Alice Kristiansen’s Adventures in Wonderland

I stumbled upon Alice’s YouTube channel by accident. I was on NJ Transit, quickly depleting all my data while listening to Lana Del Rey’s “High By The Beach” on YouTube… on repeat. Alice Kristiansen’s cover of the song popped up in the ‘up next’ column, and after the 43,586,310 time listening to the original, I thought I would spice things up.

Alice blew me away. She managed to maintain the creepiness of the song, while still making it her own. Not an easy thing to do. I became obsessed. I treated Alice’s YouTube channel like a Netflix series you discover when you’re sick at home, planted on your couch for the entire day.

After fan-girling from a distance for a few months, I decided it was time to take things to the next level. I invited Alice into our 92.3 AMP Radio studios to chat about the original music she’s releasing.

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Mike Adam: “You just came out with ‘Lost My Mind’… tell me a little bit about how you decided on this particular song as your new single.”

Alice Kristiansen: “What we wanted to do with the first single of these like new wave of singles we’re putting out is give my fans something that’s in-between what’s on my YouTube, and then what I want my individual sound to be eventually. We didn’t want to go straight into this big, bombastic production. When we first recorded the song, it was just piano. And it was kind of a process of building it up to this place where it’s like just enough production, but not too much. And I think we ended up in a really good place with it.”

MA: “Obviously the majority of your fans know you from your covers. With all this new original music, do the covers take a pause now?”

AK: “No, I’m not done doing covers. That’s how people found me. Plus, I think with the way that I approach covering songs… like, I don’t feel they’re so disconnected from what I want to do with my own original music. I’ll sort of change things around a good amount. So they do allow me to express myself, even though I am doing a cover. I don’t see any reason to stop that, ‘cause I do like covering other people’s music. It might not be just as often.”

MA: “Has there ever been a cover song that someone has done that you felt was better than the original? For me… and people fight me on this, it’s John Mayer’s version of ‘Free Fallin’.”

AK: “I was listening to that the other day. It’s so good. It’s so weird… when I first heard that, I didn’t even know that it was a cover. I feel like the John Mayer version is such a classic now as well. There’s a couple covers I really, really like. One I’m nuts about… have you seen Matt Korby’s cover of “Lonely Boy” by The Black Keys? Oh my god… I wouldn’t say that it’s better, because I really love The Black Keys, and this cover is a totally different vibe, but I feel like every single person on earth should listen to it. And then there’s this guy named Henry Green. He did a cover of “Electric Feel” by MGMT, and that’s so great. It’s so chill, and just such a good cover.”

MA: “Has there been any memorable moments where a fellow artist has reached out to you, just to tell you they’re digging your music?”

AK: “Astrid S reaching out and saying she liked the cover I did of her song… that was so crazy. Oh, and Shawn Mendes, he’s seen some of my covers and said that he liked him. So that was really cool, ‘cause he’s super talented. And I know that a lot of his fans have come over and followed me on social media which is nice… they’re all super sweet.”

MA: “What are some of the short term goals?”

AK: I think short term definitely is just getting a live show together, and getting super comfortable with that. ‘Cause I feel like when you’re just thinking about it… and I been thinking about it for a long time… and you can’t start working on it, it’s so nerve-racking. I’m just excited for when we can finally get a band together, get a rehearsal space, and actually just get down to it. Like spend hours working on this live show.”

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