Titus writes:
First, Anne & I would like to sincerely thank Lex for allowing us to form a joint playlist for last week’s show. It was great to hear some of our favourite tunes played on Uknova radio, and I was delighted to dedicate a Brandi Carlile track to my wonderful cousin Melanie, who is a fan of this talented artist. As always, during this last week I have listened to many tracks from (mainly) new-ish bands and artists, and I have been particularly impressed by an American singer/songwriter, whose work had previously escaped these old ears – Lizzy McAlpine.
Elizabeth Catherine McAlpine was born in September 1999, to father Mark McAlpine and mother Robin Lacey. She grew up in Narberth, Pennsylvania in the suburbs of Philadelphia with her sibling Emma and has written music since she was in 6th grade. Lizzy studied songwriting at Berklee College of Music in Boston, before leaving in her junior year to pursue music on a fulltime basis. Devoted father Mark passed away suddenly, of natural causes on 13 March 2020, and since then Lizzy has dedicated track 13 to him, on each of her three albums. These are ‘Headstones and Land Mines’ from her first album ‘Give me a minute’; ‘Chemtrails’ from her second LP ‘Five seconds Flat’; and ‘March’ from her latest album ‘Older’. The tracks reference him as the Earth, the Air and the Water respectively. To me, she shows broad similarity to another favourite of mine – Cat Power - who I seem to remember blogging about last year. She writes lovely lyrics, which often tell a sad story.
The ‘Dallas Observer’ said that her first album was “One of the best” of 2020, and the BBC Media Centre named her as “A talented up and coming artist”. Several publications called her a “TikTok star” and even though Lizzy dislikes this title, it is a fact that by April 2021, she had over eight million views of a then unreleased song ‘You ruined the 1975’ on this platform. I can hear you impatiently saying “But please tell us about the kind of music she actually plays”.......I would answer that she has been mainly referred to as an “Indie pop folk singer” , but personally I can also detect some bedroom pop, jazz and r & b. Her collaborators include Jacob Collier, Dodie, Tom Rosenthal, Ben Kessler, Noah Kahan, Niall Horan and Finneas. (Not a a lot of people know that Finneas, is the talented brother of Billie Eilish).
To promote her third album ‘Older’, McAlpine is embarking on a tour of North America and Europe in April 2025. In addition to her three studio albums, she has made three EP’s and released around 24 singles either as lead artist or featured artist. It seems to me that most, if not all of her songs’ lyrics are personal to her, and these lyrics are skilfully projected throughout her writing career. As one reviewer on YouTube said “All of your songs are so peacefully beautiful – thank you for giving us the pleasure of being able to listen to them”. I like nearly all of the songs on the three albums, but have asked Lex to play ‘Headstones & Land Mines’ which in my opinion is a beautifully sad way to end her first album. It can be found here.