Alice Phoebe Lou (born 19 July 1993) is a Berlin-based South African singer-songwriter. She has released three EPs and four studio albums. In December 2017 her song "She" from the film ''
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story'' was included on the
Oscars shortlist
A short list or shortlist is a list of candidates for a job, prize, award, political position, etc., that has been reduced from a longer list of candidates (sometimes via intermediate lists known as "long lists"). The length of short lists varie ...
for
Best Original Song
This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards.
Best Actor/Best Actress
*See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...
.
Since 2019 she had also been active in her side project Strongboi.
She has released four studio albums to date — ''Orbit'' (2016), ''
Paper Castles'' (2019), ''Glow'' (2021) and ''Child's Play'' (2021) — alongside two live albums and various singles.
Early life
Lou spent her childhood in
Kommetjie
Kommetjie (Afrikaans for "small basin," approximately pronounced ''cawma-key'') is a small town near Cape Town, in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It lies about halfway down the west coast of the Cape Peninsula, at the southern end of ...
on west coast of the
Cape Peninsula
The Cape Peninsula ( af, Kaapse Skiereiland) is a generally mountainous peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean at the south-western extremity of the African continent. At the southern end of the peninsula are Cape Point and the Cape of ...
in South Africa and attended a
Waldorf school.
Her parents are documentary filmmakers.
She took piano and guitar lessons as a child.
When she was 14 years old she was fond of
trance music
Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that emerged from the British new-age music scene and the early 1990s German techno and hardcore scenes.
Trance music is characterized by a tempo generally lying between 135–150 beats per minute ( ...
and started to take photographs from concerts, sometimes even getting paid for them. In 2010 she spent her summer holiday in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
living first with her aunt but soon moved to live with a friend and started earning money by
fire-dancing
Fire performance is a group of performance arts or skills that involve the manipulation of fire. Fire performance typically involves equipment or other objects made with one or more wicks which are designed to sustain a large enough flam ...
.
![AlicePhoebeLou](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/AlicePhoebeLou.jpg)
Career
Having a
gap year after graduating from high school in South Africa in 2012 she returned to Europe, first to
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
and then to
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
.
In Berlin she started to sing and play guitar as she found out that this was more lucrative than fire-dancing.
After her gap year she contemplated attending university in South Africa, but eventually decided to purchase a battery powered amplifier and return to Berlin instead.
In Berlin she performed on
S- and
U-Bahn stations and parks.
After one month in Berlin, she played on a television programme. In April 2014 she self-released "Momentum" EP. The song "Fiery Heart, Fiery Mind" from the EP featured in the soundtrack of the 2015 released film "
Ayanda
''Ayanda'' is a 2015 South African film directed by Sara Blecher and starring Fulu Mugovhani, OC Ukeje, and Nthati Moshesh. The festival title of the film was Ayanda and the Mechanic. The film was picked up for a November 2015 release by indepen ...
". She also started to play in venues.
After a performance at
TEDx
TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...
in Berlin on 6 September 2014 she started to get offers from record labels, but she wanted to stay independent.
In December 2014 she released a live album "Live at
Grüner Salon" as means to fund the recording of her debut studio album.
In 2015 she started to tour and played first time at
SXSW
South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Te ...
festival in USA in 2015.
She has returned to SXSW every year after that. She also performed in
TEDGlobal London in 2015 and opened for
Rodriguez on his 2016 South Africa tour.
In April 2016 Alice Phoebe Lou released her album "Orbit", produced by Matteo Pavesi and Jian Kellett-Liew.
She was nominated for best female artist at the 2016 German critics choice awards in Germany and was invited to several German TV programs for interviews and performances. She toured in Europe, South Africa and USA in 2016 and played three sold-out shows at the Berlin Planetarium. Moreover, she still continued busking in Berlin.
In December 2017 she self-released nine track "Sola" EP and a book titled "Songs, poems and memories". The same month it was announced that her song "She" from the film ''
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story'' is on the
shortlist
A short list or shortlist is a list of candidates for a job, prize, award, political position, etc., that has been reduced from a longer list of candidates (sometimes via intermediate lists known as "long lists"). The length of short lists varie ...
for Academy Awards'
Oscars in
Best Original Song
This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards.
