Taking a break from art and fame as become more and more recurrent since artists have started put their mental health and safety first. The pressure that comes together with music and success
Beside big names and acts, more and more of the developing artists pause, leaving the scene to take some time to develop and focus on other interests. One of them is American singer-songwriter based in Portland Alexandra Savior. In fact, the artist went from releasing music to another form of art: painting.
Meet Alexandra Savior
Artistic, pure, magical, the artist creates music that’s able to touch two different sides of reality by being very empirical and referential in her lyrics, and also mystical and psychedelic in the music. Discussing themes like break up, manipulation, love, but also presenting a self analysis on her own personal life experience, the artist creates genuine and meaningful lyrics. It all on a dream pop base, always emphasised with psychedelic and indie rock influences that surface in the strong and rhythmic bass lines.
At age 14 Savior was first inspired by her older brother to discover the world of music. Influenced by soul and grunge, she also admits a big influence from her father. In fact, he gave her her basic education on 90s music and classics like Pearl Jam, Otis Redding, and Jimi Hendrix. Another strong influence came from her teenager favourites Jack White, Etta James, and The Velvet Underground. In 2013 Savior graduated from high school and planned to attend art school. However, in the same year Columbia Records signed the prodigy artist and she moved to Los Angeles.
Savior soon started posting covers on YouTube. In 2012, at the age of 17, the artist first got attention when rock singer-songwriter Courtney Love publicly complimented her for her cover of Angus & Julia Stone’s “Big Jet Plane.”
“She’s going to be huge. I am not ever wrong when it comes to spotting talent.”
Alexandra Savior reacted to the unusual and surprising news.
I was really shocked. It wasn’t my intention to go anywhere with music really; my friends and I were having fun on a snow day. When Courtney reached out to me, it was surreal. I had a lot of strange phone call conversations with her. We would talk on the phone when I’d get home from school. Our home phone was a tomato, and I would sit on the kitchen floor and talk into this tomato and be speaking to Courtney Love. It was only a couple of weeks or so that she would send me these long, long emails with these Stevie Nicks references and different music and stuff.
Back to The Origins: The Choice of Pursuing Art
In 2020, the singer drops her final record, The Archer. Since that year, Alexandra Savior stopped releasing music. Moreover, Savior is an all-round artist, being not only a singer but also a songwriter, visual artist – as many of her music videos prove – and painter. And as for the latter, she decided to follow her vocation and start her ongoing painting career.
A news arrived in 2021, when during an interview Savior revealed she had been working on her third album. The album would be based on guitar. Back then, she said:
It’s been almost ten years since I began making music and there is some sort of loneliness in me and my songs. The fact that I cannot financially support myself seems like a failure, but it’s also the influence of expectations, both mine and the ones which came from the outside world. It makes me feel like I’m in downtime, that I am failing because in the music industry you live in constant highs and lows. One month your new record gets its premiere, you have interviews, people are interested. Next month no one gives a shit and you have to move on. Then you work three years on the new album and you have this feeling of being unsure if the public is going to like your new record. Everything can collapse in a second. In the end, you’re left with some sort of crash.[41]
However, over two years later, the singer has still been refuged in her painting world, day after day reducing fans’ expectations and hopes for the possibility of a new release.
