LYRE Producer Alina Smith’s New Single Makes Bold Moves In Music

American record producer Alina Smith is celebrating her birthday today with the release of a new single–as an artist. The track, “Girl That Was Perfect,” is a significant achievement for Smith, who is reestablishing herself as a musician after spending the past five years focused solely on the growth of her and her best friend Elli Moore’s internationally-acclaimed female music writing and production business, LYRE. 

While Smith loves producing and says that she never planned on working as an artist again, connecting with a creative life coach during the pandemic made her realize that she still had personal messages to share with the world. Her new song, featuring cover art by Patrick Walsh, explores themes of self-discovery, self-love and abolishing stigmas surrounding young female artists in the music industry. 

“I took a long hiatus and enjoyed working on other people’s music, but I felt like there was a bug in me wanting to express something, and finally I got to this point,” Smith says. 

Stepping back into singing, Smith explains, also meant being vulnerable enough to step outside her comfort zone producing and writing songs for others. After all, she has achieved success as one of the industry’s few female music producers. According to a February 2019 USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative report, “Inclusion in the Recording Studio?,” the ratio of male to female producers across 400 popular songs is 47 to one. Just 2.1% of women work as producers while 21.7% are artists and 12.3% are songwriters.  

LYRE, focused mainly on Top 40 pop music, has surpassed 200 million streams with songs that have also reached number one status on iTunes and Billboard. Smith and Moore specialize in developing digital, traditional and KPOP acts and YouTubers including Gabbie Hanna, Red Velvet, Niki and Gabi, Betty Who, Nikita Dragun and Fall Out Boy. The duo also works with collaborations like Gino Barletta (Daya, Katy Perry and Selena Gomez), Evan Boggart (Beyonce, Rihanna) and Dream Lab (Kygo, Selena Gomez). 

In addition, Smith has led social media stars like Kenzie into mainstream record contracts with Arista Records and collaborated with top-tier music software companies like Splice on branded music presets. She also hosts the hit podcast Crossover Creative, which explores the processes, challenges and joys of being a multi-hyphenate artist.

Despite initial resistance, Smith eventually relaxed back into songwriting and found it to be a “form of self-therapy” that empowered her to address unhealed wounds, including her teenage struggle working as a model with an eating disorder. She says that she also worked through sexist experiences early in her career, specifically when she was told that, because she is “pretty,” she should focus on singing and leave music production to men. Now as an established music producer in the digital space, Smith wants to work full circle and create safe spaces for young woman in music.  

“The theme of this new song surely is body positivity, but since I felt too old to be expressing myself in that way, it also shows that a fear of being too old is old fashioned,” Smith says. “Why can’t established female artists release music and come back? 

Smith fell into working with influencers several years ago when she and Moore accepted a friend’s invitation to join a digital influencer project. Smith found herself fascinated by a new type of creativity in music, and now she is writing a book under the working title Influencer. While she does not identify as an influencer herself, Smith does hope that her return to releasing music will encourage young females in the industry to feel comfortable in their own skin and believe that anything is possible.  

“There is so much stigma surrounding people who do more than one thing when, actually, practicing one artistic skill enhances the others. I wanted to come out into the light and release new music to inspire others,” Smith explains. “The more women who are out there being all of those things, the better.”