Seventeen-year-old Alex McArtor has premiered a video for her latest single, “Loving Is The Way” today via Billboard, announcing her new EP, Heart Talk Vol. 1, the first installment in a pair of releases, is set to arrive on October 18. Alex grew up listening to Lou Reed, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Led Zeppelin, and while she credits films like Velvet Goldmine, Garden State and My Private Idaho for providing musical inspiration, there’s always a personal statement at the core of McArtor’s music.
In the new track “Loving Is The Way“, Alex proves she is nobody’s toy. Written after breaking off a relationship, the infectious tune was penned in an act of rebellion at the thought of feeling owned.
“The ‘Loving Is The Way’ video was kind of an all things go type of deal. Although the song is serious and represented an emotional time for me, I didn’t want things to be all serious and dramatic in the video,” Alex explains. “So, I pretty much just goofed around this moody little beach town and people followed me with a camera. It was fun and easy. I wasn’t trying to make the video a cinematic masterpiece, or overthink it. I just wanted to have fun and dance around.
“Heart Talk Vol. I is the first release of a broader, deeply personal collection of songs I wrote over the last year or so. The collection was a therapeutic release of emotions for me and loosely based off of a few relationships that I had; young love, getting hurt, hurting others, and being a little bit ‘bat shit crazy.'”
EP track “Speed Into Air” is a song to help pull yourself together, inspired by a relationship that should never have happened, while “Crazy” details playing with fire and inevitably getting burned. Then, moving on and learning to not touch the flame again. Written during Alex’s last days at boarding school, “East Coast” serves as a farewell song to the past year and the people and experiences in it.
“The ‘Heart Talk’ title track is the most important song to me on this EP as it spawned a full album’s worth of material,” says Alex. “I vividly remember writing it in the dead of winter while I was at boarding school in New Hampshire. I wrote the song in under five minutes on an untuned piano… a really untuned piano,” she laughs. “It just spilled out of me so effortlessly and lifted this weight that I didn’t even know I had off my chest. I had taken a little break from writing songs that fall while away at school and that moment just made me realize how much I need it in my life. It’s the best way I can unbottle and release emotions I have.”
McArtor recently released her debut EP, Spoken Word, an exquisite, dreamy and downright epic music debut that pulls inspiration from both classic rock and ’80s and ‘90s alternative while showcasing the singer-songwriter’s powerful voice and pensive soul. It’s getting quite a rapturous response, as evidenced by the 3 million collective streams thus far.
While McArtor is still young, she already has a musical endgame in sight. “When this doesn’t feel authentic anymore, I am out,” she says. “It’s been me painting a picture, not doing something because someone else is telling me what to paint.”