Charming with soft guitars and murmuring vocals, Alix Page gets honest on Radiohead.

Photo: Dillon Matthew

Southern-Californian Alix Page offers a tale of heartbreak and tenderness in her latest single, Radiohead. The track is the second to be taken from her forthcoming debut EP Old News, which is slated for release in January next year. It follows her honest songwriting style, as she wears her heart on her sleeve and allows her vulnerabilities to peer through the gentle whispers of the acoustic guitar. With a heavy melancholy and a piercing sadness, Radiohead is the painful reminder of past relationships as it sees Alix confronting objects and memories that used to be sweet but are now tainted by heartbreak.

Explaining more of this inspiration, Alix shares:

‘Radiohead’ is proof that you can be completely over someone and then have a dream about them and fall right back into feelings you didn’t know you still had. Around this time last year I had a dream about me and an ex moving into an apartment and painting it together. We hadn’t spoken in months and I genuinely hadn’t thought about it in a while but it felt SO scarily real. I woke up flustered and heard the whole thing in my head before I even got out of bed; I wrote the first verse and chorus right away.

It wasn’t difficult to write technically but it made me face some hard truths during the process. I didn’t realize I still had some unresolved feelings about it until I was writing the chorus and saying those words out loud. That was kind of my way of coming to terms with the reality of that breakup and accepting the way things went. It’s really just a list of things I wish I could’ve said to that person at that moment.

Feeling touched by the honesty imbued within her music, we chatted to Alix further about the track and her coming EP.

What’s a motto you live by?

“That’s just how the bullshit goes.”

If your sound had a colour, what colour would it be?

Maybe maroon? To me maroon is elegant and composed but there’s way more to it in the undertones. You can feel some kind of unrest under the surface.

If you could set Radiohead to a TV show or movie, what would it be the soundtrack for?

500 Days of Summer. It’s one of my favorite movies of all time and the soundtrack is already one of the best out there, I feel like the song could definitely fit in from Tom’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character) perspective. If they re-wrote it so he was obsessed with Radiohead instead of The Smiths it would fit in perfectly hahaha.

It sounds like Radiohead came from a place of vulnerability, what helps you be so open with your listeners?

That part has always come easy actually. I like to joke that I’m braver in my songs than in real life. The feelings I write about in my songs pretty much stay a secret until the song is out. I think weirdly there’s something about sharing it with the world versus one individual person that feels less intimidating.

What do you hope to achieve with your music?

I really just want to meet as many creative people as I can, and develop a distinct sound and writing voice that moves people.

What are you most looking forward to with your coming debut EP?

I’m really excited to see which songs people gravitate towards. Of course I have my favorite parts of each one but I love seeing which things stick with people. I’m excited to keep creating and coming up with fun things to do with the songs, like videos and visuals and stuff.

And finally, slightly cliché but what does music mean to you?

Like I mentioned before, my songs are like secrets to me until they’re out. I come across as a very open, outgoing person and then I have these insanely strong feelings that I don’t really don’t reveal until it comes out in a song. In that way music is my way of speaking up and explaining how I really feel, so it’s a really important outlet for me. It’s like when people tell you to write down everything you’re feeling on a piece of paper instead of ranting, and then you can just crumple it up or throw it away and move on. That’s how I feel about my songs.