“I’m not an intellect. I’m just a vessel for something else”

As the artistic persona Allie X, singer-songwriter Alexandra Hughes balances between intuition and strategy, remaining an elusive phenomenon with music that spans from punk spirit to doomsday optimism. Our author, Fiona Frommelt, spoke with the Canadian artist about reinvention, anger as catharsis, and why she is driven by ambivalence of all things. Whether the mystery of the „X“ in Allie X will ever be solved remains to be seen.

Allie X, what’s your relationship with musicals?
As a child, I was determined to become a musician, so my parents sent me to piano lessons. I had a very classical curriculum all the way through university. Unfortunately, that turned out to be completely irrelevant when it came to writing good songs. I grew up with musicals like Cabaret or Sunday in the Park with George, and didn’t really have any connection to pop music or whatever was considered cool until I was in my twenties. I was a total theatre kid and  had to actually learn how to listen to music. To this day, I’m constantly discovering new sounds. Anyone who wants to write good songs has to listen to music. To everyone who just copies radio hits: Fools! Listen to music, listen to decades of music history, listen to experimental stuff, expand your horizons!

What kind of music do you listen to today?
I love punk and how it later evolved into post-punk and new wave. Those movements inspired the album Girl With No Face, even though the record itself doesn’t sound punk at all. I’m drawn to experimental music and artists who manage to infiltrate pop culture from the outside. Personally, I enjoy drone music and soundscapes because they’re genres I don’t need to analyse. They allow me to truly switch my brain off.

With every album, you reinvent yourself and step into a new persona. Who is Allie X on Happiness Is Going to Get You?
In my work, my confidence comes from radically rethinking the visual worlds from album to album. I firmly believe that my voice is what holds everything together. I need that freedom; otherwise, I’d simply be unhappy. I have to follow my inspiration and whatever genuinely excites me in that moment. For Happiness Is Going To Get You, or „HIGGY“ for short, I am “The Infant Mary”: a woman from another time who nonetheless exists in the here and now. Unconsciously, she is trapped inside a Perspex cube, blind to what’s happening outside. She focuses on tasks that are long since obsolete. The album explores the tension between past, present, and future.Right now, there’s that apocalyptic mood in the air again. It feels like a futuristic Digital Doomsday. In contrast, there’s the fragility and nostalgia of the past. The album itself is like a time capsule, where all my favourite sonic influences collide.

How did Girl With No Face pave the way for Happiness Is Going to Get You?
Happiness Is Going To Get You definitely couldn’t exist without the experience of creating Girl With No Face, even though the two albums are musically quite different. While working on Girl With No Face, I released a lot of anger and frustration and ultimately processed suppressed teenage emotions. That catharsis created the space for the emotions beneath that anger to rise to the surface on HIGGY. And although my music has always carried a certain darkness, this is the first album where something like hope and peace appear, something I’ve never heard in my own work before. That said, I still have anger. It hasn’t disappeared. I actually believe it can be valuable and protective, especially for people who identify as female.

That’s why the album title and the music carry a sense of “doomsday positivity”. It feels sinister while simultaneously light.
Yes, exactly. It’s as if your heart is opening to the sky and light is pouring into you. That is exactly what it means to be alive. It is so beautiful and, at the same time, almost unbearable with pain.

Did your musical beginnings influence HIGGY?
HIGGY is the album I wanted to write 15 years ago as Ali Hughes. Back then, I composed at the piano, but honestly, the songs were bad. They sounded like musicals or Disney songs. Lyrically, I hadn’t found my voice yet. I’ve carried all of that inside me for the past 15 years. Now the album finally exists, and it feels like a full-circle moment. At the same time, the process is very abstract. I don’t fully understand this thing that’s coming out of me; I’m not an intellect. I’m just a vessel for something else. My art is deeply personal, while it’s also divine in a way, because it’s coming from a place that I don’t understand.

Do you believe that the universe has some kind of overarching meaning or intention?
I strongly resonate with the idea of magic in terms of energies. For me, that’s something very tangible. Back then, I felt this powerful pull towards L.A., and today I sense the same energy in London. I have a deep trust that incredible things can happen.

Are there specific tools or techniques that fundamentally shape how you make music or build your visual world?
I’m so glad to be making music in this technological age, primarily because I love DIY. It used to be that you had to rent a studio just to record a song or work with an engineer. The moment a melody or lyric comes to me, I can immediately record a voice memo. Those moments are totally precious, fleeting, and you need to get them. Thanks to technology, I can work alone with a laptop, Ableton, and speakers. That is enormously liberating, both musically and visually. The fascinating thing about our apocalyptic digital age is that, basically, everything is possible. And in there lies an optimism.

You’re currently responsible for everything related to Allie X, both creatively and business-wise. How important is it for you to have complete control to realise your vision?
Without that freedom, nothing would work for me. Right now, I’m deliberately questioning many of the music industry’s standards. Instead of a system where everyone works around an artist on a commission basis, I want to build a company with salaried employees where I am the CEO. In doing so, I am intentionally moving away from the status quo and the usual „advance“ models. I haven’t accepted advances for a long time. It’s a constant struggle, but one I’m proud of and one I will continue, for better or worse. Because if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that many people in the music industry are primarily chasing money. They aren’t visionaries; they follow analytics and numbers. Perhaps people like me can be pioneers of a new system that leads to better conditions in the music industry. I am not a mass-market, world-famous pop icon, and yet I will hold my ground. Even if I never land a massive hit.