Your new favourite popstar… Allie X
Meet Allie X, the Canadian-born, LA-based singer-songwriter, artist and producer who is about to become your new pop obsession. Allie X embodies all the pop sensibilities of Katy Perry, but with the dark underbelly of a downtown strip joint. Although she has unveiled three tracks so far this year, including the infectious Prime, little is known about the enigma that is Allie X. I gave her a call to try and unearth what lies underneath…
Two years ago, Allie X wasn’t actually an amazing pop entity.
“I’d never done any production of my own. I decided that I wanted to do something that was more pop-leaning, so I learned how to produce and sort of locked myself away in my tiny apartment. I had so many songs that I became a, quote-unquote, songwriter and got a publishing deal.”
Allie X doesn’t believe that the traditional route of record deals and release schedules is necessarily the future.
“I think that music and technology is the next big wave in the music industry. It’s going to trump the major label system eventually. I’d like to be at the forefront of that. But at the moment, the whole [Allie X] thing is a bit of an experiment.”
She’s recently unveiled a new track called Bitch, but says the song isn’t about someone else being a bitch, but actually all about herself.
“It’s not about a relationship that I had with another person; it’s about the relationship that I have with myself. Not only with my self self, but with my shadow self; it’s a part of me that personifies all the things that I don’t wish to acknowledge.
“The songs that I make, and all the art that I put out, is kind of a way for my shadow self to get out. It’s actually healthier to descend into the darkness and realise those traits in yourself that you perhaps don’t want to.”
The song isn’t a reference to Britney Spears saying that Work Bitch was actually a term of endearment for her gay fans, either.
“Well, I mean I do use the word ‘bitch’, and I do use the word ‘bitch’ with my many gay friends, but that wasn’t my intention.”
The track Prime is also quite dark.
“It’s a destructive little jaunt, isn’t it? I think with both these songs – and you’ll see with the other songs that I’ll be putting out there too – I kind of have these self-destructive tendencies, but I’m also laughing about it at the same time.
“My lyrical content just always seems to go in that direction. I think that has to do with what I was talking about with the shadow self. It’s just letting all that darkness out.”
Rather than following the norm when it comes to music videos, Allie X experiments with spinning gifs as they remind her of her childhood.
“When I was a child I used to spin around on the spot and look at my hands and everything would become totally blurry but my hand – and I’d make myself really dizzy and then I’d close my eyes and fall to the floor. It’s that feeling that you get where you’re suspended and the rest of the world is still spinning around you. When I started to look at all the songs that I had put together for this project, I started to realise that it’s that feeling that I’m always after. I think I’ve lived my whole life trying to get that feeling of making the world spin in the way that I want it to spin. The problem with that is that when you close your eyes and fall to the floor, it only lasts for ten seconds; you’re continuously winding yourself up to get that feeling back.”
Allie believes that her inherent weirdness sets her apart from her contemporaries.
“Any melody that I write, even if it’s the most straightforward pop melody, it has to filter through my brain. So it seems to come out a little skewed – either lyrically or in the way that I deliver something vocally. I struggled with not wanting to be that way for a while, especially as a kid, but now I really just embrace it. It seems to make me stand out.”
Hailing from Toronto, the singer is quite familiar with the Canadian city’s gay scene.
“There’s kind of two different gay scenes in Toronto; there’s the classic village, which has a more traditionally old school approach, and then there’s Queen West – which some of us call Queer West. That’s where all the gay hipsters are now. I spent time at Drag Shows and at Woody’s [from the US version of Queer As Folk] for best length competitions.”