Allie X on Exploring New Territory and Enduring Illness to Create Girl with No Face Album (Exclusive)

The road to Allie X’s third album Girl with No Face was not without its challenges.

Since the Canada-born singer-songwriter released her last album Cape God in early 2020, she’s weathered a global pandemic and a relapse of an autoimmune illness she’s dealt with for more than 20 years. The extended period of forced downtime, however, led her to take on the challenging task of self-producing an album for the first time — Girl with No Face, a raw and thrilling body of alt-pop music that lets fans into Allie’s head.

“I've been really conceptual in the past,” the musician, 38, whose full name is Alexandra Hughes, tells PEOPLE. “This time, it's like the Magic School Bus went down my throat, and you were in my guts.”

In much of her past music and live performances, Allie largely utilized alter egos and abstract artistic lenses, but she says Girl with No Face “is the most me thing that I’ve done.” She began working on the album while at her parents’ house in Toronto shortly after the onset of COVID, making beats herself as she’d done in the past for songs like the 2014 fan-favorite “Bitch.”

“I was enjoying the process so much that I was like, ‘OK, girl, I think this is your time,’” recalls Allie. “I've always thought about producing an entire record myself, but all of a sudden I had time and space.”

Helming an entire record’s production was a long time coming for the Los Angeles-based artist, whose horizons have continuously expanded since her childhood in Toronto. The only member of her immediate family with dreams of becoming a performer, she spent time playing classical piano and acting in musical theater productions while growing up. But ultimately such hobbies were “unsatisfying.”

One of Allie’s first onstage professional gigs was singing rock hits like Heart’s “Barracuda” and Pat Benatar’s “Heartbreaker” in a cover band. “I used to crowd surf. It was really fun, really sweaty, good times — and a way for me to pay my rent that was so pleasurable,” she says. “I don't have a memory where I didn't want to be a singer.”

After scoring a publishing deal as a songwriter in 2013, she moved to L.A. at age 28 and adopted the Allie X persona for her own music. Two years later, she co-wrote multiple songs on Troye Sivan’s debut album Blue Neighborhood and earned critical acclaim with her debut releases. She’s since headlined her own tours, opened for Sivan and Charli XCX, collaborated with Mitski and written for BTS.

Due to the COVID pandemic, she wasn’t able to hold concerts in support of Cape God upon its release and launched right into making Girl with No Face. For a while, she felt free to create on her own timeline. But after taking a break and returning to the album in 2021, the pressure to release began setting in. So, she started setting deadlines and working “12-hour days nonstop” to make them.

By the time she was ready to finally kick off an official tour for Cape God in May 2022, she was faced with the return of an autoimmune disease she was diagnosed with as a teenager. Not only did she have to cancel the performances — she felt compelled to tell her fans why, having never spoken publicly about the illness.

“I hid it for most of my career because I felt like I was already a liability being an older person doing pop, and I didn't want to give anyone a reason on the industry side to drop me as a client or whatever,” Allie explains. “Having a body that fails temporarily for periods of time and being an artist don’t really work well together.”

Her listeners were sympathetic and supportive, which validated her decision to get vulnerable about the illness, though she still prefers to keep its specific details to herself. “I never wanted it to be a part of my story,” she says. “But at this point in my life, I’m just coming to terms with [the fact that] it's better just to be honest about these things because then it takes the pressure off me having to hide.”

Following the tour cancellation, Allie spent months in recovery, rarely left the house and paused work on Girl with No Face. One day in August 2022, she ventured to a healthy supermarket Erewhon to buy groceries with her dog Koji in tow and briefly left the pet in her car’s backseat.

During that time, fellow singer Simon Curtis spotted Koji in the vehicle and shared a series of social media posts claiming the conditions were unsafe, as it was a superbly hot L.A. day. Upon learning the dog’s owner was Allie, he shared that information online as well, prompting a wave of hate that left her feeling “shaken” amid the return of her illness.

“I honestly just think because I've never been involved in any drama, it was very enticing for the small community that knows me to hear that I had done something horrendous,” she reflects, assuring that Koji was totally fine and “oblivious to any sort of problem.”

Allie recently ran into Curtis, who apologized as they chatted through the ordeal and explained he was going through other hardships at the time of the incident. “All is forgiven,” she says. “I take responsibility for what I did, which was largely a misunderstanding.”

The difficult period coincided with her resuming the creation of Girl with No Face. Having nixed her initial deadlines, pressure was lifted off her artistic process, and she quickly wrote several of its tracks. As the project fully came together, she realized its overall theme.

“Girl with No Face is a really good title because it envelops this idea that I put myself into isolation, looked really hard at myself, and then these layers kept being revealed,” says Allie. “At a certain point, this thing emerged from me — almost like this presence, this ghost — and that's who I think of as the ‘girl with no face.’ She allowed me to unleash stuff that was stuck there for a long time.”

Today, Allie’s in a positive space, proud of her album and ready to bring it to life. Symptoms of her illness come and go, but she recently accomplished performing two sets in one night, which provides high hopes for her newly announced North American tour. “The thing is, I just never know how my body’s going to behave, so I am scared to let people down,” she admits.

As an independent artist, it’s not easy to curate a touring schedule that’s kind to one’s physical and mental health and still profitable. Simple, unforeseen roadblocks can cause financial deficits, especially as inflation has been on the rise. 

“It's not like I'm going to take this big health risk and come back with all this profit,” Allie candidly says. “It's like, I'm going to take a health risk and put my money on the line, and I may come back with tens of thousands of dollars lost.”

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Of course, for the performer, sharing her art in a live setting and connecting with fans is worth the risk. As displayed throughout her career so far, Allie is dedicated to her craft and ready to endure less-than-ideal conditions in the process of fully executing her vision. Luckily, it’s paying off, as listeners and critics alike are embracing the excellence of Girl with No Face.

“I really have this fundamental belief that if it hurts, it's working,” says Allie. “If it doesn't hurt, then something's wrong. But I don't want to believe that. I don't think other people should believe that. I'm just saying that’s a f---ed up thought that never goes away.”