Image via Daniel Steinert //

Have had this EP on repeat all week…

It’s definitely been a whirlwind couple of years for 18-year-old George Alice. Following winning Unearthed High off her critically-acclaimed hit ‘Circles’ in 2019, she was thrust into the spotlight, taken to all corners of the country and even overseas as her confessional ballad struck a chord with the masses.

Despite the distinct success of her debut single however, she’s managed to maintain that consistency throughout the years, releasing cuts like ‘Stuck In A Bubble’, ‘Teenage’ and ‘Mid Years’ that further the unique brand of indie and folk-pop she clearly gravitates toward, while still managing to hit all the same emotional beats ‘Circles’ did but with even more precision. It’s been a solid couple of years for the South Australian muso, and today we see the full fruits of her labour in her debut EP Growing Pains, which is out now.

We caught up with the Unearthed High alum ahead of the release of Growing Pains to chat the journey so far, her process for writing catchy hooks (believe it or not, a bouncy ball is involved) and her upcoming headline tour & Splendour in the Grass set. Check it below.

Congrats on the EP! How are you feeling right now? Excited, nervous or both?

I’m pretty excited. I’m past the nerves, which were like from a year ago when I was finalizing everything. And when you make the first tracklist you’re asking yourself things like, “Oh, is everyone going to hate this? And am I going to ruin my life?” But now the nerves are gone, I think [laughs].

It feels like yesterday that you won Unearthed High and burst onto the scene. Does it feel recent for you? Or does it feel like it’s from a lifetime ago?

It’s a little bit of both. If COVID wasn’t a thing and I was off doing heaps of things, it’d feel like yesterday. But because I’ve had so much time of not living that life and just chilling at home in Adelaide, it feels like forever ago. But like right now I’m in Melbourne and as soon as I get back into a hotel I’m like, “Yeah, it feels like literally yesterday I was doing this.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJJL8ZnP-30

In regards to the latest single ‘Hold On’, you’ve said that “Sometimes people leave and you can’t get them back, they’re gone for good, sometimes it feels like you’re drowning in the tide, or you just can’t make up your mind, all of your thoughts are empty and frozen till you start to heal.” What on earth were you going through when you wrote it at 15?

I don’t even know [laughs]. I feel like there were a lot of pretty drastic changes in my friendship group at the time. It was all just a little bit morbid, and it was just me being 15 and being like, “My friendship group has changed and it will never be the same as what it was”.

And I guess it was about people leaving and how you really can’t get them back sometimes. And it was just a bit of a shock to the system because I’d never been through that before, and I didn’t know how to react. So, I was just writing about it and thinking about how I feel when I’m super anxious. Like if there’s an exam coming up or I’m just freaking out about something and how you must just hold on and hope for the best. So, I was just throwing out metaphors, in the hope that people could relate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGiGL-HWzgQ

You’ve also mentioned that track was written the same day you wrote ‘Circles’ in 2019. Why was ‘Circles’ the track you decided to push ahead with out of the two for Unearthed?

They were very separated on the day and I hadn’t started writing ‘Circles’ yet, that one was completely from scratch in the studio. And then I’d written a verse or two on ‘Hold On’ before I went into the session. I’d never done a session before, so I didn’t know how it worked anyway. But yeah, it was of just this really organic process where we were like “Okay, we’ve finished this one. Let’s put it aside and maybe we’ll use it for something.”

And then we moved on to this other song and for a while, I was like, “Okay, what am I going to enter?”. And then I showed them to my parents in my hotel room after the session, but when I showed them ‘Circles’ they were like, “That’s the one. Just put that one in Unearthed High and see how it goes”. And I was like, “No one’s even going to listen to it. Like what if everyone hates it? it doesn’t matter.” But yeah, it was really nice to have that separation.

The EP as a whole is very pop-leaning, especially ‘Stuck In A Bubble’ and ‘Mid Years’. Through listening to those songs and your discography in general, it was clear that catchy hooks and verses come easily to you. What’s your secret?

