8 Things About Alec Benjamin You Should Know! | Billboard

Hey, this is Billboard, and you should know me, Alec Benjamin. I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, but I also lived in Long Island, New York for a few years. I did like kindergarten and first grade in Long Island, and then I moved back to Arizona. But I live in California now, but I'm still growing up, so I feel like those are like the three places that I've grown up. My first job, I was a karate instructor at a karate studio in Phoenix. Yeah, I actually was a black belt in karate, but then I stopped because one time, this girl I liked, she walked by the karate studio, and she saw me doing karate, and she didn't think it was cool, and then that word got back to me, and then I was like, man, maybe I shouldn't do it anymore, and then I stopped. But I learned a lot of very valuable skills, so it's okay. The first concert I ever went to was, I saw NSYNC at Madison Square Garden with, actually, Nassau Coliseum, with my mom, my dad, and my sister. But I actually think before that, my mom took me when I was really little to see Billy Joel, but I slept through the whole thing, so it doesn't really count. My biggest accomplishment, I think probably making my grandma smile is really cool. When she was 90, before she passed away, she saw me perform at this venue called Room 5 in LA, and she walked up a full flight of stairs to see me play. And just seeing that smile on her face was really cool, because it's two generations of people, my mom and my grandma, that were proud of me, and that's a big accomplishment. Especially at the time, I didn't know if I was gonna be able to make music into a career, so for me, that was enough. I used to perform in parking lots because I moved down to California, and I went to college for a year, and then I got signed to a record label. I was dropped out of school, and I was like, yo, this is it, I'm gonna be famous, peace out. And then I got dropped from that label a year later, and I had to kind of figure out how to get started again. But I didn't really own the rights to any of the music that I had produced while I was signed to the label, so the only thing I could do was to perform live on the streets for people. So someone like Shawn Mendes or Troye Sivan would come to town, and they have a line outside, and I would go in the line and sing my songs and hand out business cards. If I had to describe my music in one word, it would be stories. My music-making process is, I usually like to start with a concept, because the most important thing for me in songs is to make sure that I have a message. If I could just start from there, it kind of gives me a good roadmap of where I need to go. I at least know where I wanna, why I wanna end up, and that makes it easier. Because then it's like a puzzle. If you play Sudoku, and you're starting out with certain numbers, and you're like, okay, well, there's already two numbers here, we just have to figure out the pattern. If you know the concept, then it's kind of the same thing. Let Me Down Slowly was inspired by my first relationship. It's just about feeling like you're at somebody else's mercy where you really still care about somebody, but they kind of hold all the cards, and it was kind of like a helpless feeling. So it's about asking for somebody to be gracious if they're gonna leave. ♪ Could you find a way to let me down slowly ♪ ♪ A little sympathy ♪