pop

Allie X

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Alexandra Hughes' pop project, a fully designed persona wrapped around cold synths and sharp melodic writing, with credits on other people's pop records.

Allie X is the stage name of Alexandra Hughes, born in Oakville, Ontario. She studied at the Etobicoke School of the Arts and Interlochen Arts Academy before graduating in musical theatre performance from Sheridan College. Before adopting the Allie X name she performed as Allie Hughes around Toronto in the mid-2000s, playing indie pop, jazz and electronic sets with local bands and recording several early albums.

An autoimmune condition in her teenage years left her, in her own words, small and sickly-looking, and she began using clothing and makeup to redirect attention away from her appearance, a habit that fed into the controlled visual persona she later built around Allie X. She moved to Los Angeles in 2013 and worked with producer Cirkut, scoring an early breakthrough with the 2014 single "Catch".

The records that followed, starting with CollXtion I in 2015, lean on cold synthesizers and clean melodic hooks, built around a controlled visual persona: sunglasses and wigs recur across artwork and video, giving each album cycle its own tightly defined look alongside the sound.

She co-wrote "You Need to Calm Down" with Troye Sivan and Taylor Swift, and has written for other pop artists alongside her own albums, which include Super Sunset, Cape God and Girl With No Face. The latter she produced herself, pushing further toward hard 1980s synth textures.

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