ALEXIS JORDAN

“Oh my gosh! It’s freezing!” shudders 18-year-old Alexis Jordan, meeting Rollacoaster within a blissfully warm office on a cold December day. The young RnB Pop star is in London to promote her debut album, Happiness, and has arrived at a time where snow and ice have brought the capital to a near stand-still, with temperatures far colder than those Jordan would find in her native California. Despite the Artic snap, the singer couldn’t be happier to be in the UK. “I’ve been here a lot. It’s somewhere I feel is really open,” she gushes having already snagged a top three position with her album’s title track back in November and enjoyed crowds chanting lyrics back to her during live performances. “Newcastle was so loud!” she recalls. “I could barely hear myself sing!” And what else of the locals? “Oh my gosh! The girls wearing heels in the freezing snow!” she exclaims having witnessed the infamous stereotypes. “It’s not a stereotype – I saw. I was like “go ahead girrrl!”
Alexis Jordan first came to attention during America’s Got Talent’s first season at the tender age of 14. Despite impressing judges Piers Morgan, Brandy and The Hoff, she didn’t make it beyond the semi-finals, but far from being the end of the dream, she went beyond reality TV and blazed onto YouTube, clocking up hundreds of thousands of views and, eventually, the interests of super-producers, Stargate (writers of international chart toppers, Irreplaceable by Beyonce, Firework by Katy Perry and Rude Boy by Rihanna). “They say it was a joke – they were clicking videos and making fun of people singing their songs and I just kept popping up on their screen and finally they clicked it and listened. They flew me out to New York to record a couple of songs and then Jay-Z walks in. We met and talked a lot and then next thing you know I got signed to Roc Nation.”
The team went to work and the finished album is an impressively varied offering. There is the euphoric title track (Jordan’s honey sweet vocals playing over the Deadmau5 trance track Brasil) and dance-floor friendly second single, Good Girl. There is reggae on upbeat Love Mist, a tougher edge on the attitude filled Hush Hush, a stripped back acoustic guitar lead The Air That I Breath, which showcases Jordan’s powerful voice, and, most surprisingly, the Tears For Fears sampling Shout Shout.
“This is my first album and I wanted to put my heart on it,” says the singer, explaining how she would re-record the tracks until she was satisfied with the end result. “I’m so excited for it to come out.

[Originally published in Rollacoaster Magazine Issue 2, February 2011. Photography Brendan & Brendan.]