We recently had a chat with Cape Town musician Alanna Joy and these were some of the things we discussed
Alanna Joy…For Five Marks
When asked to tell the listeners who she is…for five marks, Alanna shed some light on the fact that she’s the vocalist of Alt/Rock Cape Town band Lost//Youth and that she was born in Ireland to a South African dad and half Irish half Swiss mother, but has been in South Africa since she was three. Music is her whole life, but she currently does marketing by day.
Streams And Social Media Numbers
Alanna’s band Lost//Youth is sitting well over 12k streams on Spotify and over 1k followers on Instagram at the time of writing, so we had to find out what the secret to getting good numbers is, according to her.
‘I think just being really aware of the fact that music is not only an art but also a business. We try to keep some sort of consistency with social media and we’re also very pedantic with what we put out. We want everything to be as good as we can get it, like the first music video we put out, we edited it ourselves, we like to be the DIY kings and queens. It’s a difficult thing to kind of say this is why it’s doing well, in our minds it could be so much better, but I think we’re just trying to keep up with technology.’
Milkshakes & Guitars
Lost//Youth formed during the COVID-19 pandemic and when we enquired as to how the band came together, Alanna shared a very interesting story about how they got their guitarist.
‘I think what actually got him into the band is, we played a random fucking cover show at RocoMamas and we gave him a milkshake and after that he was in the band and he loves milkshakes.’
Nasiphi responds, ‘So if you want to get your guitarist to do anything, just get him a milkshake and it's sorted?’
To which Alanna playfully replies, ‘Literally, milkshakes and doughnuts. We recently found these new biscuits, they're called Rainbow Biscuits, and he is obsessed.
Promoters, Where Art Thou?
Near the end of the interview, Alanna brings up having to turn various spaces into makeshift music venues and spotted a bittersweet post-COVID trend.
‘It's kind of a trend after COVID where bands are creating the lineups and the spaces. Beforehand there seemed to be a scene of promoters. Now it feels a lot more like the bands themselves are making the gigs, which is sad because our music industry is unstructured and informal, which always ends up screwing over the musicians but at the same time, it's really beautiful that we're still doing shit, you know? We're still making stuff happen.’
So, basically…
Our chat with Alanna Joy highlighted her multifaceted identity as a vocalist that balances a day job in marketing with a passion for music. She attributes her band's success to a blend of consistency, meticulousness, and a DIY ethos and commends the post-COVID role local bands have played in shaping gigs.
If you enjoyed this article and would like to learn more about the queen of the misfits, consider listening to the full episode here
Oi, Before You Go!
Lost//Youth have officially dropped their long awaited single ‘Stray’, a song those that listened to the episode got to hear two days before everyone else. Support Alanna and the boys by streaming their latest single a million times on repeat, here
