"I don’t remember life without music," Grammy-nominated producer ALISSIA tells Newsweek. For the renowned multi-instrumentalist, music has always been an infinite curriculum, and even after viral videos, calls from legends and years spent producing for artists across generations, she still absorbs her craft with the appetite of a student who has only begun to understand what sound can do. She recalls piano lessons at age 4 and a childhood home where Motown played constantly.
"Unconsciously, I was always being fed with the best music." Her early education widened quickly: theory and harmony led to string arranging, big-band writing and conducting, while studio gear, engineering and production opened another set of doors; then bass and synthesizers entered the picture, and curiosity became the engine of a career. "It was a snowball of me being a sponge," ALISSIA said. "I wanted to learn everything I could learn." Michael Jackson’s synth-heavy soundscapes on Thriller sharpened her interest in production, while Prince’s catalog pushed her toward drum machines and the LinnDrum.
"You always want to learn more," she added. "It’s infinite." For years, however, her name drove other artists’ work. A viral YouTube clip had brought label interest, touring offers and a call from Prince, yet ALISSIA declined early deals because she felt her artistic identity still needed room to mature.
"I didn’t feel like I was matured enough as an artist—my sound and what I wanted to do," she said. "I’m very, very intentional with the music I make." She kept touring, although the studio pulled harder, and as word-of-mouth brought more collaborators through the door, producing became an around-the-clock apprenticeship alongside artists she had long admired. "I wanted to be in the studio creating," she said.
"After a while of working with all the greatest—and people I’d always wanted to work with—I felt like I had really advanced myself." The decisive nudge arrived with her Grammy nomination for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, which transformed a private archive of songs into an urgent public project. "I was like, ‘OK, now it’s time to make my own thing,’" she said. "The click moment was the Producer of the Year nomination.
I was like, ‘I need to drop now. Let’s go.’" The recognition capped a run that had already earned her a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year for her work on Mary J. Blige's Good Morning Gorgeous.
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