I preface this blog with two caveats. Firstly, that this starts with some story telling off of the 00s. And secondly, that I am about to let you into what – or rather whom – I have regarded as something of a long time best kept secret as regards to music. Those disclaimers out the way, let us begin…
Let’s set the scene. It’s 2005. A lot of time spent at home prior to taking my GCSEs (mainly because of having my appendix out after a life threatening bout of illness) meant a lot of time discovering things I liked away from my peers. One of these was via a little corner of the web known as Popjustice.
It essentially became my bible, and one of the biggest influences on me wanting to write about things I loved, namely pop music. I will hold my hands up and say that I thus spent a great proportion of my early music writing life, writing weekly single and album reviews for the long departed UKMix, essentially being a wholesale stylistic imitation of its founder, the marvellous Peter Robinson.
One of the key albums of that time for me, and which is still one of the best cover-to-cover, no skips albums of all time for me, which I have written at length about on here before – Rachel Stevens‘ incredible second album Come & Get It – led me down several rabbit holes of the mid 00s Internet. Namely, the discovery that one of its tracks, “Nothing Good About This Goodbye”, touted as a single but ultimately never seeing a release, had started life two years prior to that, with another artist for another album.
That artist was the Chingford hailing singer and songwriter, Alexis Strum, for an album called Addicted. It was to be her debut album for Warner Music in May 2003, preceded by a quite brilliant electropop sounding single of the same name.
Alas, thanks to some easily offended production staff at Lorraine Kelly’s GMTV show misunderstanding a line concerning Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream (they erroneously thought it was advocating drug use), all promotion was immediately curtailed, and her deal was yeeted before any of her material even saw the light of day officially.
Tracks from Addicted subsequently found homes on the aforementioned Rachel Stevens album, and on Kylie Minogue’s 2003 album Body Language (“Still Standing”). Then, in October 2005, with a new deal on Mercury Records, came Cocoon, a beguiling and captivating set of songs, treading a neat path down the contemporary pop route favoured by Natalie Imbruglia and Michelle Branch.
This was preceded by two singles; “Bad Haircut” and “It Could Be You”. But again, when those singles failed to do much, it was once again a case of bye bye deal and bye bye Cocoon seeing the full light of day. Whilst 17 year old me dealt with the crushing disappointment, album samplers were purchased from eBay after intense bidding wars or certain file sharing sites, and that was how I lived with the songs from them for the next 18 years.
Fast forward to 2023, and thanks to the work of Pop Music Activism, both Addicted and Cocoon finally gained a new wind when they were fully released on digital streaming platforms, with the latter also seeing a full CD and vinyl release, notching up a cool half a million streams on Spotify in its first month of release.
And so it was that last year, Alexis, having taken numerous pivots in the two decades that had followed, decided to be a popstar once again and has started work on a brand new album. And thus far, the results from it have been nothing but a joy. Things kicked off with the bewitching break up anthem “Karma” last October.
Then this was followed by the bold and sassy self love anthem “If You Think I’m Too Much (You Should Go Find Less)” in February. Now, joining that list is “Swim”, which is as much of an about turn as is possible to get from the first two singles, but is brilliant and equal parts moving in its own way.
That’s largely because it’s a deeply personal song, but one that many will find resonance with; for whilst it was written about her mum’s diagnosis with Alzheimer’s, it’s actually a hopeful lyric, a reminder to take the chances when they come: “I want you to calm me down, the way you used to do / Done with goodbyes, now my heart’s so blue / I’d give my life to spend more time with you / Now you’ll never learn to swim”.
It is a shining example of why we’re actually even more excited for Alexis’ new music than we were the first time around some 20(!) years ago; her material is now coming from a place of lived experience, but also with a no-holds barred approach, to just go for it. So much so, she even competed in the national voting to be San Morino’s entry into Eurovision this year(!) If that’s not a pivot, we don’t know what is.
What’s more, there’s been so many examples over the last twelve months or so – Kylie Minogue being one, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Natasha Bedingfield being two others – of fantastic female artists who enjoyed success in the 00s or even longer ago than that, who have turned the adage of pop exclusively being a young person’s game on its head, and experienced a second wind and a new audience.
Which is why, if you don’t already know about Alexis Strum, now should be your time to get to know her and her music.
You can follow her on her Instagram, @alexisstrum, and also subscribe to her excellent Substack that she regularly updates. Her new single “Swim” is out now, and she’s also doing a fundraiser for Alzheimer’s Society to mark its release, which you can donate to now.
The Niche Reference 