AleXa, a K-pop music artist from Jenks, introduced herself to U.S. television viewers with an exclamation point by winning NBC’s “American Song Contest” in 2022.
AleXa emerged victorious on the strength of the song “Wonderland.” Life imitates art? She has sort of been living a wonderland existence since venturing to South Korea to pursue a music career six years ago.
“That’s a really great comparison, actually,” AleXa said in a recent Zoom interview to promote an upcoming tour stop at Cain’s Ballroom.
Elaborating on her journey, AleXa chose to go upper case: “I mean, to quote Journey, I was just a small town girl living in a lonely world, then I took the midnight train going to South Korea.”
But, seriously, AleXa — don’t stop believing — wanted to see what was possible.
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“I felt like I had a calling to not just stay at home and maybe get, like, a 9-to-5,” she said.
“I really felt like my passions and my path in life really led elsewhere on a broader spectrum. So when this incredible, one-in-a-million, life-changing opportunity came for me to go to Korea to pursue my dream of becoming a performer, I couldn’t say no. I knew that if I turned it down, I would regret it later down the line, and I definitely don’t think another opportunity like that would’ve arisen.”
Continuing, AleXa said it has been a crazy journey.
“There’s been ups and downs. You fall down the rabbit hole, but then you fall back up the rabbit hole. Everything’s very topsy-turvy. Life is consistently changing. Life is not consistently good, nor is life consistently bad. There’s the ins and the outs, the good and the bad, the black and the white. It’s just been a very — I feel like I’m living in a fantasy, which is crazy. I feel like my life is a work of fiction, but I’m so grateful and fortunate to be living it as my reality.”
Reality will soon include a Thursday, April 4, performance at Cain’s Ballroom, which is celebrating its centennial. It’s one of six dates announced for AleXa’s ‘sick of you’ U.S. tour. The tour stops are five of the nation’s biggest markets (New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas and Los Angeles) and Tulsa, which means AleXa will be blessed with a homecoming show for the first time since turning pro.
“Two years ago, when I first started touring, I went to Oklahoma City, which of course is grand and wonderful, but it’s not my hometown. It’s not Tulsa,” she said. “So the feeling wasn’t exactly the same amount of anticipation I am expecting for this round of touring. Just Tulsa alone is incredible, but also the fact that I’m going to Cain’s Ballroom? It’s such an iconic venue.”
The Oklahoma City gig was scheduled in October of 2022, and it came on the heels of her “American Song Contest” triumph in May of that year.
“They were looking again to go to Oklahoma City, which I wouldn’t have minded,” she said. “But I was really pushing for Tulsa, and my team was also really pushing tour organizers to be like, ‘hey, let’s go to (my) hometown. I’m pretty sure, you know, she would love nothing more than to perform in her stomping grounds, but also the turnout’s probably going to be better.’”
Many people drove from Tulsa to Oklahoma City to see AleXa in 2022.
“And they were like, ‘Oh my God, you have to come to Tulsa next time, girl.’ And I’m like, I know. Hopefully. And, you know, lo and behold, here we are.”
AleXa (Alexaundra Schneiderman, but hometown folks knew her as Alex Christine) said she grew up seeing shows at Cain’s Ballroom, including a Kongos concert and a Battle of the Bands contest in which she knew participants.
Because of a tight tour schedule, any re-embrace of familiar turf will have to be quick. One thing she wants to do while in Tulsa is visit a store at the mall where she once worked.
“My friends are all ready to kidnap me, if you will, and cart me around the city just for old times’ sake,” she said. “And then I know they’re coming to my show the next day. My mom is driving up from Dallas and she’ll see me (in Tulsa) and then she’ll see me back home at the Dallas show the next day. I’m just excited to see how the city has changed and grown since I’ve left.”
AleXa was still Tulsa-based in 2016, when she stumbled onto an online K-pop (Korean popular music) competition. Participants had the choice of covering a K-pop song via singing, dancing or rapping. Victors in each category earned auditions with a large Korean entertainment company. AleXa entered the dance category and won.
“I got my audition, and then nothing came of it, so I was kind of discouraged,” she said.
The contest returned in 2017, but, this time, there would be only one overall winner who would be flown to South Korea for a face-to-face audition.
“And, thankfully, due to some persuasion from people who are now in my team, I auditioned and made it through and wound up winning the overall competition and came to Korea, where I first was introduced to my current label mates, the people at Zanybros, now ZB Label,” she said.
“I’m still absolutely flabbergasted, for lack of a better word, how everything fell into place and how the stars aligned in my favor with this crazy journey I’ve been on. I have so much and so many people to thank back in those days of 2016 and 2017 for encouraging me to compete in those competitions.”
Asked if she was terrified to go to Korea and take her shot, AleXa confirmed that she was. “But, more than that, I would say I was motivated, Pardon my French, but the fact that I won that competition, it really lit a fire under my ass and kind of told me, hey, you can do these things. These things wouldn’t be happening to you and these things wouldn’t be in your path of life if it wasn’t something you could tackle and overcome.”
Maybe AleXa should put this on her resume: Thrives in contests.
