PART 1 - The PAST & THE PRESENT

So it’s now over a year since Ms. Alicia Lena broke onto the scene, signing a record deal with Junction Records, she began working hard on her debut album and in a whirlwind of media attention and huge backing from her record label, Ms. Lena unleashed her debut album This Is Who I Am, spawning 5 singles all of which gained massive airplay worldwide. A year on and the album has sold over 4,500,000 million copies worldwide, an incredible feat for a debut album and she’s back with sophomore album Waking Up which has already encompassed her debut effort, equalling record sales figures and it currently holds a 100 percent record in the singles chart, two singles, two number one’s and Ms. Lena is now a bona-fide superstar. Surprisingly shying away from huge promotion for album number two, Ms. Lena now graces the cover of Spin Magazine for this month, she talks about the past, present and future and everything in between.



Good Afternoon Ms. Lena, How are you doing?
Alicia: I’m great, feeling on top of the world. You can call me Alicia, by the way.

Ok Alicia, so your currently touring right now, how is that going?
Alicia: It has just been so incredible. It’s tiring at the end of the day but there’s nothing I’d rather be doing right now. I’ve got G2L and Will.Rocca opening for me, so it’s great to have two great friends around to help keep me sane.

How would you describe the tour to someone who hasn’t bought a ticket yet?
Alicia: Umm … sold out. The support for it has been just phenomenal, I was a little worried about it to be honest, I was a little scared that people would show up expecting a high energy performance, with dance routines and special effects but I’ve tried to steer away from that kind of performance. What I wanted is to do what I do best and what made me fall in love with music in the first place, I let the music do the talking, I sit at the piano and I perform my songs, it doesn’t have the glitz, glamour and theatrics of a Miss Vanity show or anything, I’m just not capable of that, but we all have our strengths, but there’s a lot of audience interaction which is fantastic.

How different is to be performing now than it was before you were signed?
Alicia: It is so far away from when I started out. I started out performing wherever would have me and then in 2007 I got a regular gig at a small club in New York called the Blue Note, that was when things started to improve for me, Now when I perform in these huge arena’s my only real aim is to make it feel like I’m back at the Blue Note, make it intimate and friendly and beautiful that’s all I want, so long as the audience go’s away from the show happy then that’s my job done.

How different would you say your life is, compared to over a year ago before you were a household name?
Alicia: It’s been a crazy rise. I never expected things to happen as quickly as they did. It felt like forever before I got signed and then once I did get signed then things went a bit crazy. The label wanted me to work on the debut album as soon as possible and I was more than delighted to do that, they gave me all of the support and backing that I needed and then before I knew it, I had a finished album, it was pretty overwhelming for me.

And before the album was released, it seemed that your face was everywhere?
Alicia: Yeah, that was pretty tiring. The promotional period in the run-up to the album’s release was just crazy, I know I’ve got a pretty easy job, it’s not like I’m digging ditches or marooned in a Warzone, I’m a musician. But promoting the album was quite a tiring thing, the first few interviews were great fun because I wasn’t used to it but then it’s just sort of never ending and the questions were all the same, it’s pretty tough to come up with different answers to the same questions but I kind of made sure that the promotion for this album was a lot more minimal.

Why did you make that decision, it seems like people tend to prefer heavy promotion?
Alicia: I think heavy promotion is an understatement, it was like a 2 week process of magazine interviews, radio interviews and TV interviews and like I say, the questions were all pretty much the same and I kinda thought that the album did so well because of the huge promotion, I was slightly more easily manipulated first time around, I don’t regret it because it got me to where I am today and I’m thankful for everything good that’s happened in the past year.

So would it be fair to say that you’re a different person now?
Alicia: Oh yes, undoubtedly. Both personally and musically, if you listen to the first album compared to my second album you’ll see the difference between the two is obvious, the first one, I think I was sort of trying to find where I would fit in, in the music industry, it was very commercial and pop-oriented but I don’t think it’s a co-incidence that with this second album, the one where I really found out who I am as an artist, I went down a more soulful and bluesy route than previously, and I think this is more of my comfort zone than with the first record.

And what kind of music are you currently listening to?
Alicia: I listen to a mix of everything really, The type of music I grew up listening to, people like Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Eta James, Ben E. King, Smokey Robinson, Leonard Cohen. And modern music from my good friend Tisha Jackson, Miss Vanity is just out of this world, Glamazon is gonna be the biggest name in music in another 2 years, Radio Vine, she has so much talent it‘s just crazy, my two good friends Cherise and Hannah Beth, Matty, Ryan Ross Hernandez, James Urie, Michelle Green, Gears Of Bremen, G2L, Hard Sugar, Victoria Black reminds me of myself when I first came through, Electrodeath and Cassie Valentine. There’s just way too many to speak of.

PART 2 COMING SOON