George Alice Interview

Mitch: Your latest releases, Tightrope & Stupid Question, dropped on May 13. Do you mind sharing a bit about the tracks and what drew you to releasing them as a double single?
George Alice: Doing the double single actually wasn’t the original plan at all. I just always ended up listening to Stupid Question and Tightrope after each other on the SoundCloud playlist with all the demos.

We wanted to think of these last five releases as a body of work that doesn’t really exist in one. I always think of things visually and was thinking, if we did music videos for all of these, which we didn’t end up doing, the beginning would be SOS, this big party girl thing in the middle of nowhere. Then Tightrope would be on the back of someone’s motorbike going through the desert, and Stupid Question would be where you finally land back at the party, or wherever you might end up.

It just felt right to put them out together. It felt like the end of the night versus the beginning of the night, or the other way around. It just felt supernatural, weirdly. I think it was a bit of an uncommon thing to do, especially in Australia. But YOLO.

Mitch: What do you hope listeners take away from these tracks?
George Alice: There’s a lot of vulnerability in these two songs, and I haven’t really been that vulnerable before.

When we were making Tightrope specifically, it was based off an actual conversation. It was more like voice notes. It wasn’t a regular session where there’s heaps of snares going off and the producers are trying to find the biggest pop sound. We weren’t trying to make it chaotic, bigger, or make it feel like it was going to hit you. This one was just based on sitting with a nylon guitar and figuring things out together.

I don’t know if you can still hear it in the version that got put out, but you could definitely hear it in all the demos. Jen Decilveo, the producer, had her washing machine going in the background. You could hear the noise in the voice recording because we just wanted to get it down as quickly as we could, because something special was happening. So I almost feel like that’s probably the message.

Even in Stupid Question, I think there’s a lot of vulnerability. It’s about a breakup, how crazy it makes you feel, and all the things you want to ask that you might never get closure for.

Mitch: What’s your favourite memory from making these tracks?
George Alice: I was in America for a very long time when I was 18 or 19, and I didn’t really have many friends. I was just going to every social event because I didn’t really know anyone there and I was bored.

I was hanging out with one of my friends, and he was like, “You should come to the show tonight”. So I invited all of my college friends, and we went to see Lost Frequencies play. I think it was at the Fonda and one of my friends was supporting.

I went backstage and bumped into Lenno, who ended up producing Stupid Question. I’d heard of Lenno before, but I didn’t know it was him. I knew his work, and I think he was doing quite a lot in the dance scene specifically at that time.

We all got chatting because we all make music and then we decided to go get pancakes after the show.

I just thought it was funny because a lot of the time people are like, “Let’s go to a bar after the show”, but these guys were like, “Should we just go get pancakes?”

So we did. We sat at this giant table eating pancakes for hours. Lenno and I decided then and there that we should exchange numbers and figure out a time to work together.

I ended up leaving one of my sessions around five pm and going to a night session with Lenno and my friend Maize. We went to this crazy house in Beverly Hills and were sitting in the garden playing table tennis.

It was super universe. You just had to trust it and be like, “I don’t know how I met you, why I met you, why we got pancakes together, or why I’m in this house now”. It really stuck with me. I had to trust myself and think, “Yeah, something cool is going to happen from this”. Luckily, it was Stupid Question.

Mitch:SOS has had an incredible resurgence since being featured in Off Campus. How did you find out the song was being placed in the show, and what was your reaction?
George Alice: I actually just got an email, and it wasn’t anything crazy. People have been asking me this question lately, and I wish I had some crazy story to tell, but I truly just opened my email app and there it was.

The show didn’t properly exist yet. I got the email saying they wanted to include SOS in this new TV show coming out on Prime. Hannah and Garrett were going to be drinking piña coladas in a dive bar, and SOS was going to be playing in the background. I thought, “Cool. Very fitting.”

It was also my dream to do sync placements. Around that time, I was also going on sync writing camps, so I was very much in that world. I’d kind of randomly found myself there, really enjoyed it, and wanted to do more.

It felt like it was a huge win. I didn’t know anything about the show, obviously, and I didn’t know how big it was going to get. I don’t think anybody else did either, even the people emailing me.

I just kept thinking that it felt like a good thing to do. It felt like a really clever move. It felt like a lovely little thing for my résumé, to be able to say I was in an indie series or something.

Then all of a sudden my phone started blowing up last month, and it turns out it wasn’t the small series I thought it was going to be. It’s pretty massive.

Mitch: You’ve said that when you write music, you create a visual world around it. Did Off Campus capture the vision you had for SOS?
George Alice: Yeah, pretty much, which was crazy. It felt like a massive win and a huge tick. It almost felt like a huge encouragement, like somebody else understood my vision.

