Music Rebel Gets Big Break – The Mountaineer Article
You may know her from Instant Star or The Final Destination 3 as the stubborn, red headed Jude Harrison, signed with G-Major and working with Little Tommy Q himself, or the unfortunate Erin. But this time Alexz Johnson isn’t in front of the camera, she’s behind the microphone and doing what she loves.
Alexz and her brother/producer , Brendan, are just two of ten kids in the Johnson family. They alone wrote and produced Alexz’s debut album Voodoo in a matter of a few months. Before working with Laydee Spencer Music inc., Alexz was signed to Epic Records in LA. She, like more than a third of their artists, were released of their contract. The only problem, Epic still owns all of her music she produced while signed there. Which is why Brendan and her had to rewrite and produce over half of her new album.
Alexz loves her fans and asked them to be a part of her music by choosing her first single. The votes came in and the song, “Trip Around The World,” was named her new single. Anyone can relate to this song. Through the lyrics, it says that no matter what you went through and what you go through, you will make it passed it. That’s why there was no better choice than to shoot the music video in New Orleans. The people there have made it through the worst of times and over came the unimaginable with Hurricane Katrina.
“Trip Around the World” is unlike anything you would hear on the radio. It’s different, catchy and fun, but it also has what Alexz calls, soul. By just hearing the single people can tell that Alexz isn’t in it for the fame and money, she in it for the music. Alexz once said, in an interview at alexzworld, “[when a person listens to her new album, she wants them to walk away with] hope and a sense of honesty.” Her music is real. She writes it about her life and experiences.
The listener can really see the diversity of Alexz’s voice, going from something bright and fun to something a little darker, such as her song, “Voodoo”. “Voodoo” is the song that tells a story about the music industry. With powerful lyrics like this: “And even then it’s eating me alive / Your power ties my spirit up inside / There’s nothing I can do to make it right / I’ll follow you forever through the night,” Alexz reveals that she can’t take it that the music industry has tried to change her music. Despite that, the bond she has with her music is what keeps her strong. She can’t change the industry, so she will have to take a chance. And that is what she did when she started working with an Indie record label.
Another crowd-favorite song, “Gonna Get It” opens up with a big scream. It’s almost a scream of rhythmic frustration, something to loosen up the listener. Then Alexz just pours her heart out in the rest of the song. It’s deep and the listener can sense this in the first few lines of the song with lyrics like: “Maybe it’ll never come around / Maybe let you push me to the ground / I’ll go ’cause if I don’t it’s taking me down / And I deal ‘cause none of it is real.” Maybe this is Alexz’s way of saying “yes, I did let the music industry take control of my music and I should have stopped them,” but what happened, happened and she has learned a lot from it and it has made her stronger.
Throughout the album, the listener can tell that the songs are all different and unique in their own way, but they can also see how the songs fit together. Alexz has mentioned several times in many interviews that each song is a scene in itself. They all tell different stories, but make one big one when they are together. On the back cover of the album, the songs aren’t numbered one through eleven, they are titled as scene one, scene two, etc. When Alexz wrote this album with her brother, she envisioned it as a movie, each song fitting together and telling a story, and they do just that.
By Kiley Sheridan ‘13 and Samantha Smikta ‘13
April 27th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
Amazing article! congrats on finding it first!