Based in South Korea, one of the most prolific, talented, and versatile soloists in K-Pop, AleXa, who is currently in her 3rd year of activity, is gearing up to cement her position as a versatile concept queen, and this time, she’s aiming for her home ground. For those who might not know, AleXa was recently crowned the winner of the prestigious competition show “American Song Contest” with her viral hit song ‘Wonderland’. Hailing from Oklahoma, AleXa has always enjoyed sweeping popularity in the U.S., even more so because of the progressive novelty in her creative oeuvre. Now, with her latest release, “Girls Gone Vogue”, marking her return to the local K-Pop scene, AleXa is steering her attention toward the Korean audience, and just like a stan magnet, she’s expanding her fandom with ease. Kpopmap’s exclusive interview with AleXa was scheduled early in the morning on a winter day when the chill had just started to set in. Before we got into our interview with AleXa, her beaming smile prompted us to ask how she had been doing that morning. “Oh, I mean, it’s about 10 AM-ish for me right now. So haven’t had time to eat anything yet, but I slept pretty well. So, I mean, I’m in a good mood; we woke up happy so, thank you for asking!” AleXa said, instantly setting the mood for a comfortable conversation rather than an interview. With Thanksgiving having passed recently, the sense of endless gratitude that characterized AleXa’s presence reminded us that we’re only so far away from the holiday season kicking in. AleXa shared our sentiments, expressing her hopes for a white Christmas as she crossed her fingers and swayed from side to side in the most adorable expression of joy. “Oh I am 100% in the festive mood. I am waiting for Christmas to roll around like it’s getting really cold in Korea, so I’m hoping it snows soon”. Speaking of Christmas, A.I Troopers (AleXa’s fandom) will agree that it absolutely came early for them with the release of her new mini-album “Girls Gone Vogue”, accompanied by a stellar music video for the title song ‘Back In Vogue’. What must have started out with an abundance of green screen was transformed into a classic ZanyBros production, rife with the most gorgeous imagery, symbolism, dance sequences, special effects, virtual reality, and so on and so forth. When asked how she felt about the immense success of this comeback and all the love that she was receiving from fans all over the world, AleXa’s face lit up with the radiance of a thousand suns before settling into a grounded maturity. With her hand on her heart, AleXa opened up about how rewarding her comeback had been. “Well, thank you very much. That was worded so eloquently, my goodness! But like “immense success” - that’s quite a big term. I wouldn’t say maybe it’s like immense success, but I am very grateful for how well this song, the album, and the music video is doing. Like it’s growing pretty fast in comparison to my previous releases, and I’m just very grateful to each and every fan that has taken time to either watch the music video, watch my performances on music shows or just stream the album in general. I’m very, very grateful to all the A.I Troopers, new and old that are cheering me on for this round of promotions”. The music video for ‘Back In Vogue’ currently stands at 12M views on YouTube, which is a special milestone considering that it is almost double the numbers racked by her previous release, ‘Tattoo’ (6.6M views at the time of writing). For newer fans who have just started to get up to speed with the grand AleXa Multiverse and all the mind-bending theories that come with it, the music video for ‘Back In Vogue’ provided some highly anticipated clues into her cinematic universe and even more so into the origin story of “AleXa”. The idea of getting into all these theories herself and explaining the link this music video has to the rest of her discography revealed her animated determination to conjure up a fascinating alternate world. “So this kind of ties back to the song I released at the beginning of this year, called ‘Tattoo’. In the music video, you will see, at the end, Alexa runs through this portal, and at the beginning of ‘Back In Vogue’, she jumps out of that portal. So those two are tied together with what storyline exactly? Not quite sure, but it’ll make sense one of these days, one of these days”. The air of mystery AleXa maintained throughout her exposition amplified our curiosity manifold, especially with her history of imbuing her music videos with easter eggs, allusions, callbacks, and more. For instance, you must have noticed the reference to ‘Wonderland’ in ‘Back In Vogue’ through the motif of “falling into the rabbit hole” as a nod to “Alice In Wonderland” or, in another scene, a glimpse of the ‘Do Or Die’ universe. Similarly, fans are also surmising possible appearances of ‘Bomb’ AleXa and AleXa_H(eart), which