Pop Star On the Rise Alice Chater Shows Us Her Camera Roll

Image courtesy of Alice Chater.

Hi, my name is Alice. Step into my palace — This is how Alice Chater, a 23-year-old British multi-hyphenate musician, introduces herself to the world in the opening lines of her spooky-themed single “Wonderland (My Name is Alice).” From modeling to acting to uploading covers to YouTube, Alice has been trying to “be on the grid” for a couple of years now. In 2019, she’s aiming higher: “I’m ready to crack it. I’m hoping I can.”

Alice was discovered on YouTube, but her career really begun when she met will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas. “He was like, ‘Whoa, what the fuck. You can really sing. You’re amazing.'” Within a week, the performer had been offered record deals by five different labels, and the ride toward pop stardom had taken off. This year, the pop star is putting the finishing touches on her album, releasing more singles, and taking notes from the artists she admires. “I love to perform, dance, act, and be theatrical,” she says. “I look back at people like Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Britney, because they were all really strong, and that’s what I really want to do. That’s what my artistry is basically.”

Ahead of the release of her new single “Thief,” out this week, Alice shared her camera roll with us. Many of the photos were taken on the road during her UK tour, others at parties with her famous friends, and others during the intimate, behind-the-scenes “diva” moments we all know so well.

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“This is in London, maybe Metropolis Studio. I was recording with these guys called Laconic, a UK production and songwriting team, that day. We made a really sick song. I’m trying to think — I know what song we did for that. I was having major FOMO because my boyfriend at the time was going out without me a lot, and I was like, I didn’t want to do that. So, we wrote a song about that and it was called ‘FOMO.'” 

“I love baths. I’ve had an obsession with baths since I was little. I could live in a bath. I love taking a bath. We got a bath for one of my performances during Pride, and we put wheels on it, and I did a whole performance in the bath and a routine with the bath, and it just became, like, a thing. Now the bath actually comes everywhere with me.”

“This picture was taken at my first festival this summer, RiZE. I was a bit nervous because I was like, ‘Oh my god, nobody’s gonna know who I am.’ But there were people that knew my songs and that was a great experience. I loved the feeling of doing my first festival. It was amazing. I’ve never actually been to a festival myself, which is crazy, as a musician. I always had this weird thing where I wanted the first time I went to a festival to be the one I was performing at.”

“I’m looking at the playback during the film of my video for ‘Hourglass.’ It was done in one take, and I’m so critical of myself, every single move I do — my foot, if my leg isn’t straight, or it’s bent. So I think, at that point, I was watching every single second of the playback, because if I wasn’t happy I’d be like, ‘I want to do it again, let’s do it again.’ I did it with one take, and it managed to be great. I was a bit dizzy at one point in the video, and I didn’t know where the camera was. I think you can kind of see that in my face in the music video. I thought, ‘I’m just gonna keep moving and doing the choreography,’ and it just kind of worked out. I was like, really dizzy.”

“These are my backup dancers. They’re my girls that came on the tour with me in the UK, which was really fun. I loved having two brunette dancers. We had the best time on that tour because we would just come back to the hotel together and watch girly movies, and just lay in bed all together.”

“This is at my best friend’s house, Wallis Day. We were just laughing because, you know, I’m not a diva, but I was wearing sunglasses inside, and I was drinking rosé out of a jar. I was wearing a turtleneck and Wallis was like, “This is hilarious, we should take a Polaroid of this moment because you look so sassy.”

“I wanted to do a very literal, dramatic music video, but take the idea a bit out of proportion. I wanted to do heart surgery — literally, stealing my own heart. So what you see there is a very dingy old hospital in which I get kidnapped, and this doctor steals my heart. We gave our treatment to the amazing female director Anna Radchenko. We wanted it to really be an [Alexander] McQueen vibe because I love McQueen.”