Alix Page

Alix Page

on her tour with Gracie Abrams and the release of her EP

At 20, Alix Page is anything but your ordinary breakout artist. She's been covered by Fader, Stereogum, CLASH, Earmilk, Ones To Watch, and more. The first track off the EP titled “25” was included in Coup de Main’s Best Releases of 2021. And yes, l'Odet thinks she's pretty spectacular, too. My personal favorite of hers is "Radiohead."Alix is also fresh off her tour with Gracie Abrams, the Gen Z standout with 4.2 million monthly listeners on Spotify. I met with Alix before she opened for Gracie at The Basement East in Nashville. We chatted about her recent EP and how songs score the ever-changing chapters of our lives. I hope you enjoy! 

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Cariann Bradley: Well, thank you so much for talking to me.

Alix Page: Of course. Yeah.

Cariann: I love your music!

Alix: Thank you.

Cariann: Your song “Radiohead” is my shit.

Alix: Thank you so much!

Cariann: I was in a long-term relationship a couple years ago — I remember during the breakup when I was moving my stuff out, I kept my ex’s “In Rainbows” vinyl, and I was like, “And I'm keeping ‘In Rainbows.’ Obviously." And that was the last real interaction we ever had. [Laughs]

Alix: [Laughs] That's so funny! That’s iconic to do. The story for that one — I never got into Radiohead. I knew “Creep,” but everyone knows “Creep.” [Laughs] And then I was dating this guy and he was a huge fan. He was like you have to listen to Radiohead. And I didn’t really want to, like yeah whatever, another dad band. Then we broke up and I listened. They’re so good. I was very stubborn about it at first and then fell in love with them.

Cariann: I love that. Talk to me a little bit about your EP that just came out.

Alix: It's kind of all over the place. I wrote "True + Honest" when I was 16, around the same time I wrote “Stripes” and “Frank,” my other two singles. So that’s been in my back pocket forever and I was waiting for an excuse to record it. Then I wrote the other three, like mid-late 2020. I knew that I wanted to put those three altogether. I felt like looking back at my whole catalog to find an honest kind of fit, like the storyline I had going on. We recorded them all last summer. “June Gloom” was the first song I wrote after the pandemic — I wrote that in July and that was a breaking point, for me, I think. That year launched me into a new era of new songs.

And then “25” in the fall, and then “Radiohead” was like November-ish, but yeah. It's been really fun to see them have a life of their own, as a body of work. Looking back and thinking about who the songs are about and how they've all evolved and changed over the years — it's just cool to have them just live in the world now.

Cariann: Yeah, it's almost like they take on a new life.

Alix: Yeah, completely.

Cariann Bradley: Are you signed? How did you get to do the tour?

Alix: I am completely independent! The way I got in touch with Gracie [Abrams] was I found her when I was a sophomore in high school, and she was just posting clips of originals on Instagram and didn't have anything released. I just became a huge fan of the way she shared on social media. She’s so cute with her fans and I just fell in love. And then I posted a cover of "I miss you, I'm sorry," when it first came out, like April 2020 — heat of the pandemic. She followed me on Instagram after that. I was like, what the heck? That doesn't happen all the time. What is going on? I found out that my first-ever interview — this little zine called “all my friends” — that her cousin runs it. So she had heard, I think “Stripes,” through that and then also found me through the cover.

We'd become Instagram friends and had been talking about memes once in a while and my cat and stuff on my story. I met her in person for the first time at her show at the Roxy in LA in October. She was so sweet and “25” actually came out that night. I was at the Gracie show and it came out at 9:00pm and it was so funny. She’s just been a huge influence of mine, first and foremost. The offer for the tour came out of nowhere. It wasn't on my radar that she hadn't picked an artist yet. It was just a perfect match and was a perfect fit for our music and fan bases and just like, her team is so kind and it's just been a great, great fit and could not be more… I'm just like freaking out that it's still happened and I'm so fortunate. It’s crazy.

Cariann: You deserve it. You work hard. That’s awesome.

Alix: Thank you!

Cariann: Are you writing for anything right now? Like a full-length or anything?

Alix: I feel like I haven't. I started from such a humble background of…I just fell in love with songwriting when I was 16 and write my silly little love songs and stuff. [Laughs] I don't really write with a product in mind. I kind of just write songs as they come to me. I think it's been hard to write on tour for sure. I haven’t had that much free time or time to really think and process. But before I left for tour, I was writing a ton in school this last year. There are definitely more things coming. I would love to do a couple little singles and then another EP.

Cariann: Well, you're a writer, foremost, right? A ton of musicians don't even write their own stuff.

Alix: Yeah.

Cariann: What is that for you? How did you start doing that?

Alix: I honestly didn't until I was 16. I don't know what it was. I think I always figured I would at some point. I didn't want to rush into it and try to force myself to do it too early. I went to an arts high school and was very aware of the people around me who had momagers, who were already putting them in summer camps and all this crazy stuff when they were tiny. [Laughs] And I was like, I don't want to do that. And then I started taking a songwriting class my sophomore year of high school for part of the curriculum. 

Cariann: Your music reminds me a lot of, like, Phoebe Bridgers, Holly Humberstone. Do you get compared to those artists?