harks back to Project PARTS. AleXa’s knack for storytelling shines through her art and her ability to incorporate the most stunning choreography with the most striking lyrics, leaves us in awe every time. This vivacity of ‘Back In Vogue’ is also owed in part to AleXa’s amazing team, who happen to be the same songwriters and choreographers behind the lauded bop ‘Wonderland’. This begs the question, what grand vision did AleXa have for “Girls Gone Vogue” and was she able to manifest it into reality just as she wanted, or was it even better than her expectations? To answer, AleXa brought up a key point of connection. “Oh man, I mean, yeah, first of all, you know, working with the same songwriters and, you know, like House of Sam, the choreographers for ‘Wonderland’ and that translating over to “Girls Gone Vogue..even though ‘Wonderland’ is an AleXa song and somehow exists within the AleXa Multiverse, it feels like, you know, ‘Back In Vogue’, it’s like a sister extension of that song by like these means of having the same songwriters and choreographers. Like after ‘Wonderland’, I really wanted to keep that kind of spunky and like very upbeat kind of sound sonically, but I wanted to move towards more of a chic and a bit more hyperfeminine kind of concept. And so I feel like through the creative process of working on the new album and the new title track with the team, you know, everything that came to fruition, I’m more than satisfied with. So I’m very happy with how everything turned out”. As interesting as this collaboration is, it wasn’t the only one that had the K-Pop world talking. AleXa also collaborated with MAMAMOO’s MoonByul on her b-side track ‘Star’ and quite fittingly, might we add. Given AleXa’s precious friendship with MoonByul ever since her pre-debut days, this collaboration was a long time coming but a pleasant surprise nonetheless. “You know, it’s always an honor to, like, have any interaction whatsoever with MoonByul sunbaenim because it’s like, before debut, I was in MAMAMOO’s music video for ‘Gogobebe’. So, that’s the first time I met them in person. After that, during my ‘Do Or Die’ promotions, I did a cover of MoonByul sunbaeim’s ‘Eclipse’, in which she actually directly joined in, and we danced together. And then, even when I was on “American Song Contest”, MoonByul sunbaebim, like she sent in like a cheering video for me. And so, she’s always been very supportive of me. And so this time, being able to actually directly collaborate with her on a song, it was just like a dream come true. And like, we all know she’s the rapper of MAMAMOO but hearing her singing voice on this track was just so lovely. So, I’m very, very honored and touched that she collaborated with me on this track. Truly, the ethereal blend of MoonByul’s deep, rich tone with AleXa’s light and pure vocal colour in ‘Star’ is as delightful as going stargazing on a clear night. Besides being a wonderful collaboration, ‘Star’ also serves to posit AleXa as a star vocalist with considerable range. This is also the very first track on the album, and her duality as we jump straight into the action of ‘Back In Vogue’ soon after is one of the many reasons why AleXa always manages to keep us on our toes. In fact, if there’s one thing that comes to mind when we think of AleXa – it is that what AleXa does is something only AleXa CAN do, and with every comeback, she takes it to the next level. Musically, this time, ‘Back In Vogue’ mixes pop with jazz and old-school hip-hop, but in terms of future plans, AleXa is sharply focused on some very particular genres and soundscapes. “I mean, I kind of dipped my toes into it back when I debuted with the rock version of ‘Bomb’ and then not too long ago with the rock version of ‘Xtra’, but those were, like, just versions of already existing songs. I would like to actually come out with a rock song itself. I think it’d be fun to experiment with that genre, as well as delving a bit more into the R&B realm, kind of, Amy Winehouse kind of sound, like, I would love to try those out eventually”. As AleXa puts this idea out into the universe, it leaves us wondering: just how much cooler can she get? Besides being an idol and an actor, she is also a visual artist who expresses her worldview through her aesthetic. In her own words, she has “a passion for the fashion”, and when it comes to this comeback, she has a clear favorite outfit in mind. “I mean, that’s the thing with ‘Back In Vogue’, every single outfit was like so unique, and like I loved every single one of them, so choosing a favorite is really hard. So like, aesthetically, I really like the outfit that’s featured in like the main dance portion of the beginning with the black and red checkered top with the abominable snowman legs. You know, the white leg warmers? Really cute, not easy to dance in, not easy to dance in, but it’s really cute to look at, so, yeah.”
