Alesia Humphries knew that she wanted to write a song about the word that people often used for the place where she went to high school — “Awesometown.”
One day, the singer, who goes by the stage name Alesia XO, sat down and started writing lyrics based on this word she heard so often.
“It used to be this funny moniker that was like a marketing tool for Santa Clarita,” she said. “It’d be a way to talk about coming to Valencia. People would be making fun of the word ‘Awesometown,’ but I thought, ‘This is a perfect word to sing.’”
“Awesometown” was once used by Newhall Land and Farming to promote the community of Valencia.
In eight minutes, she had written a full song about the moniker.
Humphries, upon finishing the lyrics, sent them to her writing partner, Steve Dole, who started composing the melody.
“He said, ‘People are going to be so mad if we write about Awesometown,” she said. “But it doesn’t have to be just about our town — it’s about any town in the U.S.”
The song made its debut Sept. 3, and is intended to paint a picture of what Santa Clarita is like, as a suburb located just north of Los Angeles, Humphries said. She infused phrases such as “working that net just like a boss, hiding in between the lines, and “Mickey Mouse makes his bed here, and all the folks behind the scenes like to think it’s an island like no one else can live in.”
Humphries began singing professionally at age 15 and lived in Los Angeles as a solo artist. She said Awesometown is only the first of six songs she is releasing, one at a time, that will also infuse indie blues with rock and soul undertones.
“Hopefully in two months, we’ll be talking about the next one — ‘Big Huge Secret,’” she said.
The song is now available on Apple Music and Spotify.
