Here’s a short snippet of our interview with musician Alexander Glantz. Known as Alexander 23, the 25-year-old Chicago native made his debut back in 2019 with his first track Dirty AF1’s. During this quarantine as the world settles into their homes, we were spontaneously enlightened with his new track ‘IDK You Yet’. The somber song and its reflective lyrics are instantly relatable and easily resonates to anyone and everyone missing that honest ‘je ne sais quoi.’ We got to know more about him and his musical prowess.
What got you started in music and made you want to pursue it as a career?
When I was little, my dad played the guitar and I was like, “Oh My God I need to try it.” So I tried it and hated it but eventually picked it up a year later. Ever since I was like 10 years old, I was playing in bands then I went to school for engineering but dropped out after a year to pursue music more seriously. After I realised that everyone has their own levels of fulfilment that they need from certain things and for me, career wise felt I was only going to get that from writing songs and playing it.
What’s the significance behind selecting the number 23?
I was born on the 23rd, I grew up in Chicago and saw Michael Jordan as a huge figure in basketball and was obsessed with him, and he wore number 23. Plus, I was 23 when I started writing these songs. I knew that I wanted to go by my real first name and I just thought I’d spice it up by adding number 23 at the end.
Talking about the single IDK You Yet, what inspired the song?
So I wrote it during quarantine. Just the feeling of being isolated in my house and that headspace reminded me of my headspace a few years ago when things weren’t going so well for me and I felt super isolated. So I wrote it about that time a few years ago when everything was kinda falling apart and it really felt like something was missing but I don’t know who or what it was yet.
Do you have any advice for anyone interested to pursue music?
First of all, go for it, it’s really fun. If you love what you do it’ll never feel like work. I get asked by people a lot, people who want to be a singer asking, “What do I need to know?” and I think my biggest piece of advice and it sounds crazy, but don’t be afraid to be bad at it. You’re not going to be the best version of yourself right away. I’m still searching within myself and learning new things about what I like and what I don’t like everyday. But I think what sets me apart and what sets people who have some form of success is that they’re not afraid to fail and they’re not afraid to be bad at something.
I mean I’ve written a million bad songs. You’ll never hear them. But I’ve written so many bad songs and at the time I was super excited about them. I was loving the journey of making songs and getting better. I can look back now and say it was terrible, “Why did I ever make that?” I’ve made videos I don’t like and made a bunch of stuff that I now hate. But I would never be making the stuff that I love without going through that.
Read the full interview in our August issue here.
