Lizzy McAlpine

Elizabeth Catherine McAlpine was born on September 21, 1999, in Narberth, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, to father Mark McAlpine and mother Robin Lacey. She grew up alongside her sibling Emory and began writing music as early as sixth grade. At Lower Merion High School, she participated in a co-ed a cappella group and performed in theater productions. She later enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston to study songwriting, departing before completing her junior year to pursue a full-time music career.

McAlpine first built an audience by sharing original songs and covers on SoundCloud and YouTube. In 2018, she released her debut EP, Indigo, which she subsequently removed from most streaming platforms, leaving it available primarily on SoundCloud. While studying abroad in Spain in the fall of 2019, she wrote the material that would become her debut studio album, Give Me a Minute, released in August 2020. The Dallas Observer named it among the best albums of 2020. In April 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, she launched the Instagram concert series BerkleeAtHome. The following year, she released the eight-song When the World Stopped Moving: The Live EP in April 2021, and made her late-night television debut on November 22, 2021, performing "Erase Me" on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Her second studio album, Five Seconds Flat, was released on April 8, 2022, and marked her first appearances on both the Billboard 200 and the Billboard Hot 100. The album debuted at number five on the Billboard Heatseekers chart, peaked at number nine on Alternative New Artist Albums, and reached number 19 on Top New Artist Albums. The single "Ceilings" went viral on TikTok, peaked at number 54 on the Hot 100, and accumulated over 230 million streams. In November 2022, McAlpine performed a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR Music with the band Tiny Habits serving as backing vocalists, and NPR listeners ranked the performance among the top ten Tiny Desk Concerts of that year. She launched her debut headline tour in 2022, with the touring run extending into 2023 across 27 shows in multiple countries; she cancelled the UK and European dates citing mental health and burnout.

During 2023, McAlpine collaborated with singer-songwriter Noah Kahan on a duet version of his song "Call Your Mom" and with Irish singer-songwriter Niall Horan on a duet version of "You Could Start a Cult." She signed with RCA Records in 2023 and announced her third studio album, Older, alongside its lead single of the same name on February 13, 2024. The album was released on April 5, 2024, and she supported it with the Older Tour, which ran from April 21, 2024, in San Diego, California, through October 31, 2024, in Dublin, Ireland.

McAlpine's father, Mark McAlpine, died on March 13, 2020, and she has since dedicated the thirteenth track of each album to his memory. On Give Me a Minute, she wrote "Headstones and Land Mines" about him; on Five Seconds Flat, she dedicated "Chemtrails" to him; and on Older, she wrote "March" for him. The three songs reference him as the Earth, the Air, and the Water, respectively.

In 2025, McAlpine made her Broadway debut, portraying Nellie Collins in the original Broadway cast of Floyd Collins at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, opposite Jeremy Jordan, with the run extending from March through June 2025. Later that year, in November 2025, she starred as Susan Hunsecker in a concert production of Sweet Smell of Success opposite Raul Esparza at Lincoln Center, produced by MasterVoices. McAlpine is also set to make her television acting debut in the third season of School Spirits, with her songs "doomsday" and "The Elevator" having appeared in earlier seasons of the series, and she is additionally attached to her first film, Only What We Carry.