Alissic | EQUATE Magazine

Brazilian-born singer Alissic is not your average pop star and that’s pretty obvious from the jump. If you believe everything you read, her press release states she was born nine months after her parents encountered a UFO when driving home from a restaurant that only served pizza. Growing up in a Brazilian town, she spent most of her time as a vigilante, protecting frogs from salt attacks, and by age 7, she could play the recorder with her nose. Alissic also has two fangs after she got bitten by a vampire.

Alissic, also known as Alissa Salls, was first known to many as the wife to Bring Me The Horizon frontman Oli Sykes. Since making her music debut, however, that is rapidly starting to change. The pair got married in 2017 and have become partners, on both the romantic and working fronts. Sykes has been a big part of Alissic’s music journey as he taught her how to produce and write songs. He also helped direct and edit both of her music videos.

Before pursuing music, Alissic was a teenage model, but soon realised it wasn’t an avenue she wanted to take further. “I wanted to do something that came from me. I always felt like a really creative person and I started modelling when I was 15, so I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life anyway,” she tells EQUATE. “Modelling just happened and I got to travel the world and meet so many people but it got to a point where I had a moment of realizing I needed to do something that allowed me to do something creative. I didn’t know exactly that was going to be music. I always loved music but I guess I always thought it was a little too hard to become a musician out of nowhere. After I met Oli, he showed me the ways and stuff. I really love fashion and I love illustrations, so music was the perfect combination.”

An interesting artist in her own right, Alissic released her first single ‘Like‘ in October 2020 – described as an “otherworldly pop statement” by Clash. A perfect description for the track. The mesmerising song immediately showed a lot of promise as if she has been making music for much longer. Ironically, it was one of the first songs she made after saying goodbye to being a model. “One day I just started sampling stuff and I figured out how to produce very slowly. “Like” was one of the first songs I created so it’s quite special because I remember the day I started making it and it was almost three years ago,” Alissic explains, adding, “It started off with little beats and melodies. It didn’t have any lyrics or anything but it was really special because I was manifesting about making music and hoping that it would change everything for me.” The emerging artist then went on to reveal the meaning behind ‘Like‘ and why it instantly grabbed the attention of her fans.

“I was going through some weird emotions and I didn’t know where they were coming from. I wrote this song as a reminder to question myself and to use it as a resource for those emotions,” she continues. “The first verse is just questions that I’m asking myself while the second verse is the answers to those questions and feelings. Visually, it is basically as if I was in my own head and the video is very white as I was in limbo trying to find those answers.”

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“I made “Piano” last year around October and it took two days to make in my living room. As soon as I finished it, I was buzzing about it”

– ALISSIC

‘Like‘ didn’t go unnoticed and proved to be the perfect introduction for Alissic. The song was initially released independently but was soon re-released in 2021 through Ministry of Sound after the 23-year-old signed a major deal with the label. As soon as the single started to gain momentum, many wanted a slice of the pie. While Alissic initially pictured herself as an independent artist, she ultimately decided to work with a label to push her ideas on a bigger scale. “I wanted to do this very organically, like bedroom vibes. After I released “Like,” I received so many calls from independent labels and bigger labels,” Alissic shares. “I felt like the right thing to do was to sign with a big label because I feel like I have too many ideas visually, and I knew it would be the right thing to do if I wanted to make them real.”

After listeners were able to get their teeth stuck into ‘Like‘, Alissic sharpened her fangs with the release with ‘Piano‘. Sonically, the song has a different vibe to her debut single but, nevertheless, is still very captivating. Visually, there is a theme with frogs. “When I was making “Piano,” I wanted to have barbershop quartered singing on it, and then as soon as we started to make the sounds to sound like it, frogs came into my mind as if they were singing the bassline of the song,” she says. “As soon as I had that thought, I envisioned the song with frogs. So, that’s where that was all born.” Does anyone remember how her bio reads that she’s a champion for the amphibians? Enough said.

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Alissic continues: “I made “Piano” last year around October and it took two days to make in my living room. As soon as I finished it, I was buzzing about it. I had another song that I really liked and I didn’t know which one to choose. But, as soon as I finished “Piano,” I was like ‘this is it’.”

Innovative and visionary are two wonderful ways to describe Alissic wonderfully. After all, she directed both her music videos and constructed/created really artistic and detailed storyboards — one which can be seen on Instagram — when planning for them. While in the studio, Alissic tells me she also makes rough sketches for how she envisions the song. “As soon as I have a vision of what the music is sounding like, the colors and stuff, I usually have my iPad with me so I start writing lyrics and drawings all over so I can get a vibe,” she reveals. With that being said, there have been times where Alissic has created music and not maybe visualized anything in her brain. “I worked with a lot of different producers, and I had the experience of making music and not seeing anything. It was nice, but I didn’t have ideas bursting. I feel like when it’s going the right way, it’s when I start to get excited about the visuals,” she insists.

If ‘Like‘ and ‘Piano‘ are anything to go by, Alissic is no one-trick pony. With lots of unreleased material ready to go, she assures me that fans can expect an ongoing evolution. “I don’t think I will ever just stick to one thing because that’s my personality. I’m constantly changing and finding new ways of expressing myself. It would be weird if I just did the same thing,” she says. As of this writing, Alissic has no EP or project set in stone. “For now, I’m just focusing on making sick music, and I’ll worry about an EP later,” she insists. As for live performances, that’s also something she has her eye on, but also isn’t something in the pipeline currently. However, that hasn’t stopped her from planning ahead. “It’s on the brain. I’ve already drawn my stage and stuff [laughs]. As soon as I start releasing more stuff, I will hopefully be doing live shows,” Alissic reveals.