“I’m not great at journaling,” Alina Adams—better known by her stage name, ALINA—admits. “So I write songs instead.”
The 19–year–old singer–songwriter grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, surrounded by instruments, choreography, and noise. “When I was born, it was kind of like, are you gonna sing or are we gonna have to go for adoption?” she laughs. In her family, music wasn’t optional—it was like oxygen. Someone was always practicing or rehearsing, especially her sister.
“She was always this big star,” Adams says. “I thought she was going to be this famous movie star, singer, pop–star girl, so I always felt that it wasn’t my path.” Instead, she tried to carve out her own journey, taking up gymnastics and even applying to college for graphic design. Despite this, her love of songwriting never really faded.
“It was really at the end of my junior year that I decided I wanted to release a few songs, because why not?” Adams reflects. “I released this little EP just for shits and giggles; to be out in the world for someone to hear.” That 2023 EP, Defenseless, hit 100 streams not long after its release, and suddenly, music felt possible in a new way. She quit gymnastics and—in her senior year of high school—decided to take the leap into music full–force, keeping graphic design as her backup plan. She never ended up needing it.
In 2023, she had her first viral TikTok video. Since then, she's continued posting storytimes, covers, and her own original music. “I always thought I had to fit this mold of doing something super hooky and catchy with a repeating chorus,” Adams says, “but once I started to get good responses on the music that I was posting on Tiktok, it started opening me up to the idea of I can just kind of do whatever and then if people like it, they like it. If they don’t, they don’t.”
Vulnerability isn’t an afterthought for Adams—it’s the point of her music. She cites artists like Gracie Abrams, Phoebe Bridgers, Lizzy McAlpine, Billie Eilish, and Noah Kahan as sources of inspiration; her favorite lyricists are those who make listeners feel seen. When asked about her favorite artists, she mentioned, “In my experience with music—especially just growing up and being so aware of songwriting—I've always listened to music for the lyricism and for the relatability of it and for feeling seen by other people in music … people who just get it.”
For her, every song is a kind of diary entry—just not the kind she’d ever keep to herself. “I’ve never been the best with journalling,” she says, “so whenever I'm feeling a big emotion, the first thing I do is go pick up my guitar and kind of just see if it will help me understand when I'm feeling better. I know that my vulnerability in my music is what makes it mine.”
These days, Adams’ songwriting rituals are as familiar as her lyrics are personal. Now living in her first apartment, she’s traded the chaos of her family’s house for coffee mugs, open notebooks, and a guitar that's always within arm’s reach. Before writing, she’ll sometimes watch an Emma Chamberlain vlog or listen to Britney Broski’s podcast on repeat.
But when it comes to music, her influences stretch from internet icons to indie mainstays. “Phoebe Bridgers took me a while to get into,” Adams admits. “But I took the time to listen to her discography and I was like, ‘Oh, I understand how to write songs now.’” She’s also been listening to bands like mercury and Momma, whose rockier sounds have started to seep into her own new material.
For Adams, the greatest reward is knowing that her most vulnerable moments might help someone else feel seen. Her song, “i know, i know, i know” is a perfect example of her unfiltered honesty. “Every line in that song … I just kind of blacked out writing it,” she says. “I was so amped up on energy that I word–vomited and then that happened.” Her lyrics—vulnerable, unpolished, and almost entirely unrepeated—are words she once thought no one would care about. The opposite proved true: The rawness of her music resonated with audiences online and in–person. “When that one song started to do well on TikTok, I realized I can do whatever feels right, and that’s what I need to go for.”
Both “i know, i know, i know” and her new single “mercilessly” are confessional at their core; yet while the former channels raw emotion, the latter combines inspiration from both a school project and personal emotion. Written in response to a class prompt to incorporate “embers” into a song, Adams scratched down, “Burn me to embers, tear me to shreds. Tell me I’m yours. Take me to bed,” and built the song from there. “It’s about letting people treat you like shit because you like them too much, which is horrifying, but it happens to the best of us,” she admits.
When asked what kind of movie her music would be, Adams didn’t hesitate. She looked back at her wall of posters: “The two posters behind me are my two favorite movies, 10 Things I Hate About You and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which are two I consistently go back to and can find relatability in. So, for my music, it would probably be some sort of coming–of–age, angsty–teen–upbringing, coming–to–terms–with–adulthood sort of thing,” she laughs, “Maybe a dram–com. Is that a thing? Dramatic comedy. Yeah, something like that.” In a way, both of these movies fit so perfectly with her music. Her songs are soundtracks for late–night overthinking sessions, existential crises, or just moments where you need someone to relate to.
Whether she's chronicling heartbreak, uncertainty, or the mess of being 19, Adams isn’t interested in pretending things are neater than they are. Her songs are confessions set to melody—personal, a little messy, and sometimes exactly what someone else needs to hear. For now, she’s content to keep writing things down—not in a diary, but in songs, for anyone willing to listen.
