“People were calling me ‘Billie Eilish’ from eBay”: How Alma’s neon hair and pop tunes are stirring up the internet

The first thing you will notice about Alma is her hair. When the Finnish pop star first dyed her hair neon green nearly a decade ago, it was a “very, very big deal for people.” “They were calling me ‘Smurf’ and ‘Shrek’ and everything,” she says. But Alma was instantly obsessed – she’s never once returned to her natural dirty blonde. Even back then, her mission statement was clear: “I wanted to be a rebel and make pop music.”

It is early morning in Los Angeles when I open my laptop to speak to Alma over Zoom. In Helsinki, where she sits, it is late and darkness sweeps across her apartment windows. We are worlds apart, yet when the conversation shifts to music, I am struck with an immediate sense of closeness. “When I was having hard times, I started to listen to music, but I don't come from a musical family at all,” she says.

Born Alma-Sofia Miettinen, Alma grew up in Kuopio, the eighth most populated city in Finland. She describes living in a poor neighbourhood, with monotonous buildings populated by teeny tiny apartments. “My mom, however, got us this beautiful place with a big forest in our backyard,” she says. “We happened to live in the same kind of house as everyone else, but the backyard was a big, big forest. I remember my sister and I just playing and really hanging out there. We spent most of our time hiding in the woods. It was nice.”

According to her mother, Alma would spend “like, eight hours in a row” watching music elated content on YouTube. Still, actually making music herself felt just out of reach. “When I was growing up, music felt like quite a privileged thing. I felt like if you played an instrument, you came from a rich family, or your parents really cared about you,” she says. “My mom and dad, they didn't even realise that music could be an important thing in someone's life.”

Taking matters into her own hands, Alma dropped out of high school at 16 and entered Finland’s version of Idol, from which she was discovered by a German producer and signed as a songwriter and artist. Within a span of four months, she had done the seemingly impossible and become a professional musician. “Music was never something you can get a career out of, and it's still pretty crazy that I have a career out of music. It is one in a million,” says Alma, now 26. “I know that. And I'm very happy.”

Not only is this Alma’s one out of a million shot, it’s also Finland’s. Given her road to success, Alma’s story is rooted in her home country – a place not necessarily known for its contribution to pop. How would she describe Finland’s relationship to music? “I would say there is definitely a culture of playing sad music,” she says. “People listen to music to cry.” The melancholic northern nation has shaped how she builds relationships and copes with success. She proudly declares her- self a “Finnish friend.” “Finnish friends are like, if you open up, you’re friends forever. It doesn't matter where you go or what you do and who you become,” she says. “We're still friends.”

Despite her Finnish pride, Alma made the majority of her freshly completed second album in Sweden. There, she worked with some of Scandinavia’s most promising up-and-coming songwriters, most notably Elvira Anderfjärd and Tove Burman, both working under the wing of producer Max Martin. Throughout our chat, Alma gushes about her love for Anderfjärd and Burman, a sweet reminder of how music fosters friendships, especially during hard times.

"Alma is truly her own force to be around. She is a gentle whirlwind,” Burman tells me later. She adds that Alma is the embodiment of the Finnish term sisu, which loosely translates to ‘a stoic determination’.

“It's crazy, because I feel like at some point my friends were super... Not scared, but they were thinking about me a lot,” says Alma. “There was a time that I was struggling a lot and they were so, so sad. There were a lot of texts like, ‘How are you today? Do you want to hang out?’ And I could feel like, ‘Oh, they're scared for me. They’re worried.” Covid had hit, Alma’s tour and related promotion had been cancelled, and she was in a “very bad place.” “I remember when I first went down to Sweden, I was telling my managers that ‘I’m not ready. I’m not ready to make music again.’”

But throughout the album-making process, something changed. “The songs have brightness and beauty, and they're not that dark. I feel like that was the happiest thing for my friends because when they heard that, they were like, ‘We're f***ing happy for you. You're a different person.’” She adds that making the album “with that gang” is what “really, really saved” her. “I have a positive way of seeing life, even though there is this very, very, very dark Finnish side of me,” she says.

Alma’s music is so personal, she’ll occasionally play it to her therapist in lieu of actually speaking. “I feel like when I go there and if I don't have anything to say, I always have this song that I wrote,” she says. “Now that I look back to the album, I’m just feeling much better. Like, I survived.” To Alma, survival is both personal and global. Not only did she survive the pandemic, but also a “very dark time” in her life. “I thought when I was a teenager that those were the hardest times of my life. But life surprised me that I can get even darker," she says, laughing from this vantage point. “I’m so glad that music exists because it really saves lives.” These days, Alma is thriving, regularly visiting London and Stockholm to write music and bringing her girlfriend, poet and activist Natalia, with her on these adventures.

Despite the darkness from which it originates, Alma’s sound is straight up pop. In the past, this genre has been frowned upon by the music elite as too commercial or uncomplicated. This, however, is precisely what Alma adores about it. “Pop music is not crossing anybody out. It's literally people together, which I love,” she says. “It doesn't matter if you come from any kind of family or if you're intelligent or if you have a musical background – whatever. Pop music, it's for everyone.” As a teen, Alma despised music’s “rules” and the way in which only a certain number of indie bands were considered “cool.” In fact, she hated the latter so much that she refused to include guitars in her music for several years.

Lately, however, pop music is in a constant state of flux, with viral phenomenons on TikTok changing the landscape overnight. The way in which music reaches the masses has become democratised, with content creators selecting which songs go viral, first on TikTok and then on Spotify. It is a difficult world to keep up with, one in which the line between artist and influencer grows blurrier each day.

“I never signed up to be a model, or to be an influencer, or create anything other than music. They can judge my albums,” Alma says, matter-of-factly. Her TikTok bio reads simply: “My label made me do it.” Still, she’s open to new experiences, hopping onto new platforms and into unexpected spaces with a refreshing naiveté. “I just go to different situations and I always just say yes,” she says. “Even though sometimes I don't have the answers or I feel like I don't even know what the f*** I'm doing.”

It’s worth noting that on Instagram, where she goes by the handle @cyberalma, Alma boasts 120,000 followers. There, you’ll find everything from Fifa-sponsored content to dispatches from the studio to sweet selfies with her girlfriend.

Across her platforms, there’s one thing about Alma that instantly resonated: her hair. Her neon coif set a worldwide trend, inspiring none other than Billie Eilish to take the electric plunge as well. But Alma was not bitter that the biggest star of her generation was inspired by her look. “I was just honoured,” she says. “You can have my clothing, you can take anything from me. You’re Billie f***ing Eilish.”

However, success in the 21st century, especially on social media, often comes with trolls. Despite the fact that it was Alma who inspired Eilish to go green, some of Eilish’s fans were vocally displeased or even cruel about the aesthetic similarities between the two artists. “Her fans were pretty harsh. At some point, I had this campaign where my face was in a lot of places and on Instagram,” says Alma. “People were calling me ‘Billie Eilish from eBay’ and stuff like that.” She pauses and adds, graciously: “But, when you're so successful, your fans are, like, hardcore protecting you.”

Now Alma is gearing up to get offline and meet her own fans face to face with an upcoming tour. It’s a full-circle moment, given that in-person promotion for her debut album Have U Seen Her? was stopped in its tracks back in March of 2020. But first, she plans to recharge in her hometown wilderness – a peaceful sanctuary where she can rest with her other Finnish friends. “When I come home after a tour I always just call my best friends and we go and hang out in the forest,” she says. “It’s the best therapy.”