At twelve, Alexis Lace walked down Victoria Street in London for the first time with a family member she is now estranged from. They only walked the street together because their time was limited, and to her, the place seemed made of glass. A few months ago she went back alone at around 5 am, in the dark, and the memories of those good times and of the loss that followed came rushing back. “Long Street Made of Glass,” released on September 25th, is the song that came out of that walk.
When I covered Alexis Lace last November with “Stork,” the fourth single from her album Silver, the subject was her decision to live childfree and the judgment that comes with it. That song was blunt, with a steady, barely moving rhythm and vocals aimed squarely at the double standard around parenthood. Now she turns to something just as personal in a completely different way, and the two songs sound nothing alike. Where “Stork” confronted a lifetime of pressure head-on, “Long Street Made of Glass” takes its sadness and turns it into an upbeat, catchy tune. She chose that deliberately, so this very personal song would not simply be a sad one.
That range is worth pointing out. Both tracks come from very serious, intimate territory, one about identity and autonomy and the other about estrangement and memory, yet each finds its own sound. It shows how diverse Lace is as an artist, and the choices in each song, from how the track moves to how the feeling is expressed, are the kind of human creativity and expression that AI can never replicate.
She does it all herself, too. Lace wrote, produced, recorded, mixed and mastered the song in her own room, drawing on 90s R&B, with All Saints, TLC and En Vogue named as influences. The video uses footage of Victoria Street’s glass buildings, shot on the street itself.
Lace is now working on her fifth album, due in early 2027. If these two songs are anything to go by, it will be hard to predict.