KHS Foundation Portfolio 2016 Myles Head: March 2017

Looking Back At “Yesterday”

Just a small town boy; Alex Stark grew up thinking he was going to live a regular life, but little did he know he was going to be given the opportunity of a lifetime. Visually Stark looks like your average 17 year old boy, in his scuffed jeans, black jacket and plain white T-shirt, but after talking to the young prodigy he couldn’t be any more than amazing. Coming from nothing, this phoenix has strived for nothing but greatness and his debut single “Yesterday” has given him just that, staying at the top of the charts for 9 weeks in a row. Now, he is releasing his first album of the same name, featuring his hit song. The album promises to focus purely on his journey from nothing to stardom, going through all the twists and turns his life has gone through up to this point.

So Alex, in this album you’ve said you would focus on telling the story of going from nothing to fame and fortune. What does that actually entail?

Well initially I grew up in Bristol, where I lived an average life, I had always been inspired by stories where there was a person who was suddenly pulled from nothing and found themselves fated to find greatness; because at heart I am a dreamer, I love to dream, I love to think of impossible fantasies and dream about them, about people who can achieve the impossible, and as a child I loved this, Hell to this day I still love to be lost in my own fantasies. However this is not a fantasy world where people are fated to do something great. This world is harsh, filled with chance and luck, no one is fated for anything, and as a kid realising this was the worst thing I could ever do. So I didn’t, I kept dreaming, living in my head, but in reality I was nothing special, living off other people’s successes and stories, because of this I was subjected to bullying.

In the song “Yesterday” you mention people hurting you; I’m guessing you are referring to the bullies?

Yeah, Bullying has been with me for as long as I remember, because I used to dream a lot I often kept to myself, separating myself from others and eventually becoming an out-cast as the weird kid and because of this I became an easy target for bullying. This was when I started to become depressed, realising that all my fantasies were just in my head, that I had become a sad kid with no friends and no social status. I started to become desperate, trying to make friends with anyone who would accept me; I say “accept” very loosely as many people saw this as an opportunity to manipulate me into doing things for them, and eventually after them getting bored of me, they would keep me around as a scapegoat, pushing all their problems onto me. This obviously didn’t help with the depression which, by that point, had started to become a serious problem, and soon after I had attempted the first time to end my own life, I ALWAYS hate telling people this as it make them pity me, but I feel I don’t need pity because every experience only made me stronger, and into the person I am today.

But what about the people who helped you? You also mention the people who helped you get to where you are.

Now obviously I had friends that were true to me and most of them are still my friends to this day, but things didn’t change for quite a while. It was also around that time that I had started to sing and perform. This then led me to becoming friends with a few local singers and producers. They taught me a lot about the music industry and music itself and they gave me advice that will probably stay with me till the day I die. Then that’s when things started to get better for me, I experimented around with my own music and eventually came up with the track “Yesterday” which I posted to YouTube and it went viral, blew up completely, what was it? Around 6 million streams within the first 3 weeks? I was amazed. It felt like one of the stories. From there I got my first record contract signed and started working on more music, eventually ending up here.

So apart from “Yesterday” what other tracks will there be on the album?

I created about 15 tracks for the album but unfortunately I had to cut a few out. That was just down to some issues with the sound and the overall vibe they gave off. I didn’t feel they were appropriate for what I was going for with the album. But my personal favourites are “Friend” and “Patience”. “Patience” is all about how, as bad as things may look, things will eventually get better. It was actually inspired off a quote my mum read to me a few years ago “When it rains look for rainbows, and when its dark look for stars”.

So the album “Yesterday”, when will it be released?

The album I believe should be released sometime in April, however I will be releasing 1 or 2 tracks from the CD before it comes out.

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This logo is based off of a piece of equipment called a "launch pad" (Launch pads are used by DJ's to play sound files). On the buttons of the launch pad there are the words "SYNTH". Synth is the name of the magazine.

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