15 Minutes with Lizzy McAlpine
by Vicky Durachta
Recently topping the apple charts, Lizzy McApline is an artist that you need on your radar.
Born and raised in Philly, Lizzy McApline has been writing music ever since she’s been in the sixth grade. She writes all of her songs and they all feature her talents on the guitar. A wonderful blend of indie and pop, her music continues to expand the genre as we know it. Her most popular songs include, “Pancakes for Dinner”, “Apple Pie”, and “To the Mountains.” Though with her recently released album, “Five Seconds Flat”, she continues to push her boundaries as an artist.
Lizzy’s song “Pancakes for Dinner” immediately drew me to her. Her instrumentation immediately drew me in, as her guitar skills far exceeded my expectations. Her lyricism was full of nuance and meaning and it immediately made me feel connected to the song. I began listening to Lizzy routinely and found that I fell in love with her songs and their seamless production.
Luckly, as part of In2une Music, I’ve gotten the opportunity to interview Lizzy for a wonderful 15 minutes to learn more about her process and objectives as an artist.
How did you get into music? How long has it been part of your life?
It’s been part of my life for my entire life. I’ve always been surrounded by music. My grandma, specifically, she’s taken us to see a Broadway show every year since I was 8. She’s always had a piano in her house and a guitar so I would just sit at those instruments and pretend to play til’ I really could play them. So I feel like I’ve always been surrounded by music, but I would really credit my grandma.
Getting into your creative process, every artist has one. But what do you do to get out of a creative rut?
So, I go through phases of writing a lot and writing nothing at all. And during those periods of not writing anything, I’ll try to write but usually if it feels forced or if I try to push through and write something it will either not sound good or not be something that I like, or I’ll just get nowhere. So, normally when I am in a creative rut, I just have to let it happen how it’s going to happen and I can’t force myself to write. I just won’t write for a while. And eventually, whenever the inspiration hits me, I’ll sit down and write again. But I can never force it.
Do you have a specific spot where you like writing? Or wherever that inspiration hits, you just start writing?
Normally it’s in my room!
So, your album topped 6 on the Spotify top Albums for the week of April 8th. How did that feel?
It was crazy. I wasn’t really expecting that but it was really cool!
You also recently played at Coachella. How was the experience? Performing in front of such a large crowd with Finneas? Was that your first time performing at such a large venue?
Yes it was. But it was really crazy. It was honestly surreal. I feel so grateful that he even thought of bringing me out for that. But it was really fun! I honestly wasn’t nervous at all, it was just really cool overall.
I also want to talk about your music videos. Your videos are cinematic masterpieces, often playing on specific motifs and themes. Can you explain your creative process with these videos? Why did you choose the motifs that you did (ex. skeleton)
The creative process was long. I wrote this concept over a year ago at this point. But we had a lot of pre-production, a lot of planning that went into it because we were aiming to shoot this in 6 days, which we ended up doing. But we shot the whole thing in 6 days and we really had to have everything planned and down to a T. Then we shot it and then the post-production was a lot of editing and sitting in a room for hours everyday just editing. But honestly, it was one of the most fulfilling things that I’ve ever been a part of. It was really satisfying to see my vision come to life, in front of my eyes. [As far as the motifs] I don’t really know where it came from, I just wanted to find a metaphor. I didn’t want the film to just be about a relationship; I wanted there to be something more, out of the ordinary, to drive the point home. So I came up with the skeleton concept just as a way to show the feelings more visually.
From your recent album, what’s your favorite song? What about it makes it special?
I think the one that I’m most proud of and the longest to write, which ended up being the most intimate, is “Nobody Likes a Secret.” That song took me over a year to write. The breakup that it’s about happened a year ago. But it took me until a couple months ago to really write about it. I was most nervous for that song to come out but I’m also the most proud of it because it feels the most genuine [as in] I really buried my soul. But my favorite, it really changes all the time, but I love “Orange Show Speedway.” I think it’s the perfect closing song for the record, it’s just really fun.
I know you just released this project, but do you have any ideas going forward? A next direction?
I don’t really know what direction I want to go in next in terms of sound, but I do have a lot of songs written for the next record already. I like to think ahead. I’m a planner, I’m a virgo! We haven’t started producing them [songs] yet, so I’m not quite sure what it’s going to sound like. I kinda don’t want to go into it with many expectations because I went into this one with many expectations, like it’s going to be indie rock. And then we went in and we were like “this song felt like it was going to sound like this and this song was going to sound like this”, so we just scrapped the idea of keeping it one genre early on. So for the next record, whatever the song needs we’ll make it sound like that.