Alice Phoebe Lou is a South African singer-songwriter. She has released three EPs and three albums. In December 2017 her song "She" from the film was included on the Oscarsshortlist for Best Original Song.
Early life
Lou spent her childhood in Kommetjie on west coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa and attended Waldorf school. Her parents are documentary filmmakers. She took piano lessons as a child but learned to play guitar herself. When she was 14 years old she was fond of trance music and started to take photographs from concerts, sometimes even getting paid for them. In 2010 she spent her summer holiday in Paris living first with her aunt but soon moved to live with a friend and started earning money by fire-dancing.
Career
Having a gap year after graduating from high school in South Africa in 2012 she returned to Europe, first to Amsterdam and then to Berlin. In Berlin she started to sing and play guitar as she found out that this was more lucrative than fire-dancing. After her gap year she contemplated attending university in South Africa, but eventually decided to purchase a battery powered amplifier and return to Berlin instead. In Berlin she performed on S- and U-Bahn stations and parks. After one month in Berlin, she played on a television programme. In April 2014 she self-released "Momentum" EP. The song "Fiery Heart, Fiery Mind" from the EP featured in the soundtrack of the 2015 released film "Ayanda". She also started to play in venues. After a performance at TEDx in Berlin on 6 September 2014 she started to get offers from record labels, but she wanted to stay independent. In December 2014 she released a live album "Live at Grüner Salon" as means to fund the recording of her debut studio album. In 2015 she started to tour and played first time at SXSW festival in USA in 2015. She has returned to SXSW every year after that. She also performed in TEDGlobal London in 2015 and opened for Rodriguez on his 2016 South Africa tour. In April 2016 Alice Phoebe Lou released her album "Orbit", produced by Matteo Pavesi and Jian Kellett-Liew. She was nominated for best female artist at the 2016 German critics choice awards in Germany and was invited to several German TV programs for interviews and performances. She toured in Europe, South Africa and USA in 2016 and played three sold out shows at the Berlin Planetarium. Moreover, she still continued busking in Berlin. In December 2017 she self-released nine track "Sola" EP and a book titled "Songs, poems and memories". The same month it was announced that her song "She" from the film is on the shortlist for Academy Awards' Oscars in Best Original Song category. "She" was released as a digital single on 23 February 2018 with a music video directed by Natalia Bazina. During 2018 Alice Phoebe Lou toured Europe, USA, South Africa, Japan and Canada. The first single Something Holy from her Paper Castles album was released on 30 November 2018. On 15 January 2019 the second single, Skin Crawl, was released digitally. The video of Skin Crawl won in June third prize at the Berlin Music Video Awards in the best concept category. On 15 February third single, Galaxies, was released and on 8 March 2019 the album was released. On March 2019 Alice was the artist of the month of Consequence of Sound. On 6 May Galaxies video filmed in Zeiss Planetarium in Berlin featuring Maisie Williams was released. On 12 July A Place of My Own EP containing four songs from Paper Castles album recorded live was released in digital format accompanied by a YouTube video of the recording session. On 7 August video for the Lost in LA was published. The song is from her Sola EP. On 15 November Alice was interviewed in aspekte-program of German ZDF TV and she performed Paper Castles with her band. In December Paper Castles album was listed at number 19 in the NBHAP magazine's 50 best albums of 2019 list and 7th in FMS magazine's top 35 albums and EPs of 2019 list. During 2019 she had over one hundred concerts in Europe, Japan, USA and Canada. For example, she performed on 30 May 2019 first time at the main stage of Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona. Later that day she had another smaller concert at the OCB Paper Sessions stage. On 28 February 2020 German TV Bayerischer Rundfunk broadcast and streamed her PULS-festival concert recorded on 30 November 2019 in Munich. In spite of extensive touring Lou still continued to occasionally perform in Berlin parks and U-Bahn stations too. In spring 2020 she had a short Europe tour and after that several streamed and broadcast concerts, for example on Arte. On 13 March 2020 she released Witches single. Week before that, on 6 March, self-titled video Strongboi was released by her Strongboi side project with Ziv Yamin. The digital single of the song was released on 20 March. This was followed by Strongboi's Honey Thighs digital single on 10 April. On 1 May she released ten track live album Live at Funkhaus from the December 2019 Funkhaus Berlin concert. Further, a short documentary filmed and directed by Julian Culverhouse about Paper Castles tour was published. On 26 June Touch single was released.
