Alex Chaiet has always been obsessed with making music. Whether it was playing fake guitars and pianos or pretending to do America’s Got Talent with her dad, music spoke to her in an esoteric language. “My mom said I always acted like a diva and like I wanted to be a star,” she tells Clique. “I’d always be super dressed up and when my parents would film me or take a picture I would stick my hand up and say ‘no paparazzi!'”
Alex began writing songs in the fourth grade when she got her first *real* guitar. “The only way you’re going to be different is if you write music,” her music teacher, Ms. Lonnie Martinez, told her at the time. From that moment, Alex set out on an epic quest of crafting her own songs. The first, called “Trash”, described the difficulty she had making friends. “Elementary school was not the fondest of times,” she remembers.
Since then, Alex has continued to write songs every day. “I go over to my piano, or my guitar…and whatever I’m thinking, I find a way to say it in a good way,” she says.
Lately, Alex has been thinking — and singing — a lot about Pacific Palisades. Like thousands of others, she and her family were forced to relocate from the home she grew up in after the wildfire in January, 2025. Fortunately, she found comfort in music. The result was one of her most personal songs yet, called simply, “Palisades.” The song was written just days after the fire. “It kind of poured out of me,” she says.
On her Bandcamp page, Alex reveals more. “This song isn’t necessarily about losing material items but more so about the community and memories that we lost,” she writes. “This is a piece of work that I am extremely proud of and I hope that anyone who listens to it feels a nostalgia about our home.”
Alex’s truest sentiments were woven into the lyrics of the chorus like threads on a loom: “I’ve got my body, but can’t get my mind out of the Palisades,” she sings. Coincidentally, Alex shares co-writing credit on the song with Martinez — the very teacher who inspired her musical journey almost seven years ago. “Making it,” she says, “was a very full-circle moment.”
| Follow Alex on Instagram: @only_alex9 |
Photos by: @katiedalyphotography
