Alice Phoebe Lou (16 and Over)

“There’s something so beautiful about letting the people in your life grow. Whether they’re your friends, your family or musicians you look up to, letting them change and leave some things behind is so powerful,” says Alice Phoebe Lou. The musician is well aware that it’s oh-so-human to long for the comfort of nostalgia. In recent months, she's been wrestling with who she was when she first started releasing music back in 2016 and who she’s become since. “I’m about to turn 30 but people still associate me with that young, sweet girl,” she explains. “As you get older, you sing about more mature themes but some people actively push against that because it’s not what I symbolise to them.” On new album ‘Shelter’, Alice has no interest in people pleasing. “It’s a record about how growth and change are so important.” Alice Phoebe Lou started playing music as a busker after moving from South Africa to Berlin in 2012 and falling in love with a lifestyle that could be so self-determined. At first, it was just a way to earn enough money to pay rent but it quickly evolved into something more. Busking, she explains, “is hard and fucking humiliating. People will shout at you, men will harass you, competition for a spot to perform can be vicious...I had countless situations where people were just the worst. But then you have those shining moments where you genuinely move somebody. I knew that if I worked on my music, it could be something beautiful.” Debut album ‘Orbit’ came in 2016 and saw Alice “piece together the possibility” of music turning into a proper career while 2019’s ‘Paper Castles’ cemented her as a talented, exciting musician. With a busker’s mentality about needing to win people over immediately, Alice only gave herself “permission to write without the fear of judgment” on 2021’s ‘Glow’. That record and surprise follow-up ‘Child’s Play’ allowed Alice to go “super deep and vulnerable. I think people really connected with me speaking about personal, painful,…