Alice Phoebe Lou (born 19 July 1993 as Alice Matthew) is a South African singer-songwriter based in Berlin, Germany. She has released five self-funded studio albums to date — Orbit (2016), Paper Castles (2019), Glow (2021), Child's Play (2021) and Shelter (2023) — alongside two live albums, three EPs and various singles.
Since 2019, she has also been active in her side project called Strongboi, a duo which features her keyboard player from her band.[2]
Early life
Lou spent her childhood in Kommetjie on west coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa and attended a Waldorf school.[3] Her parents are documentary filmmakers.[3] She took piano and guitar lessons as a child.[4][5] When she was 14 years old she was fond of trance music and started to take photographs from concerts, sometimes getting paid for them.[6] In 2010, she spent her summer holiday in Paris living first with her aunt but soon moved to live with a friend and started earning money by fire-dancing.[4] She has two younger brothers who are twins and grew up listening to Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, The Velvet Underground and Portishead.[7] Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, she would spend 4 months every year in South Africa visiting with family and friends. She has lived in Berlin, Germany since she was 19 years old.[8] She resides in the Berlin neighborhood, Neukölln.[9]
Alice Phoebe Lou performing with her band at Warschauer Straße Station, Berlin in 2016
Career
Alice Phoebe Lou at Oval Space, Thursday 30 September 2021
She took a gap year after graduating from high school in South Africa in 2012, and settled in Europe, first to Amsterdam and then to Berlin.[4] In Berlin, she started to sing and play guitar as she found out that this was more lucrative than fire-dancing.[4] After her gap year she contemplated attending university in South Africa,[10] but eventually decided to purchase a battery powered amplifier and return to Berlin instead.[4] In Berlin, she performed on S- and U-Bahn stations and parks.[4][11] After one month in Berlin, she played on a television programme.[12] In April 2014 she self-released "Momentum" EP.[13] The song "Fiery Heart, Fiery Mind" from the EP featured in the soundtrack of the 2015 released film "Ayanda".[14] She also started to play in venues.
After a performance at TEDx in Berlin on 6 September 2014[15][16] she started to get offers from record labels, but she wanted to stay independent.[4][5][17] In December 2014 she released a live album "Live at Grüner Salon" as a means to fund the recording of her debut studio album.[18]
In 2015, she started to tour and played first time at SXSW festival in USA in 2015.[18] She returned to SXSW every year after that until 2019.[19][20][21][22] She also performed in TEDGlobal London in 2015 and opened for Rodriguez on their 2016 South Africa tour.[23][24]
In April 2016, Alice Phoebe Lou released her debut album "Orbit", produced by Matteo Pavesi and Jian Kellett-Liew.[5][25][17] She was nominated for best female artist at the 2016 German critics choice awards in Germany[26] and was invited to several German TV programs for interviews and performances.[27][28] She toured in Europe, South Africa and USA in 2016 and played three sold-out shows at the Berlin Planetarium.[29][30] Moreover, she still continued busking in Berlin.[31]
In December 2017, she self-released nine track "Sola" EP and a book titled "Songs, poems and memories".[32][33][34] The same month it was announced that her song "She" from the film Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story is on the shortlist for Academy Awards' Oscars in Best Original Song category.[35] "She" was released as a digital single in 2018 with a music video directed by Natalia Bazina.[36] In 2018 edition of the Berlin Music Video Awards, Lou's music video ''She'' was nominated for Best Song.[37]
"She" also features significantly in two scenes of the German Film Kokon, which was released on 21 February 2020 (When 'Nora' and 'Romy' are on the roof of a building, listening to music; and at the end, as 'Nora' finds her Caterpillar has metamorphosed into its adult form).
During 2018 Alice Phoebe Lou toured Europe, USA, South Africa, Japan and Canada.[38]
Alice Phoebe Lou at Funkhaus Berlin on 1 December 2018
The first single Something Holy from her Paper Castles album was released on 30 November 2018.[39][40] On 15 January 2019, the second single, Skin Crawl, was released digitally.[41] The video of Skin Crawl won in June third prize at the Berlin Music Video Awards in the best concept category.[42] On 15 February third single, Galaxies, was released and on 8 March 2019 the album was released.[43][44][45]
In March 2019, Alice was the artist of the month of Consequence of Sound.[46] On 6 May Galaxies video filmed in Zeiss Planetarium in Berlin featuring Maisie Williams was released.[47]
On 12 July A Place of My Own (Mahogany Sessions) EP containing four songs from Paper Castles album recorded live was released in digital format accompanied by a YouTube video of the recording session.[48] On 7 August video for the Lost in LA was published. The song is from her Sola EP.[2]
On 15 November Alice was interviewed in aspekte-program of German ZDF TV and she performed Paper Castles with her band.[49]
In December Paper Castles album was listed at number 19 in the NBHAP magazine's 50 best albums of 2019 list[50] and 7th in FMS magazine's top 35 albums and EPs of 2019 list.[51]
During 2019, she had over one hundred concerts in Europe, Japan, USA and Canada.[52][53][54] For example, she performed on 30 May 2019 first time at the main stage of Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona. Later that day she had another smaller concert at the OCB Paper Sessions stage.[55][56] On 28 February 2020 German TV Bayerischer Rundfunk broadcast and streamed her PULS-festival concert recorded on 30 November 2019 in Munich.[57] In spite of extensive touring Lou still continued to occasionally perform in Berlin parks and U-Bahn stations too.[57] In spring 2020 she had a short Europe tour[58] and after that several streamed and broadcast concerts, for example on Arte.[59][60]
On 13 March 2020, she released Witches single.[61] Week before that, on 6 March, self-titled video Strongboi was released by her Strongboi side project with Ziv Yamin. The digital single of the song was released on 20 March.[62] This was followed by Strongboi's Honey Thighs digital single on 10 April[63] and Tuff Girl on 7 August.[64]
On 1 May she released ten track live album Live at Funkhaus from the December 2019 Funkhaus Berlin concert. Further, a short documentary filmed and directed by Julian Culverhouse about Paper Castles tour was published.[65] On 26 June Touch single was released.[66][67] A purple 7 inch vinyl containing Witches and Touch was released on 18 September.[68]
In November it was announced that her third studio album titled Glow would be released in March 2021.[68] On 4 December single and video of Dusk from the coming Glow-album was released.[69] On 10 December 2020, Alice covered Paul McCartney's unreleased track Deep Deep Feeling for McCartney's ’12 Days of Paul’ campaign.[70] On 19 February 2021, second single Dirty Mouth was released from the upcoming album with a music video.[71]Glow was released on 19 March 2021.[72][73]
On 2 December 2021, she released the ten track album Child's Play without any advance announcements.[74][75]
On 25 February 2022, while she was touring in west coast of USA,[76] her side project Strongboi released new song Fool Around.[77] Strongboi released in 2022 two further singles, Unconditional and Cold from their coming debut album Strongboi that was released on 17 February 2023.[78]
She continued touring through the summer of 2022, and in autumn she had a North America tour supporting Billy Bragg.[79] Touring continued in 2023 and on 10 March 2023 the title track Shelter of her coming album was released as a single in digital formats followed by a music video about month later.[80] The second single, Open My Door, was released digitally on 28 April 2023[81] and the third one, Lose My Head on 2 June 2023.[82] Shelter album was released on 7 July 2023.[83]
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