Alma had big plans for this year. Along with a world tour, album release parties and the numerous trips she was hoping to take, she also wanted time to simply celebrate with her friends after finishing her stateside tour with Tove Lo.
But as with the rest of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic almost immediately dissolved all of those plans. "I've had a lot of energy, and it's just so hard and so frustrating when you can't, like, do anything," Alma tells Billboard over the phone from Finland. "I was like, 'I'm gonna see my friends, and we're gonna go outside, and we're gonna go clubbing!' It's frustrating that I can't do that."
One thing that hasn't been delayed by the global crisis, though, is her debut album. On Have U Seen Her? (out today), Alma finally gets the pop-focused debut that she's been waiting to share with her fans for more than four years.
As Alma tells it, the album was almost delayed even longer thanks to the global pandemic, until she stepped in and made it clear to her team that she wanted to release it as planned. "It's more important for people to now get new music and get inspired than it is for me to get the record as big as I can," she says. "I don't know, I'm an optimist, I'm gonna get that same spot someday."
It makes sense why Alma would want fans to hear this collection during this moment — many of the songs on Have U Seen Her? deal with an internal struggle for self-confidence, something the 24-year-old says she tries to remind herself of constantly. "I just want to look to the mirror and be able to boost myself, because that's the only place where I can get that confidence," she says. "I have to be able to show that to myself."
Below, Alma takes Billboard track-by-track through her new album, explaining the meaning, inspiration and stories behind each song:
"Have U Seen Her?"
"'Have U Seen Her?' comes from a dream that I used to have — it was a dream where me and my sister ran away, and we kind of escaped to this fantasy world. When I was making this record, I remembered that dream again, and I was like, 'Holy s--t, this is the dream!' It was kind of cliché, but this felt like the dream I am living now. We escaped, we left our hometown, and we went to big cities. We've been doing these shows and it feels amazing, it feels like a miracle sometimes, because I don't come from a musical background, I don't come from a rich family, so it feels like a miracle that I am living my dream. I actually think the whole album is about that story; that I left my home country to go and do my own thing, and I showed everybody that I'm good enough."
“LA Money”
"When I did this song, everything started to feel right. I'm not saying I hate my old songs, but I think for this record, I wanted to be a bit more real, and I wanted to show, you know, this side that I never talk about. I think everybody sees me as super fun, but I also have the other side, too. This song is about the fact that a lot of people don't even know who I am. There are so many people who want something from me, but they don't really care about me. I think it was just from that feeling of, 'Please see me as me, not just as something for you to sell.'"
“Worst Behaviour" ft. Tove Lo
"I was very frustrated, because throughout my life, I've always had a couple different men in my life telling me what I should do. This song is for them — now I'm brave enough to stand up to them and say, 'No, you don't tell me what to do, I do what the f--k I want to do, and I'm on my worst behaviour.' I called Tove, and I was like, 'Do you like this idea?' She said, 'F--k yes, I want to be featured on this.' It was so easy, and we got to work together again. I think every young female in the pop world can understand what I am saying, because unfortunately, there's a lot of bad s--t happening. But it's getting better."
“Stay All Night”
"I think everybody assumed that I wrote this one for somebody else, but I actually wrote this one for myself. I was in a place where I felt like I wasn't allowed to do anything because I'm a baby celebrity and I have to behave. But I don't behave, I never f---ing behave, that's who I am. I'm free, I'm having fun, I stay up late, I show up late, and I kind of just wrote that song for myself. Like, 'Don't care so much all of the time. Even if you have a career, you're still young and you still have to live to be able to write something.' So, for me, it was like 'Come on, b---h, don't think too much! Just stay up all night, it doesn't matter what you have tomorrow, you're gonna get through it anyway.'"
“Bad News Baby”
"I wrote this pretty long ago, and it was my first day in L.A. when I came from Finland. I was feeling very vulnerable, feeling like I wasn't as good as these L.A. people are, not smart enough, funny enough, talented enough. I went to the studio, and told myself, 'I'm going to be the f---ing best songwriter in the world.' So this was the song for myself at that time, that I listen to sometimes when I feel like I'm not good enough. There is so much competition, there are so many good artists, and I don't wanna compete with them, I just wanna be the best!"
“Nightmare”
"This is a very specific story — it was this moment where I was in a relationship, we were young, and I was being a f---ing idiot. I was just partying, kissing other people, and being the worst partner ever. It's about that! I was a f---ing nightmare! That's a real story, and I'm still ashamed of it, but it's a reminder to myself that I was young and I was stupid and s--t happens. It's worse if you're not able to say, 'Yes, I was bad when I was younger.' Everybody does that, you don't have to lie and say you've always been amazing, because you weren't!"
“Mama”
"I love this track, it's a song for my mom that came from a time where, again, I was partying a bit too hard. I woke up one time where I felt like everybody hated me, I felt like my friends hated me, I did something stupid when I was drunk, and I was still being a nightmare. Then, I was thinking, 'If everybody in my life ditched me, would I still have my mom?' So I called her and was crying to her asking for help, saying, 'Even if I did something super bad, would you still love me?' And she of course told me she would love me forever. If you have that kind of relationship with your mom, it's pretty f---ing awesome. She is my safety net."
“King Of The Castle”
"Nobody every prepares you to be an artist, and nobody can explain to you what it means to be a celebrity. Especially here in my home country, everybody knows me, and it gets a bit overwhelming. 'King of the Castle' is about that, that I've always wanted to be an artist and get successful and do tours -- but there are those times where it's like, 'I wish I never got any of this and I could just live my life.' Clearly I don't always think that, but s--t gets real sometimes. Everybody can relate, everybody wants to live one summer like they were 17 again when s--t was so easy."
“My Girl”
"It's pretty clear when I sing on the pre-chorus, 'She put a pill on my tongue/ And she kissed me saying "Let's die young"/ And I never even asked, I just took it fast.' So yeah, it's basically about a situation where I partied hard with this girl [laughs]. It was a situation, and I can't really remember her name now! But it was a wonderful moment."
“Find Me”
"I was talking with a friend of mine a long time ago, and I told her, 'If I were to go crazy, I would run away and I would go to this specific place.' And then years later, I saw her and asked, 'Can you still remember where I would go if I went psycho and left everything?' She did, and it was crazy to me that she remembered that. So I wanted to write a song about the fact that she was the only one who knows where I am at if I just up and leave. It's our own little secret. I'd never just leave everything behind, but I am very good at just shutting my phone and not answering for a few days, I like doing that often. My managers love it."
“Loser”
"This is one of my favorite songs. I was feeling like, especially here in Finland, everyone wanted me to get so successful, like 'Alma needs to be the next big thing!' I had this moment where I was like, I just want to be young and have a fun career, I don't want any of this pressure. I'm just the loser who's making music! After I kind of took that approach toward everything in life, of not taking any of it too seriously, I released myself from something. I didn't need anybody to be like, 'We're gonna save you and make you a perfect pop princess!' Hell no, I don't need that, I already like myself."
“Final Fantasy”
"So I didn't know this was the title of a video game series until somebody told me like two months ago [laughs]. As I started to see this whole album as that escapist dream I mentioned, I wanted to end it with this song. It's called 'Final Fantasy' because it's about a breakup I went through, where I had to choose between my career and my relationship. It was a moment where I knew I was going to break up with this person, but I was ready to fake it for just one more day, because I just couldn't bring myself to do it. It felt like a fantasy, where we're good and everything is fine, even though we both know that it's time to breakup. It's the right way to end the album, because I also wanted to be as real as I can on this record — so this is me being fake one last time here before telling you everything and being as honest as possible."