Alix: Yeah, I get that a lot. My voice has literally sounded the same since I was like 13. It's just my voice, but I submitted my songs for my school's original showcase my sophomore year of high school, and the director of the program was like, "You sound just like this new artist I've been listening to — her name's Phoebe. Her first album just came out." And it was like 2018 and listened to her, fell in love with her. From there, I was like, "Okay, this kind of writing just makes so much sense to me." And I hadn't been exposed to her kind of dry humor, and her really full songwriting, but still with catchy melodies. That was completely new world to me. And I think that like definitely was very inspiring and still is for sure. Yeah. And then Holly, I love too. She's ridiculous. I think she is going to take over the world and—

Cariann: She's so nice, too.

Alix: Yeah, so cute! I went to her show in October, also through Roxy and I was blown away by how great she sounds live, too.

Cariann: I don't know if you've heard of this artist. I really want to interview her, but she's opening for Billie Eilish right now. Her name's Dora Jar.

Alix: Love her!

Cariann: She is so good.

Alix: Yeah, literally, I heard “Multiply” for the first time like three months ago and I was like, where did this come from? How does someone just have a song this good, like out of nowhere and still be pretty small? How is this not huge?

Cariann: And it's so unique. “Multiply” gives me a Gen Z Joni Mitchell energy.

Alix: Her melodies — the way they just wind and weave! And her getting the Billie tour was huge.

Cariann: Yeah, I've been following her on Instagram for a while, just watching her followers go up. She's taking over! I really like her music. There's this wave…when I interviewed Holly late last year, I told her I feel like there's this wave of young women in songwriting who are getting to actually say their shit. Artists like Taylor Swift got bashed for it and kind of cleared the way.

Alix: Totally.

Cariann: And it's cool. It's encouraging.

Alix: Of course, there are still like bands and stuff making it, but I feel like there's not as much of a place for these all-male bands writing about girls and bands anymore. That's just not as appealing anymore. I feel like women just have more things to say right now and are, like, going off. [Laughs] Super interesting. Even thinking about the most popular artists right now — it's all women. There are some bands who got famous — like Maroon 5, for example — in the 2000's and will never lose that level of fame, but feel so outdated now. It's so interesting.

Cariann: It must be a theme for music overall.

Alix: Yeah. It's super interesting. 

Cariann: Well, I don't want to take too much of your time. But I did want to get your opinion on something. It’s funny— when I interviewed Holly late last year, I talked to her about this new relationship I was in and how her music was soundtracking it. That relationship is over now. [Laughs] And—

Alix: Oh no. I had a relationship that was also pretty soundtracked by Holly. That’s crazy!

Cariann: Yeah?

Alix: Yeah.

Cariann: I remember hearing Olivia Rodrigo talk about how Gracie Abrams inspired “Drivers License.” And how her music soundtracked that time of her life.

Alix: Listening to “minor” and driving the suburbs! Yes. Literally now that I'm thinking about Holly, like…I was developing a crush on this guy and writing “June Gloom.” And “June Gloom” is heavily inspired by “Overkill.” That was one of the first songs I heard of hers. And it's so brilliant. It’s so heavy and cool. When me and this guy were breaking up, I started listening to “Vanilla” a ton. We still have this shared playlist for each other. When we were broken up for a week and he added a sort of reply song to mine and I added “Livewire” to his and that's so crazy. I never even thought about that. Like, oh my god. Music is so cool the way it does that.

Cariann: Yeah, it really is. I was listening to “Scarlett” a lot when I started talking to that guy and it's funny because “Scarlett” is about breaking up. At the time I was like, it feels so upbeat! It feels like it's soundtracking this! And then we broke up and it was really ugly and I think it was foreshadowing. [Laughs] Did this song taking up such a big part of my brain during this situation like…foreshadow its failure? I don't know, it's just so funny how music does that.

Alix: That's crazy.

Cariann: Music just invites such synchronicity. And I’m not musical at all, but that's what I think is so beautiful about the art is that we can just connect to it and it sticks. We can find real similarities in it.

Alix: And so many common themes and like... I don't know. Yeah. That's super cool.

Cariann: Holly really soundtracked us! We'll have to tell her.

Alix: Oh yeah. “Thursday,” too. Oh my gosh. “Thursday.” I turned 20 in November, and I think her EP dropped in November. Things were still rocky with that guy and I was like, I want to try and get coffee with him. And then that one verse in “Thursday” where it's like, " I threw a party for my twentieth / Invited half the town / I know it's so unlike me / But on the off-chance, you'd come around?” It's so funny. Yeah. Wow.

Cariann: It's just encouraging and really beautiful to know that once you zoom out of the present moment, your music is going to do that for people too.

Alix: Thank you.

Cariann: Your music is beautiful and it's going to soundtrack people's stories, too. And it's like you said, it takes on a life of its own and that's what's really magical about it.

Alix: It's out of my hands and…yeah. I’m letting the world do something with it and that’s super cool. 

BY CARIANN BRADLEY — PHOTOS C/O L'ODET AND ALIX PAGE — APRIL 2022
LISTEN TO ALIX'S EP "OLD NEWS" ON SPOTIFY — AVAILABLE ON ALL STREAMING PLATFORMS
FOLLOW HER ON INSTAGRAM HERE: @ALIXXPAGE