Alice Merton is the kind of artist who offers hope to countless others. After label after label failed to see any hit potential in her music, she and her manager started their own label in late 2016 and self-released her first single, a simple but rocking dance number that distills her experience of living in a succession of different countries while growing up. The song, “No Roots,” immediately set digital and analog airwaves ablaze, topping Spotify’s Global Viral 50 charts and scaling charts in Germany and France. By the time she performed the song on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in February of this year, she had already signed with New York City-based indie label Mom + Pop Records and had landed the opening slot for Vance Joy’s spring tour.
The 24-year-old artist is only the ninth lead solo woman to top Billboard’s alternative songs chart, and she has yet to release a full-length album. Mom + Pop’s release of her No Roots EP adds one song to those of her self-released EP, raising the total number of songs she has thus far made available: five.
With the most enticing bassline-slash-kick-drum groove since the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” and a head-bobbing chorus that can be sung, often involuntarily, after one listen (“I’ve got no roots / But my home was never on the ground”), how could “No Roots” have been shunned by labels hungry for a cash cow? Maybe it’s that pesky guitar. A trend-following A & R rep may dismiss guitar—even when it’s just performing rhythm and bass duties, as in “No Roots”—as something that had faded away in the passing of the garage rock revival of the ’00s. Or maybe the lean but effective production by Merton and co-writer Nicolas Rebscher spooked them. “No Roots” is free of multiple electronic filler tracks apparently deemed necessary to thicken up millennial-targeted pop anthems. The instrumentation leaves enough breathing room to allow the punchy acoustic drums to place the listener not just on the pulse, but in the pulse of the song.
Even my 22-month-old son gets it. During his first listen, he began shouting along with the chorus, albeit with his unintentionally snarky modification of the lyrics (“I got the roots! I got the roots!”).
The song’s inner strength draws from Merton finding a silver lining around her twelve moves to various cities in Germany, the United States, Canada, and England owing to her father’s numerous relocations for work as a mining consultant and her parents’ wanderlust. While the song is her answer to the question “Where is home for you?” and can silence any self-righteous stay-in-placers waiting to pigeonhole her, “No Roots” also speaks to travelers who appreciate how new surroundings can open eyes and minds to new, fresh points of view and can lead to lasting friendships. Her band reflects her itinerant background; her drummer is French and her guitarist and keyboardist are German.
Merton’s tasteful fusion of retro and modern pop on the EP can easily appeal to multiple generations. In “Jealousy,” Merton sings of the emotion’s destructiveness (“You’re covering me like a bear skin coat / Getting harder to breathe under your control”) in a commanding delivery that evokes Florence & The Machine. Combined with a feel reminiscent of Irene Cara’s 1980 hit “Fame,” the song suggests curiously sandwiched images of neon sweatbands and cryptic text messages from lovers.
Merton reveals different sides of her intensity in “Hit the Ground Running,” a track obscenely ripe for licensing to a dystopian thriller soundtrack, while the inescapable prospect of losing a romantic partner in “Lie to My Face” looms large in a timeless, Adele-esque waltz.
No Roots hits a patch of inconsistency in “Lash Out,” where Merton lays out a battle between her visceral impulses to speak her mind and her self-restraint. The edge she builds up in the stomping verse (“Rip that tape from my mouth / I won’t be quiet”) finds itself blunted by a glossy, paint-by-numbers chorus that could be mistaken for Katy Perry fulfilling a contractual recording obligation. Unsurprisingly, Serban Ghenea, who has mixed tracks for Perry as well as Bruno Mars and Taylor Swift, mixed “Lash Out.” An acoustic version of the song she played live on Radio Bremen in Germany last month, however, radiated a raw Patti Smith vibe, demonstrating that no matter the layers of sheen that may end up shellacking her work, Merton has a natural talent for delivering passionate, resonant lyrics with a voice meant for the stage.
I predict that many unsigned artists, emboldened by Merton’s backstory, will ramp up their promotion campaigns to hopefully launch what will be their own viral success stories. I also predict that Alice Merton will never be known as a mere one hit wonder.