In Conversation with Alex Porat

Alex Porat is a magnetic force. She delivers lighthearted pop with serious skill, effortlessly combining memorable melodies with fresh electronic production and crystalline vocal delivery. She first gained a strong following by posting covers on YouTube and now, with only a little over a year of solo releases under her belt.

Alex and I became acquainted with each other, as we gushed about our favourite Studio Ghibli films before we began discussing her new music video,

[UNPUBLISHED:] Tell me about the music video for “Taxi”

[ALEX:] It has hints of European inspiration. It's one of the more storytelling music videos I think I've done so it was really fun to do.

[UNPUBLISHED:] Do you enjoy filming storytelling music videos? Are they more difficult?

[ALEX:] I really enjoy filming music videos in general so having the variety is super fun for me. I like changing it up to keep it exciting. But shoot days are my favourite days because I'm so exhausted. I feel like that's what I've been aiming for my whole life, to feel tired doing something I love. When it comes to those days, I just have so much adrenaline, so anything becomes fun. Then at the end of the day, I’m so tired and usually sleep 24 hours the next day.

[UNPUBLISHED:] Tell me about “Taxi” from your point of view. What were you thinking when you wrote it? 

[ALEX:] It was one of the first songs I had written even before the group of songs for my last EP and I was just waiting for the right time to release it. I remember performing it on a live stream and people kept asking “Can you release it? Can you release it?” and so I've just held on to it because I wanted to keep working at it until it felt complete. Writing it was so fun because it all kind of dances around the idea of a crush. I wrote it with two of my friends Jeff Hazin and DCF, both fantastic musicians from Toronto and we were sitting down and just having fun. What’s funny is in the post-chorus bit people think it's a sort of car horn beeping, but that's literally my voice just distorted. We were recording adlibs and then I just remember we were saying “what if we chopped and made it sound like a car horn”, that type of thing. So we distorted it a bunch and that became a part of the chorus. I love writing about real life, things like crushing and love, and the tribulations of being in relationships. 

[UNPUBLISHED:] What's your process when it comes to music?  Do you have lyrics in your head already or do you start with the melody? 

[ALEX:] I love hearing a chord progression and then feeling out different melodies that come to mind. I went to art school when I was younger, so we did a lot of choir and musical theatre. Jazz choir made me love scatting so I gravitate to melody first usually. I like to have a concept in the back of my mind as well. Sometimes finding a concept can be super hard but I think because we've had so much time to ourselves this past year that it's been easier even though the experiences have been bleak in real life.

Writing in the pandemic is so weird so it'll be interesting to see how the world evolves and how songwriting changes because of that. Right now I’m going through a lyric phase where I pay so much more attention to lyrics. And I’m always voice noting everything because if I don’t it’ll be lost forever.

[UNPUBLISHED:] Have there ever been times where you think, “What did I sing?” and does that mean your voice notes are a follow-up of you doing little melodies?

[ALEX:] Yes, and I'm just always praying that someone in the room is also voice noting on their phone too. I’ll need to voice note at the weirdest times. Like after concerts or after a night out when I'm walking down the street. Then sometimes when I'm in the studio I’ll pull up my phone and I'll listen back to whatever’s on there. It will either be really good or just the worst thing I've ever done. And everyone there gets to hear it with street chatter in the background and all.

[UNPUBLISHED:] How did you know you wanted to pursue music?

[ALEX:] When I left high school I knew I wanted to do music and I knew I could if I put my full attention to it. Everyone I knew was applying to schools and I just felt that the thrill of going to post-secondary was so exciting. Also, I was constantly hearing how unstable a career in the arts was so that was super discouraging. I thought I wanted to go to school for business, and maybe business will help my music in some sort of way. I was still writing and still doing music things throughout this time but as I went into my second year, it just felt like my gears were way more focused on what I was studying. It's a privilege to have an education, but I just wasn't fully in it. I thought, “why am I here? Everyone's priority is to have this education and my priority in my heart is elsewhere”. It just felt like such a disservice to not pursue what I was passionate about. I loved the courses, I loved the people I met, and my professors were great, but it still didn’t feel right. I pretty much decided at the end of the second year that I was going to leave and keep doing YouTube. I've been doing YouTube since 2010, but I started taking it super seriously because I had so much more free time. 