— ✨ AleXa ✨ (@AleXa_ZB) November 14, 2022 For how clear AleXa makes it that they’re incredibly difficult to work with, she sure makes the fit look effortless anyway. After all, when AleXa puts her mind to something, she aces it no matter what. One such goal she had for this comeback was to convey a musical theatre vibe with the diversity of genres and a wide spectrum of musical styles. In case you didn’t know, AleXa is a theatre major, and a long-time fan of the art form, which means that she must have had quite a few standards to go by when creating the framework of “Girls Gone Vogue”. In this context, AleXa shared her inceptive purpose with us. “Oh man, standards! I mean, I think I just, overall, with the album itself, I wanted to deliver a different feeling with each song because it’s like when you’re watching a musical, no two songs are the same, you know? You’re gonna have, you know, the ballad that’s maybe a love song, or it’s maybe mourning somebody. And then you’re gonna have the really happy upbeat dance song, and then you’re gonna have this giant like middle-of-the-show song before the intermission happens. And you know, I really wanted to give those, kind of, different flavors, you know, to the whole album. And so, that’s how we have things like ‘Star’ and then immediately into ‘Back In Vogue’. And then you get like this bubblegum happiness from ‘Endorphine’, moving into like the grungier side with ‘Black Out’, and then you’ve got the sad song, ‘Please Try Again’. So it was just an overall little musical journey that I really wanted to encapsulate into an entire album.” While working on “Girls Gone Vogue”, AleXa was also on a U.S tour, much to the joy of international A.I Troopers. Touring is arguably one of the most rewarding parts of being an artist, but it does come with its own share of unseen toils. We asked AleXa about her most memorable moments from the tour, and if there were any struggles she personally faced during this tour, and she replied, once again, with a predominant nerve of gratitude. “Well, I mean, that’s the thing. Every single stop on the tour was very memorable for different reasons. I mean, some, was because of the fans, some was because of the food, some was because of the surroundings. I mean Puerto Rico itself was such a beautiful place to stop in, and then, you know, Oklahoma, which is like my home state, that also meant a whole lot to me. And then there was Jersey City, which was the first stop, so that’s a big thing as well. But I mean, I don’t know, it was just, everything was so fun. I made good memories in every single stop that we went to, and I honestly cannot wait to tour again and go back. But if there’s like an unseen struggle..I mean, not so much of a struggle really because I guess at this point I’m used to it in the artist’s life of being just very busy, but you know, we did a show, then we would immediately go to the next city. So there wasn’t really a lot of time to like do tourist things or like stop and smell the roses, like eat a lot of local food, but you know, that’s okay! That’s okay. There’s always time in the future to go back. But I feel like that might be a little bit of a struggle for touring, but it’s nothing big.” As we neared the end of our interview, AleXa remained energetic and lively, as always, bubbling with excitement and eagerness. We were reminded of her lyrics in “Back In Vogue”, where she says, “got a hot bright future that’s ahead of me”. By this point, we were keener than ever now to know about AleXa’s next big artistic ambition. “Oh, my next big artistic ambition. Well, I would like to say world tour, but that might be pushing it a little bit, but at least doing, you know, a Europe tour, maybe a South America tour, maybe even a Southeast Asia tour, that’d be really fun. Aside from that, releasing a full album, not just a mini-album, because I’ve done a few mini-albums now, but a full-length album, I think, would be very fun”. Naturally, we couldn’t just gloss over the possibility of more acting projects from the idol. “Oh my goodness. If I have more opportunities come up, I am going for it. Oh my gosh, I want to act more so badly. So any opportunities were to arise in the future, I would most certainly go for it”. Finally, after an incredibly wholesome, refreshing, and enlightening conversation with the woman of the hour, AleXa, we concluded by asking her to send a message directly to A.I Troopers and Kpopmap readers who are reading this interview right now. “I mean, I think personally, I just want to say thank you so much for the overwhelming support that you guys have shown for ‘Girls Gone Vogue’ and ‘Back in Vogue’ itself. I mean, I’ve been able to wake up every day just so grateful for like all the positive comments and feedback, all the wonderful dance covers, and dance challenges that fans have been uploading. Even the memes I’ve been seeing going around from the music video. I’m just very grateful for the fan response for this round, and I hope that in the future, with my next release, whatever and whenever it is, that you guys show it just as much love. So thank you so much”. On behalf of A.I Troopers all over the world, we made sure to convey your sincere support and affection for AleXa to the artist herself before bidding adieu. Knowing the ardent love she holds for her art as well as her fans, we cannot wait to see what AleXa has in store for us next. Note: This interview has been edited for clarity. What is your favorite track on “Girls Gone Vogue”? Tell us in the comments section down below!
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