“The best advice Liz gave me when I was younger was to just go out and live,” Alyssa Micaela says of her longtime mentor and 2023 Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Liz Rose. “I think you’re gonna get your best song ideas and your best material from just living your real life and not trying to make stuff up.”
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Micaela met the famed songwriter at just 15 years old. Rose, who notably helped foster a young Taylor Swift, has been asked to meet with many up-and-coming artists throughout the years. Despite being one of many artists in Rose’s orbit, something about Micaela made her stand out from the crowd.
“I first saw her play live,” Rose tells American Songwriter. “She blew my mind. I just wanted to help her and encourage her. We’ve gone through a lot of phases and stages together.”
“She changed my whole life,” Micaela adds. “I met her when I was a teenager. I’ve known her for 15 years now – half my life. I wouldn’t have moved to Nashville. I wouldn’t have met any of the people I did if it weren’t for her believing in me and her encouragement. It was such a God thing really.”
After trying out college for a stint, Micaela knew her place was in Nashville. She packed up her things, moved to Music City, and started down the path so many have done before her. Despite being on the scene for some time now, Micaela has just now shared her debut album, The Hard Way.
The 11-track album is as fun as it is candid. While many of the songs on The Hard Way are up-tempo, the Texas native allows for moments of vulnerability, bearing her worries for like-minded listeners. As Micaela puts it, this album is a good representation of who she is.
“The goal was for people to feel like we could be friends,” she says. “[I wanted this to be ] the album you listen to when you’re pre-gaming to go out with your friends or on a road trip. It’s gonna make you have a damn good time.
“Then, there are a few songs on there that tug at your heart a little bit, which is important,” she continues. “I think it’s a pretty well-rounded album.”
As to what kept her out of the album game up until this point, both Micaela and Rose thought she needed to live more life before she started writing her story.
“Every 16-year-old thinks they have their story,” Rose explains. “She’s been through a lot over the last 10 years. That’s what this record is about.
“That’s the most important thing with an artist,” she continues. “It doesn’t matter if they’re 20 or 30, their most important record comes when they figure out who they are. It took some time [for Alyssa] to get there but, it was worth it.”
When listening to The Hard Way, you can sense that Micaela knows what kind of artist she wants to be. A stand-out from the record, “Jealous of the Birds,” is also the most vulnerable, according to Micaela.
The track takes a unique viewpoint on anxiety, with Micaela looking to the sky in an attempt to let her troubles melt away.
“Jealous of the Birds” is different from anything I’ve done before,” Micaela says. “It came from a pretty dark place but, it’s awesome to look back on where I was in my life when we wrote that to where I am now.”
“I’m honestly not super good at being vulnerable,” Micaela adds. “With ‘Jealous of the Birds,’ I thought about how the birds don’t worry, they just pick up and move along. [Along with the idea that] if God provides for the birds and he is going to provide for us too. It was exactly what I was feeling.”
“I think what’s so interesting is most people, especially female writers, write a ton of ballads,” Rose says. “And everybody’s like, ‘Okay, but do you have an uptempo?’Alyssa is completely opposite.
“Everything she does is fun, and sassy and strong,” Rose continues. “So I think that it is always so interesting when she does write that ballad. It’s real.”
Though Micaela and Rose didn’t work together on The Hard Way, the influence of their relationship did carry over into the co-writing sessions Micaela did have this go around.
Micaela also discussed picking her co-writers. “It’s really about finding people that let me be me and say things the way that I want to say it,” she explains. “I don’t care about how anyone else would do it. Liz was always really good at listening and helping me take everything I was feeling and put it down in a way that was ‘me.'”
Rose, also Micaela’s current label head, decided to loosen the reins on the singer’s career prior to the making of The Hard Way. In the past, Micaela leaned heavily on Rose, coming to her for every decision. This time, Micaela had unbound freedom, which was both daunting and exciting to her.
“I realized me and Alyssa wrote really well together but, she needed to go find her own voice and her co-writers,” Rose adds. “She’s worked really hard to figure out who helps her find her voice. It doesn’t have to be me but, as I told her a few weeks ago, I think there is a song we haven’t written together yet.”
“It was scary,” Micaela admits. “I’m always like ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’ But, then it was exciting because I thought ‘They trust me to do this.’ I’ve lived and grown up a little and I think I developed the confidence to go out and do things more independently.”
Rose gave Micaela the advice to “go out and live” early on in her career. “It has to come from a real place,” Micaela said. “Even as a music fan myself, when I hear something that I don’t believe, I notice right away. I never want people to say that about me.”
Rose then compared Micaela’s newfound sense of self to Swift’s unabashed songwriting.
“Taylor is still the perfect example of that [idea],” Rose says. “She said it the way she said it and I wrote with her and let her say it. I didn’t try and songwriter-her out of the room. That’s what I’ve always told Alyssa – you’ve got to go out and find what your voice is. Don’t let anybody push you around.”
Micaela certainly stands her ground on this record. She doesn’t adhere to many of the familiar facets of country music and where she does, she adds a unique point of view that garners a fresh perspective.
The Hard Way is what Micaela hoped it would be: a damn good time and a thought-provoking piece of work. Like Micaela, The Hard Way stands out from the crowd.
Check out the full interview with Alyssa Micaela and Liz Rose, below.
Alyssa Micaela: Jody Domingue / Elicity Public Relations