My secret? I don’t know. You know what… This sounds so crazy and I don’t know how it makes any sense, but I’ll be sitting at a piano and I’m playing some really beautiful, sad chords, and it sounds like it’s going to be a song that you can cry to. But then I imagine a bouncy ball, when I was little I used to throw a bouncy ball and just watch it bounce off the walls and go everywhere.

And I just imagine where it would go if I just dropped this little bouncy-ball of a song. Like would the notes be higher or lower? Does it just roll on the floor? Does it hit the roof? All this crazy stuff. I know that makes zero sense, but in my brain, it seems to work and I come up with these hooks and it just kind of works.

What colour is the bouncy ball? Where is it? Give us the drop on the whole process.

It’s this rainbow bouncy ball that I had when I was little and it was like a funny material, and it’s just been engraved in my brain forever. I was like, “This is a really cool bouncy ball”. And I think my dog at the time ate it, but it was a pretty cool bouncy ball.

The EP is titled ‘Growing Pains’. Obviously spending the latter part of your teenage years in the spotlight comes with its own unique set of growing pains. Can you run me through a couple?

Everything happened when I was so young and at the time I was like, “Yeah, I’m super grown. I’m a full adult,” even though I’d just turned 16. I’m grown and I can handle this and it’s going to be awesome because this is my adult life now.” And I thought I was mad cool. But looking back, I was not grown. I was a child [laughs]. But yeah, I guess there’s a lot of growing pains just being 16 in general.

But then to add this added pressure of everybody watching the music that I’m putting out. And it was even just silly things, like for a while I was too scared to post on Instagram because I didn’t want people to comment or anything… Not that anything negative has ever happened, but you know, it was just one of those things where I was being a full teenager and just scared of everything.

But yeah, I think I’m lucky cause I’m adaptive as a person. I can just kind of adapt to anything and I got used to it pretty quick. It’s like a double life and there’s double the growing pains in being a young musician, especially a female. Maybe even triple, who knows? But yeah, it’s a wild time, but it’s fun.

And just circling back to ‘Circles’ (mind the pun), that song really has taken on a life of its own since you first dropped it all those years ago. How has your relationship changed with that tune?

I think I’ve just grown to love it more because of not only what it’s done for me but just because of growing up and experiencing things and listening to it differently, and realizing that I was writing about feelings that I’d never even felt before. Back then I was writing about friendships changing and high school and all that. Whereas now I listen to it and I’m a bit more and now I’m about to turn 19. It kind of hits a little bit harder, but I still love it. It’s like my little child that I put in the world and I went, “Yeah, you can go do your thing and I wish you all the best.”

You’re also set to make your Splendour debut later this year. How are the nerves and excitement levels, after all of the delays? Are you less nervous now, considering you’re pretty seasoned on the live circuit as compared to when you were first announced for it in 2020?

I think so. I think when I was first announced on the lineup, I was 16 and that’s just really young, which I just didn’t realize at the time. And I was like, “No, it’ll be fine. Just get up there and close my eyes and hope for the best”. Whereas now I’m like, “Okay, we’ve rehearsed, we’ve made a great set. We’ve done this, we’ve done that. I’m ready to do it”. But yeah, I’m a big believer everything happens for a reason, and I think this show, in particular, was one that I really needed to hold off on until I was ready. Because it’s Splendour, it’s a pretty big deal. So, it’s good to be prepared.

Lastly, say if ‘Hold On’ was the single that you submitted to Unearthed High instead of ‘Circles’ and that was the single that propelled you into the limelight, how do you think your trajectory would be different?

I don’t know. I feel like it isn’t as playful as what ‘Circles’ is and I think I needed something a little bit more light-hearted. ‘Hold On’ was just in a very different ballpark, not in a good way or a bad way, just in a very different place. And I think that I wanted to start the way I wanted my career to carry on. I want to be a pop artist and make indie pop, and that’s what I do. And I think that song represented that best and represented me as an artist, even though I didn’t really understand what that meant at the time.

George Alice’s debut EP Growing Pains is out now. You can buy/stream it here and you can cop tickets to her headline tour here.