“American Song Contest,” the NBC show she won, was patterned after “Eurovision Song Contest,” an international songwriting competition that began in 1956 and now is watched by 200 million viewers annually. Past winners include ABBA (1974), Celine Dion (1988) and Måneskin (2021).
The U.S. version featured one music artist from every state and five U.S. territories, plus the District of Columbia. Participants were enlisted from all levels of career achievement. Jewel (Alaska), Michael Bolton (Connecticut), Sisqo (Maryland) and Macy Gray (Ohio) were in the field when AleXa secured victory for herself and Oklahoma.
“Going into the show, I never really had the inkling that I was in it to win it,” she said. “I was just there for the vibes, dare I say. I was there to have fun for the experience. But I think after I passed the semifinals and I knew I was going to be participating in finals, at that point, I was like, ‘OK, let me get my A-game on. It’s either all or nothing for this. I refuse to lose at this point.’”
In the finals, Allen Stone of Washington was in the lead with 105 points following voting by judges. AleXa roared from fifth place to first place to win (with 710 points) after viewer votes were tabulated.
“I just remember breaking down next to my parents,” AleXa said. “I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I knew I had fans out there and I knew I had people who supported me, but that much of like an avalanche win was just something I never could have foreseen.”
Snoop Dogg (he said he digs K-pop; AleXa said she is open to a “collab”) and Kelly Clarkson hosted the competition. Clarkson told Billboard she knew about AleXa prior to the show because her niece is a huge K-pop fan.
“She is already obsessed with her, and so are many fans,” Clarkson said. “Honestly, that’s why the vote counted, right? Like Allen Stone was going to take it and America comes in and votes and it’s like, ‘Nope.’”
Clarkson also told Billboard this: “I’ve never seen anything like AleXa. That’s her biggest pull. Her performance and her vibe and the fact that she’s from Oklahoma is so funny to me, because I grew up in North Texas and I didn’t see any of that hanging out, like those kind of artists.”
The victory earned AleXa radio play, an appearance on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” and a performance at the 2022 Billboard Music Awards.
AleXa said the best thing to happen to her as a result of being on “American Song Contest” was expanding her fan base to include not only K-pop fans, but fans of pop music in general.
“For the recent fan events that I’ve had in the states, I’ve had people come who are like, ‘oh, I found you through ‘American Song Contest.’ I really don’t know much about K-pop, but you really caught my interest.’ It’s really cool to see how, as an artist, I can have a positive impact on people outside of my typical demographic.”
And on that subject: AleXA recently released a new single, “Sick.”
“At the end of last year, we collectively decided, my label and I, that we really wanted to gear towards the American audience this year and release English music rather than just focusing on my Korean discography,” she said.
Elaborating on the strategy, she said, “I think, honestly, just after seeing with how the American general public received me after ‘American Song Contest’ and how my horizons broadened a bit, we wanted to (lean into) that, I guess, and just see how much further we could go because I did feel like I solidified a name for myself in the Western performance world, but I wanted to really make my mark and not just settle for something I did two years ago.”
“Sick” will be a track on a new album — a “mini” or a full — that will arrive late this year or early next year. During the Zoom interview, AleXa said she had been in the studio recording for the past three days.
AleXa performed “Sick” during a return trip to “The Kelly Clarkson Show.” Asked about the song, she said this: “We had a handful of songs pitched to us and we were really going through the catalog and, when we landed on ‘Sick,’ it was like, oh, this is a really easy listening song and the lyrics tell a very, I believe, universal experience of feeling someone is out of your league or too good for you. You just feel so inferior and they make you feel sick because they’re so perfect in your eyes. And that’s a relatively relatable storyline that the general public could be enticed with. So we went ahead with the song because we figured it’s an easy listening song and we could see it on the radio and we could see it being streamed well. But the only thing was we were like, how are we going to visually represent this song? And then that ties into the music video.”
A news release about “Sick” said the song takes AleXa back to her pop-punk roots. Did you know she had pop-punk roots?
“I grew up really loving the alternative, emo-scene-kid music,” she said, adding that she grew up with artists like Avril Lavigne, Evanescence and My Chemical Romance.
“I really want to bring that sound back because I feel like no mainstream artists are really trying to emulate that kind of sense of nostalgia that a lot of us emo punk kids had back in the day.”
Where is this all headed? AleXa said she is grateful to be where she is at this point in her career. She didn’t set out to become an artist because she wanted money or fame or her name in lights.
“I just love being able to do what I love and share that with an audience that reciprocates that love,” she said.
“But I really do hope that bigger and better things are to come, whether that’s reaching out on a more global scale — not so much just centralized in America, or whether that’s receiving recognition in a foreign country and even appearing on different competitions abroad. I mean, ‘American Song Contest’ was a thing, but who’s to say the next step isn’t ‘Eurovision’ itself. You never know.”
Concluding, AleXa thanked fans around the world who listen to her music and watch her videos and enjoy her artistry.
“But I want to give a huge, tremendous thank you to people in my hometown and in my home state for always supporting me and always being this backbone and always being this home I can return to. I just really hope that I can continue to be an artist that makes the people of Oklahoma proud.”