The music video we did for SOS was pretty bonkers in itself and an incredible journey, but it definitely showcased what I was feeling and thinking. It’s that real flirtatious feeling where you’re in the bar, maybe you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be, or you’re with someone you shouldn’t be with.

It’s funny because life is a bit funny that way. You can go and have fun with your friends and not think about the consequences for a minute.

Specifically at that point in my life, I spent a lot of time on college campuses. I spent a lot of time at USC when I was in America, and it was that whole thing of going to frat parties, getting weird with it, meeting strangers, and suddenly thinking, “Wait... I think we’re soulmates.”

I think Off Campus absolutely nailed what it’s like to live in that world and what it’s like to fall in love, be flirty, go out, get drunk, and know you’re going to be fine getting home. It was a huge encouragement that I’d painted a really good scene.

Mitch: If you could place any other song from your catalogue in a TV show, what song would you choose and on what show?
George Alice: Holy shit. That’s such a good question.

I’ve been watching Girls lately. It’s incredibly life-changing.

I’ve actually been writing music about it because that’s how much it’s impacted me. It’s so 2012 millennial, coming-of-age. Life is weird and hard, but it’s beautiful. Let’s go dancing at the bar even though we’re poor.

I think I would put Mid Years in Girls.

It feels like school and college were hard, but now I’m in the real world. I’m never going to go back to all of that.

Mitch: Do you think sync placements are becoming as important for music discovery as radio once was?
George Alice: Yes! I’m actually in the middle of doing more research on this. I’m really nerding out about all this stuff at the minute.

When I was in America, I was talking to some of my housemates about The O.C. and Grey’s Anatomy. I remember I made this really sad demo one day and I was like, “Damn, it’s so cinematic”. They were like, “You need to pitch that to be in a TV show like this. This could make your whole career”. But that was never anything on my radar.

Now I’m researching The O.C., Grey’s Anatomy, Dawson’s Creek, and a whole bunch of other shows because they were teaching me about the massive impact those shows had on people’s careers.

I started watching them to get an idea. Then I remembered that when I was younger and I’d watch a movie or TV show, I’d become obsessed with the soundtrack and immediately go try to find it on YouTube.

So I guess it’s coming back around.

Back then, those shows had the power of radio behind them as well, but it’s interesting to see just how powerful they are now.

I think social media virality has replaced radio and it’s also backing up the sync world. Movie and TV soundtrack discovery is happening a million times heavier now because we have virality on our side. Kids are constantly talking about things online while also finding all these shows on the internet. It’s so accessible now, whereas before it maybe wasn’t.

Anyway, that’s my whole rant about it. I’m very invested in all this stuff now because, obviously, when something like this changes your life, you want to figure out how and why.

Mitch: What can fans expect from you next?
George Alice: That’s a great question. Something like this really picks you up and spins you around. When you get put back down, you’re still spinning.

I’m just trying to figure out what the best next move is. I’m also taking time to exist in SOS because I loved this song so much.

I think this song really set up what will be the trajectory of my career, sonically as well. It opened the gates for me to be very myself in music, to be unserious, and to not be afraid to talk about myself and represent what it’s actually like to be a twenty-something-year-old girl and what that consists of.

We’re making a bunch of new music at the moment and seeing where that lands, and hopefully some more shows at the end of the year.

I think we do have some plans in the schedule to be moving around the place a little bit. I know we have some new little bits and pieces lined up, but whatever that may be, you shall see.

Mitch: If you were curating the soundtrack for a brand-new TV series, which Australian and New Zealand artists would you include?
George Alice: Pash. They’re so good. I think Pash have that real classic boy band energy. I don’t know if we have that anymore. When I was a teenager, being obsessed with One Direction and 5 Seconds of Summer was the greatest feeling in the world. I just want to be that obsessed with something again.

I think people discovering Pash in a real coming-of-age TV series would be a really cool thing.

For that teenage angsty energy, Teenage Joans, of course.

Mariae Cassandra. I just love that real singer-songwriter, cutesy bedroom pop vibe. I think that would be awesome in a show.

Yorke has a new song called break up season, and it’s completely turning my life upside down right now. I love that song.

Those artists and their music could honestly soundtrack an entire season of something pretty epic.

RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS!!

Mitch: Favourite Off Campus character?
George Alice: Oh my God, I actually really love Allie. I think I see a little bit of myself in her, only in the sense of her little wild side. She’s a bit crazy and loves to dance. Me too!

Mitch:Stupid Question vs Tightrope. Who survives?
George Alice:Stupid Question... it’s a banger! It makes me want to tap my foot.

Mitch: Favourite lyric you’ve written?
George Alice: “Reliable, but text, don’t call me.” I’m extremely Type B, and I think anyone who’s Type B understands that.

Mitch: Finish the sentence! George Alice is for fans of...
George Alice: Kesha, Holly Humberstone, and the extremely, sometimes introverted extrovert