Alexa Joyce is packing for New York. “There’s a million pieces of clothing on my bed,” she says, laughing, as she gets ready for another trip to the city that has already played a significant part in her introduction to the world. She is in London today, preparing for what comes next.
For a new artist, Joyce already has a clear sense of what she wants her music to do. Her debut single, I WANT YA, is built around disco, flirtation and the kind of pop that asks very little of you except that you move. It is also the first glimpse into an artist who has spent years figuring out what she wants to say, how she wants to look and, perhaps most importantly, how she wants people to feel.
“I think the world now just needs more joy and fun,” she says. “It feels like the perfect time to release this project into the world because it’s all about making people feel good and making people want to get on the dance floor.”
Joyce, who grew up in Liverpool, has been working towards this moment for some time. Before stepping forward under her own name, she worked at Fiorucci in Soho and spent time around some of the industry’s biggest names, including Mark Ronson and DJ Cassidy. She has worked across London, Los Angeles and New York, performed at Abbey Road Studios and attended the Grammys and Clive Davis’ Pre-Grammy Gala. Now, I WANT YA is her introduction.
The song began with a very specific musical idea. On the way to the studio, Joyce was listening to Amii Stewart’s Knock on Wood and Michael Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel. She was drawn to the shuffle in both records, something she feels is largely missing from contemporary pop.
“You don’t tend to hear that shuffle in modern music now,” she explains. “I feel like that’s what runs through your whole body and kind of makes you want to get on the dance floor.”
The track also captures the playful side of Joyce’s personality. Asked when she knew it was the right song to introduce herself with, she admits it is difficult to choose a favourite. “All my music feels like my kids,” she says. “It’s like asking me to pick my favourite child.”
Still, I WANT YA to make sense. “The elements of this record really set a good introduction for me from a sonic perspective,” she says. “It has those disco influences. And also, the fact that the topline was super fun and cheeky, [that] feels like that’s exactly me.”
Her description of the sound — “Donna Summer meets the Spice Girls” — is less of a throwaway reference than a blueprint. From Donna Summer, she takes the scale and physicality of disco. “When you hear Bad Girls or Hot Stuff, your foot immediately moves,” she says. She is equally fascinated by Last Dance, particularly the way the song takes its time before opening into a huge arrangement of horns, strings and dance-floor drama.
The Spice Girls represent something else: personality.
“The personality of ’90s pop was so huge,” Joyce says. “As individuals they were all completely different. But obviously, girl power united them all.”
That unapologetic sense of fun is central to how she sees pop. Joyce thinks the genre has been unfairly dismissed by people who want music to appear more serious or sophisticated than it needs to be. “There’s a huge snobbery around pop, which is so silly, because it’s the best thing ever. It’s just so fun.”
Her own musical education had little time for genre boundaries. Her parents introduced her to Chaka Khan, Earth, Wind & Fire, Donna Summer and Lionel Richie. Her dad loved Britpop, Oasis, Rod Stewart, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. Her older cousins filled in the gaps with Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Steps and, naturally, the Spice Girls.
The result is an artist who sees no reason to choose between them.
“Anything that makes anyone feel good, I just think is the coolest thing ever,” she says. “I don’t think anyone should ever dampen anyone’s joy, no matter what that is. Let people love what they love.”
That belief extends to Kylie Minogue, perhaps the clearest modern reference point for Joyce. She admires Kylie’s ability to change eras while keeping music at the centre of her identity.
“She’s always been one of those artists who is really music-centric,” Joyce says. “Music is the focal point of who she is as an artist.”
There is something else about Kylie that Joyce values: the feeling she creates. Joyce remembers seeing her perform at British Summer Time and thinking, “Nobody in this audience has got a problem.”
“She’s this tiny little woman, but she’s just got so much aura,” she says. “She’s epic. I love her.”
That sense of warmth also comes from Liverpool. Joyce describes the city as full of “wit and charm and warmth” and says she wants that same feeling to exist around her music.
“If anybody moved to Liverpool who had never been there and didn’t know anybody, somebody would make you feel at home within five minutes,” she says. “Whether that’s through listening to my music or meeting me in person, I always want to make sure that people feel like I’ve got that warmth that makes people feel at home.”
It is fitting, then, that I WANT YA made its live debut at the Stonewall Inn in New York during Pride Week. For Joyce, the venue connected directly with the inclusivity she associates with disco and pop culture.
“Pop music would not exist without the LGBTQIA+ community,” she says. “It just simply wouldn’t exist.”
She talks about the joy of Pride, but also its continuing importance. For Joyce, the dance floor is somewhere people should be able to feel free, while recognising that the spaces that allow that freedom still matter.
Her relationship with New York is similarly tied to music. Asked what she is most looking forward to on her next trip, her answer is surprisingly simple: sitting in the passenger seat of her manager’s car, driving through the city and listening to a playlist.
“Every time I’m driving around New York, I feel like I’m in a movie,” she says. “Especially when the sun’s shining and you’ve got records like The Glow of Love by Luther Vandross out the window, or Do I Do by Stevie Wonder.”
As for what comes next, Joyce promises another side of herself. The next record is “slightly less flamboyant” and “a little bit cooler”, but the purpose remains the same.
“I kind of want the girlies to come to me when they’re checking out of Heartbreak Hotel and ready to get back on the dance floor,” she says.
Then, simply: “Have a good time.”
For Alexa Joyce, that is the point. The disco references, the fashion, the pop history and the big-name mentorship all feed into something much more straightforward. She wants to make records that people can live inside for three or four minutes.
“Music’s always been a release for me personally,” she says. “I think if I could be a part of that for someone else, or a part of a memory where somebody’s dancing in the kitchen with their parents, that would be amazing.”
And if I WANT YA is the first chapter, Joyce already knows what she wants the rest of the story to feel like.
“Fun and feel-good,” she says. “100 percent.”
