Students will go to great lengths to get into their dream school, but senior Alex Ille’s quest led her to a recording studio.
Looking to apply to New York University, Ille recorded her new song “Crave,” released on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube, to flesh out her application profile to the university’s prestigious music program.
“I booked a producer for one specific day,” she said. “It was initially to get some stuff down for my NYU creative profile. We recorded three tracks, and I had Jeffery [Wieneke] come in and help me with one of them.”
With the help of the producer she had hired, alongside fellow senior and musician Jeffery Wieneke, she recorded and produced three tracks. “Crave,” however, is the only one she decided to publish.
“What I want to do in my future is release and produce music,” Ille said. “So I wanted to make sure I have something on platforms, just to show that I do this because I feel like a lot of people weren’t really aware that I did. Also, I just felt a specific connection to it, in the sense that I wanted it to be specific enough to relate to my life, but also vague enough to let other people relate to it.”
Ille stated that the song was her trying to connect with people over a bad tie in her life, saying, “Once I released it, I realized a lot of people were coming to me and telling me, like, ‘oh my gosh, I relate to that so much, this makes me feel heard,’ and I was like, that’s perfect. That’s exactly why I want to write music.”
Despite being her first published song, Ille has been writing music since she was young.
“I was put into music and acting lessons at like age six,” Ille said. “I don’t know, I think my mom just thought I had some knack for it as a toddler. And ever since then, it’s honestly just been a passion for me, because it’s what I care about the most, and it’s what I love to do. If I’m on the street and broke at 25, I’d still rather be doing that, making music, than working a nine-to-five in some field I don’t care about.”
