My favorite song of the year so far is about starting anew. It’s by the 32-year-old singer-songwriter Alex G, and it has a beautiful chord progression arranged with lustrous acoustic guitars, mandolin licks, and a warm-sounding accordion. “When the light came / big and bright / I began another life,” he sings. Actually, he might be talking about death. Either way, the combination of mystery and melody has kept “Afterlife” in constant rotation for the past two weeks.
The song certainly signals a new chapter for the Philadelphia native. It’s the first single from Headlights, his forthcoming debut (due July 18) with RCA, the label poised to turn one of the most popular and influential indie artists of the past 15 years into a full-on mainstream proposition. And “Afterlife” suggests that Alex G is more than ready to level up — in a catalog already loaded with idiosyncratic earworms, “Afterlife” is possibly the most immediately endearing song he’s ever written.
It could be argued that Alex G already is a rock star. His 9.2 million monthly listeners on Spotify outpaces many acts you might assume are more popular. (It’s about as many listeners as Turnstile, Boygenius, and The National have combined.) And his influence is now pervasive enough that Alex G-like artists have already established big careers. A prominent example is Mk.gee, whose 2024 breakout hit Two Star & The Dream Police has a lo-fi dreaminess that feels indebted to Alex G’s early Bandcamp releases. (He also, clearly, favors the seventh letter of the alphabet.) While it might have seemed a little strange at first to imagine such a quintessentially independent artist sharing a label with Britney Spears, Doja Cat, and Sleep Token, Alex G’s musical footprint justifies it.
In the indie world, Alex G became a leading figure in part because of his ability to pull from many different styles of music and integrate them in ways that feel natural and singular. You can see that talent on display in the video for “Afterlife,” which combines down-home visuals filmed at a community square dance in Texas with music reminiscent of British and Celtic folk. (I would bet that he recently had a “Pogues and Led Zeppelin III” phase.) Though in true Alex G fashion, you only see flashes of the actual artist lurking in the background. It speaks to his penchant for obfuscation, both in his music (where he frequently modulates his voice into wildly twisted tones) and public persona (totally nondescript, possibly on purpose).
When the occasion demands it, he can present as a conventional “sensitive guy” singer-songwriter, like his 2022 performance of “Miracles” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. If this were your introduction to Alex G, you would assume he was just another good-looking dude with a guitar who sings nice ditties about wanting to start a family. “Blessing” (another song from his most recent LP, God Save The Animals) represents the subversive flipside of that equation — it’s a surly pseudo-nu metal number with a loping, sinister groove that Alex unironically claimed was inspired by Audioslave’s hit power ballad “Like A Stone.” (It honestly does sound a lot like that song.)
These tracks, along with “Afterlife,” demonstrate how Alex G freely mixes tradition with novelty, and old-fashioned songwriting with of-the-moment production flavors. His music might have the shape of singer-songwriter music, but it’s not constructed like how that music is normally put together. And it feels that way when you listen to it. “As far as production, I’d imagine I have a lot in common with electronic or pop producers,” he once told Pitchfork. “I’m not trying to get something organic, I’m going in and chopping stuff up, manipulating things after the fact. I don’t care about the process. I just want the product to sound exactly how I want it.”
That approach puts Alex G solidly in line with the current musical climate. (Putting out a cowboy-themed video in the midst of an Americana gold rush is solid marketing as well.) But can Alex G really be a crossover indie-rock megastar on the level of Mitski or Phoebe Bridgers, who moved into the realm of TikTok virality and arena tours in the early 2020s? Or is he destined to remain a very successful cult hero?
Two interesting wrinkles make me lean toward the latter scenario. The first is the progressive strangeness of Alex G’s albums, which have grown grander and more polished as he’s aged while somehow being a little less accessible. God Save The Animals and 2019’s House Of Sugar are his two most ambitious and (in my view) best records, but they are filled with jarring shifts in sound and mood. (Like “No Bitterness,” which starts off as low-key stoner rock before exploding into an ecstatic hyperpop breakdown.) By comparison, early efforts like 2012’s Trick — which, judging by streaming numbers, remains his most popular record — sound a lot more straightforward and (for lack of a better word) normal.
The two most popular songs from Trick, the slyly sexual sorta-rocker “Sarah” and the achingly sweet love song “Mary,” were products of Alex G’s “’90s indie scholarship” era, when he was overtly influenced by bands like Built To Spill and Modest Mouse. I first started listening to him upon the release of 2015’s Beach Music, which includes some of his most obvious Elliott Smith’s homages. (He even recreated those distinctive “fingers moving on the fret” guitar sounds you might remember from Either/Or.)
I saw Alex G for the first (and for now only) time the following year, when I was randomly in Orlando and saw him play in a bar with the New York-based synth-pop project Porches. I remember him wearing a trucker hat and a baggy shirt, and virtually nothing else about the show. As a stage presence, he was distinctly unmemorable. He looked like someone who had wandered from the audience and stayed at the microphone because security couldn’t be bothered to escort him away. The tunes were uniformly good, but the band was as noncommittal about performing them as their reluctant, nonchalant frontman.
This brings me to the second wrinkle: I’m not sure that Alex G has a personality. I don’t mean he has a bad personality. I’m saying he might not have a personality. I have interviewed him twice, once for a print article and once for my old podcast. And it was a challenging experience both times, not because he was rude but because he had nothing to say. Not a single thing. Nada. Goose egg. Asking Alex G to talk about songwriting is like inquiring with a typical 14-year-old about their day at school. The podcast interview was especially hard, since that format is designed to be a virtual hangout for the audience. People want to hear fun, compelling banter. And Alex simply was not a fun, compelling hang. He was a reluctant, nonchalant interview subject.
I don’t think I’m alone on this. When you read Alex G profiles, you can feel the writers straining to come up with any semblance of color. Like on the press cycle for God Save The Animals, where there were at least two articles from major outlets that opened with strikingly similar anecdotes involving dogs and Dunkin Donuts iced coffee. (Spoiler alert: Alex G is really into dogs and Dunkin Donuts iced coffee.)
It’s possible this is all by design. In his songs, Alex G combines heartfelt autobiography with dark fiction in ways that deliberately muddy the distinction between “true” identity and contrived invention. A child of the internet, Alex G has always understood that you are what you create for others to consume. And that might include not creating a “relatable” or “personal” avatar for yourself. Famously averse to social media, he has spurned the cult of personality that’s been the grist for stardom, pop and indie, in the 21st century. He has, instead, forged a fanatical following for his actual music. So, why not be deliberately boring in interviews so that the focus stays on the work?
If that’s the case, I wonder if that strategy can be effective when you’re on a major label. It goes against the grain of how parasocial relationships sustain careers now. But I hope it works. What I know for certain is that “Afterlife” is a fantastic song. And if the new album has more bangers of that magnitude, I will be more than fine with Alex G’s lack of quotability.
Headlights is out 7/18 via RCA Records. Find more information here.