Alice Olivia is already a pretty big deal, racking up an impressive 125,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel. Not only impressing the crowds online with her covers of Ed Sheeran, Shawn Mendes and more, she’s also delivered her own offering, ‘Shot You Down’. We caught up with Alice to find out what’s next for the Internet sensation, and when we can expect to hear more.
For those who haven’t heard your music yet, how would you describe it?
I work with my producer and we try our best to make sick songs out of synths, beats, bass and vocals. I’m not really sure what style it is, but right now anything goes so we just do what we love.
You’ve uploaded various covers to YouTube including Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, Adele, and more. Which is your favourite to perform?
I don’t tend to perform any covers in shows that I’ve previously uploaded, I tend to find new ones for a live show. In terms of which one was my favourite to film, it was definitely the Adele ones! There’s just something about Adele that excites me the second I hear something new from her.
How do you decide which songs to cover?
I tend to cover what’s hot and what I love! So if someone has released a brand new song and I like it I’ll cover it and make it my own.
Your debut performance was at Isle of Wight festival, can you tell us a bit about that? Did you have to camp in any horrible fields?
Haha, only on the first night! We turned up too late at night to be let into the ‘artist camping area’ so we had to camp in the stewards’ field. We set our tent up at 1am in the pouring rain! Didn’t get much sleep that night! But after that is was lovely – my manager forgot his sleeping bag and had to just sleep on the floor for 3 days.
‘Shot You Down’ is an amazing atmospheric jam, can you tell us a bit about the story behind it?
Well, we were working on a song and my producer accidently cut one of the vocal lines in half and we ended up with the hook from ‘Shot You Down’ – we thought it sounded cool and then built the energy around that as the inspiration. Lyrically I kept it quite broad because I wanted it to be about a situation that everyone’s been in.
The video is full of summer vibes, did you get to go somewhere warm to film it? What was it like working with Jay Parpworth?
I actually shot it in London and then a location near Milton Keynes. The video was originally scheduled for another day, but last minute we pushed it back a week and it happened to be the hottest day of the year! We were very lucky, working with Jay was really cool too!
You already have a massive following on YouTube and have ventured into vlogging, is that something you’d like to do more of in the future?
Definitely! There is so much that happens in and around music and behind the scenes that people never get to see – people only get the finished project usually, so it’s cool to let people look into the process and the events you get to go to – I will definitely be doing more vlogs in 2017!
If you could collaborate with any other YouTubers who would it be?
Well if you’re talking about the original YouTubers then I may as well shoot for Justin Bieber, right? Haha, I wish! No, I would definitely be up for collaborating with YouTubers, I love what William Singe is doing right now.
When can we expect to hear more original songs from you?
Early 2017 we definitely have some good things in the pipeline!
Lastly, what advice would you give to someone looking to make a career out of music?
Get yourself online as quick as possible and start building your following now. Even if you feel like you’re not ready. No one is ever ready. You have years to master your craft along the way whilst gaining support from people who are following your journey. Make sure you keep doing what you love 100 percent of the time.
Buy Alice Olivia’s ‘Shot You Down’ on iTunes, here.