SIDES
Alice Merton: “A real roller coaster ride”
Alice Merton has experimented with many different sounds and styles of music on her new album. Photo: Danny Jungslund/Paper Plane Records International/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The title says it all: Alice Merton shows herself from a new angle on her second album «SIDES». Their poppy debut is followed by a sadder, more personal album.
Sunshine follows rain. The idea behind this age-old adage is that a situation will naturally get better on its own over time.
Pop singer Alice Merton is also of this conviction – and expresses it fully on her new album «SIDES». «There is always another side. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel. The only question is how and when you get there, »says the 28-year-old in an interview with the German Press Agency.
Merton, who was born in Frankfurt/Main in 1993, spent her childhood in Canada and currently lives in London and Berlin, started in 2017 with her first hit “No Roots”. The song ran up and down radio stations in several European countries, and in the US it made it onto the Billboard Hot 100. “No Roots” is about feeling at home – a personal song.
Beautiful moments, terrible moments
Personal and intense – that also applies to her new record, which, like so many recently, is a pandemic work. Merton has often struggled in the past two years. In addition to beautiful moments, there were also terrible ones, as she says. “It was kind of a real roller coaster ride, and that’s what the album is about.”
The singer had to deal with a difficult breakup. Added to this was the death of her beloved grandmother and mental challenges. Because Merton was struggling with panic attacks and finally decided to seek help. “I felt very bad for a long time and I knew that I needed therapy,” she says.
In the song “Vertigo”, Merton describes very vividly how such a panic attack manifested itself in her: “My hands are sweaty/ My heart is beating heavily (…) The sound is getting louder/ The ground starts to shake,” she sings their mother tongue English. However, the therapy helped her deal with the seizures and write the album – which she shows with the following song “Breathe In, Breathe Out”. “Breathe in, breathe out. You are here,” sings Merton.
time for experiments
In the 15 songs, the 28-year-old experiments with many different sounds and styles of music. Although she mostly stays true to her pop roots, she surprises on “Vertigo”, “100 Stories” or “Mania” with a rock side and a stronger voice.
“Blindside”, on the other hand, her favorite song on the album, as she reveals to the dpa, is pop again as usual. With a rolling drumbeat and synthesizer it sounds bright and happy – but that doesn’t fit the content.
Because “Blindside” is about people who only make ultimatums to others and to whom you have to submit. People who believe that one depends on their success and cannot be happy without them. Merton likes this ambivalence between light melodies and dark content. “You can just make a little fun of a serious situation and then you’ll feel better somehow.”
Overall «SIDES» is an introspective, rather dark album. The topics are serious and often sad. Nevertheless, Merton always manages to bring in hope that she draws from music, because: “People always need music – no matter what happens in the world.”
The record is rounded off with the song “The Other Side”. But what is this other side? “The other side is just that moment when you realize you’re getting better,” Merton explains. You can always come back to the other side. But life is a dynamic state and throws you back again and again. “It’s just life, it’s a cycle, and I wanted to express that with the album.”