[UNPUBLISHED:] What is the significance of the title ‘Miss Sick World’?

[ALEX:] Me, Lowell, and Nathan wrote this together mid-pandemic. It was a play on ‘Miss Universe’, kind of like being the winner of the Miss Universe pageant, and what it would feel like to be the person that represents the standard of perfection, at the top of the universe. I feel like the world has so many issues, and we're fighting so many different fights, and it's so scary. Every single month, there's a new thing or it’s not new and finally the spotlight is on it, and it's crazy because some of these issues have been ongoing for years. Now I feel like there's a lot more talk about these issues, thanks to social media, and people spreading awareness. But now the thought just comes to mind, do you want to represent a world that is so sick with so many issues? Who would even want to be an ambassador of the world right now? So, I don't know if I want to be ‘Miss Sick World’. 

[UNPUBLISHED:] How does “Taxi” fit into “Miss Sick World”? Do all the songs link together on the EP or are they all separate?

[ALEX:] They're all parts of my life experience. I feel like I've gone through so many different stages of different relationships, and I try to pull inspiration from that and sometimes from what my friends are going through. Especially with ‘Miss Sick World’, it’s more of a bigger picture of what everyone might feel inside. I've always written so bluntly but with ‘Miss Sick World’, it just felt way more introspective. I love being able to have these different parts in this project. “Taxi” is a daydream, living this idea of what could have happened if this crush turned into something more. All the songs are all different pieces and parts of my world.

[UNPUBLISHED:] Did you always want to write songs? 

[ALEX:] I’ve always written music. I remember the first time I went to the studio was in my pre-teens, and I had gotten a grant to go to the studio. I finally recorded one of my songs and it was so bad. So I used the covers to try to build a fan base until I felt like I had original music I was proud enough to share with them. I knew I had to take things into my own hands and push myself to grow on the internet and on social media that I could fully control. The internet is such a big entity and there's so much there that people can use, and I thought YouTube and the algorithm could maybe do something for me.

So, I just stuck to YouTube and I fully believed in YouTube. I think consistency is key so I kept posting as much as I could. In the meantime, I was writing my songs and getting ready to start releasing them to the world.

[UNPUBLISHED:] Did you grow up in a musical household? 

[ALEX:] In my family everyone loves music. My parents both love music. When I was younger, they would sing me to sleep. They played a lot of classical music in the house. I was watching TV really young and I think that it played a huge role in my love for music because I was watching Studio Ghibli films, so I fell in love with the soundtracks very young. Then, Disney movies got me really into musical theatre and Whitney Houston's ‘The Bodyguard’ and also ‘Titanic’ furthered my love for music. So the media we watched at home grew my love for art, music, and performance. They were always super supportive and I took guitar lessons for a bit. I tried singing lessons but they didn't really work out. I also loved dancing, so they would take me to drop-in dance classes. They were supporting me throughout all of it taking me to auditions for things, I was auditioning for commercials and talent shows left and right. I was fully invested in the entertainment industry from a very young age. So, now being where I am today, I feel like I’ve made progress and it's just so much more rewarding because of how many no’s I got and how many rejections I got from all the auditions from when I was younger. I know my family is proud of me and that means the world to me.

[UNPUBLISHED:] Tell me about Shawn Mendes reacting to your singing video with Glamour.

[ALEX:] They had me on a Skype call and said “Hey, we just wanted to talk to you about your Shawn Mendes cover, we're doing a video on covers of this artist.” I remember reading Glamour really young so that was super exciting for me. They had me on a video call and said here's a link for you, and it was the video of him reacting to it. I just never felt external validation with music and so it really motivated me and for the first time. I felt that being a musician was an attainable thing. It made me so excited to continue growing my music.

Stream Alex Porat’s ‘Taxi’ out now!