Elizabeth Catherine McAlpine, more widely known as Lizzy McAlpine, has been making a name for herself since 2020 when she released her debut album”‘Give Me a Minute” and 2 years later, “five seconds flat”, which gained even more popularity and caused this 24-year-old artist to go viral when TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms adopted her song “ceilings” and landed her #54 on Billboard Hot 100.
I’ve been listening to Lizzy for a few years now, and like many others, her music has gotten me through my happiest and darkest times. Floating around a mix between pop and indie music, Lizzy creates songs based on widely relatable experiences like heartbreak, relationships, loss of a loved one, and other heavy topics. She does sprinkle in some positive songs every now and then, like “orange show speedway” or “Never Gonna Be Alone”, but she likes to stick to her acoustic guitar and raw vocals.
In “five seconds flat”, Lizzy experiments collaboratively with people like Jacob Collier, Ben Kessler, FINNEAS, and Laura Elliott. All of these people added their own magic and individualized and specialized their song. The album “Give Me A Minute” is just Lizzy. “Five seconds flat” demonstrates lots of techno-type techniques in her music, plenty of layers, more upbeat music, reverb, effects, and vocalizing. “Give Me a Minute” is a simpler album that holds a slower, sadder melody, her acoustic guitar, and her un-affected voice. Lizzy has created a lot of contrast between her two albums, and has even released a few singles like “Call Your Mom” with the infamous Noah Kahan and “A Little Bit of Everything”.
Lizzy is well-known for her smooth, unstressed voice and easy-going riffs. She can belt, and has a wide range. Lizzy writes all of her own music so far, and is very open about the process, including the songs that she doesn’t like as much. “I hate that song,” Lizzy stated in an interview with Zach Sang when discussing her song “Pancakes for Dinner” from “Give me a Minute”. “I just think that that era of my songwriting, like my first album, just doesn’t connect with me anymore, and I just think it’s like- cheesy. I think it’s a cheesy song.”
On April 5th of this year, Lizzy released her album “Older.” She’d released two of the songs from that album as singles before the release date: “i guess” and, of course, “older”. The songs completely contrasted from each other, “older” being Lizzy’s staple, smooth guitar-only style song, and “i guess” ending with a rock, belty vocal highlight. I have yet to listen to the entire album, but Lizzy seems to have tried to capture both “five seconds flat” and “Give Me a Minute” in this trilogy album “Older”.
I think everyone should try one of Lizzy Mcalpine’s songs. She appears to have a song for every occasion, mood, and time of day, and she really seems to resonate with our age group. Lizzy is by far my favorite musician, and is going on tour all over the world right now: do we have our next Taylor Swift?
