Written by Kelly Holm
Alexa Goldie was fronting multiple rock bands and playing in bars at the age of ten. She wasn’t much older when she started writing songs with assistance from her vocal coach. By her early teens, she had a pop record deal with an indie label.
“Ever since I can remember, music has been everything to me,” she said. “I remember my mom telling her friends that she thought I was going to be a doctor, but I always knew that I was going to have some type of involvement with music…”
Goldie’s journey to authentic artistry didn’t end with that first contract, though— it was only getting started.
“I spent a lot of my early teen years in Los Angeles writing and recording with pop producers who would always ask me why I wasn’t country,” Goldie reflected. “I was told that I had to be pop… every time I wrote or came up with a melody, my co-writers would say ‘that’s too country!’”
Due to the music industry’s pigeonholing ways, Goldie felt that she couldn’t embrace the country label unless she rocked cowboy boots and had a twang in her voice. It took a lot of courage and some advice from Pharrell Williams for her to begin to blaze her own path, in more ways than one.
“[Williams said] ‘Alexa, you will hear in the music industry that you must be different, a triple threat, unique— but really, to make it into the industry, you need to find you and voice that through your music,” she shared. “I am inspired every day by what Pharrell said because that meant to me that I needed to go country… I needed to follow my dream, even if I was scared and unsure of the outcome.”
So as of age 16, Goldie’s been both a country artist and an independent one, influenced by Nashville mavens like The Chicks, Deana Carter, Ingrid Andress and Carly Pearce. Being unsigned to a label has had its challenges, but was a crucial move to make in order for her to fully realize her artistic vision.
“When I was younger and signed… I had a team that would help pave the way,” she said. “Now, as an independent artist, I have had to learn how to market and push my music all by myself…”
Goldie’s most recent release is an EP called High Road, featuring six tracks.
“Since I started writing music, my goal has been to tell a story and be able to make people relate to my words,” she says. “Lately, my goal has been to write about a new idea [in] everything I write. Before writing for the High Road EP, I found myself always wanting to write about heartbreak or the one guy who broke my heart, but now I have been pushing myself to write about other parts of my life…”
Goldie began writing for the EP in 2018, and began producing and recording with Mark Schroor and Erik Fintelman in late 2019 and early 2020. The most difficult aspect of the entire process, she says, was narrowing the tracklist down to just six songs out of all the ones she’d written.
“‘Not My Own’ is my favorite original to perform, because it never fails to put a tear in my parents’ eyes,” Goldie said. “It’s hard to say which song off the EP is my favorite [in general] because they all feel like my little babies. But, if I had to choose, I would say ‘Hometown’ because it speaks the story of what I am going through right now!.”
“Hometown” is about the struggle of leaving behind one’s origins to pursue Nashville dreams, while “Not My Own” deals with the importance of family support throughout industry struggles.
“If you are a fan of my music, I would say that you enjoy a song that tells a story,” Goldie says. “My ultimate goal is to reach people with my music. Deana Carter touched me with her words and changed my life from a young age. When I was going through tough times, listening to Deana would bring light in, and if I can do that for others, that’s when I will feel like I made it.”
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