Best Actor/Best Actress
*See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...
category.
"She" was released as a digital single on 23 February 2018 with a music video directed by Natalia Bazina. In 2018 edition of the Berlin Music Video Awards, Lou
's music video ''She'' was nominated for Best Song.
"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.
![Alice_Phoebe_Lou_Dec](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Alice_Phoebe_Lou_Dec._1%2C_2018_Funkhaus_Berlin.jpg)
The first single ''Something Holy'' from her ''
Paper Castles'' album was released on 30 November 2018. On 15 January 2019, the second single, ''Skin Crawl'', was released digitally. The video of Skin Crawl won in June third prize at the Berlin Music Video Awards in the best concept category. On 15 February third single, ''Galaxies'', was released and on 8 March 2019 the album was released.
In March 2019 Alice was the artist of the month of Consequence of Sound.
On 6 May Galaxies video filmed in Zeiss Planetarium in Berlin featuring
Maisie Williams
Margaret Constance "Maisie" Williams (born 15 April 1997) is an English actress. Williams made her acting debut in 2011 as Arya Stark, a lead character in the HBO epic medieval fantasy television series '' Game of Thrones'' (2011–2019). She ...
was released.
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.
On 7 August video for the ''Lost in LA'' was published. The song is from her Sola EP.
On 15 November Alice was interviewed in aspekte-program of German
ZDF
ZDF (, short for Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen; ; "Second German Television") is a German public-service television broadcaster based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate. It is run as an independent nonprofit institution, which was founded by all fe ...
TV and she performed Paper Castles with her band.
In December ''Paper Castles'' album was listed at number 19 in the NBHAP magazine's 50 best albums of 2019 list and 7th in FMS magazine's top 35 albums and EPs of 2019 list.
During 2019 she had over one hundred concerts in Europe, Japan, USA and Canada. 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. On 28 February 2020 German TV
Bayerischer Rundfunk broadcast and streamed her
PULS
Puls may refer to:
* Puls (surname)
* ''Puls'' (album), by Swedish pop group Gyllene Tider
* Puls (band), a Danish music band specializing in club dance music
* Puls (beer brand), a brand produced by Viru Brewery, Estonia
* Puls (company), a com ...
-festival concert recorded on 30 November 2019 in Munich.
In spite of extensive touring Lou still continued to occasionally perform in Berlin parks and U-Bahn stations too.
In spring 2020 she had a short Europe tour and after that several streamed and broadcast concerts, for example on
Arte.
On 13 March 2020, she released ''Witches'' single. 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. This was followed by Strongboi's ''Honey Thighs'' digital single on 10 April and Tuff Girl on 7 August.
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.
On 26 June ''Touch'' single was released. A purple 7 inch vinyl containing Witches and Touch was released on 18 September.
In November it was announced that her third studio album titled ''Glow'' would be released in March 2021.
On 4 December single and video of ''Dusk'' from the coming Glow-album was released.
On 10 December 2020, Alice covered
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...
's unreleased track ''Deep Deep Feeling'' for McCartney's ’12 Days of Paul’ campaign. On 19 February 2021, second single ''Dirty Mouth'' was released from the upcoming album with a music video. ''Glow'' was released on 19 March 2021.
On 2 December 2021 she released without any advance announcements ten track album ''Child's Play''.
On 25 February 2022 while touring in west coast of USA, her side project Strongboi released new song ''Fool Around''. She will continue touring through the summer and in autumn she will do a North America tour supporting Billy Bragg.
Discography
Studio albums
Extended plays
Live albums
Singles
* ''Something Holy'' (Single, 2018, 7 inch, instrumental version on B-side)
* ''Witches''/''Touch'' (Single, 2020, 7 inch vinyl and mp3/wav, double sided A single)
References
Further reading
NPR: Alice Phoebe Lou Dives Deep In The Ethereal 'She' VideoNBHAP: Young Independent Woman: Alice Phoebe Lou On Her Life As A Female Songwriter
External links
*
Official Youtube page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lou, Alice Phoebe
21st-century South African women singers
People from the City of Cape Town
South African expatriates in Germany
Feminist musicians
Indie pop musicians
South African singer-songwriters
1993 births
Living people