You know that feeling when you’re somewhere you’re absolutely not supposed to be, with someone you’re absolutely not supposed to want, and the wrongness of the whole thing is making it so much better you can barely breathe? I was in that situation for about four months last year. We had to act completely normal around people who would have lost their shit if they knew what was happening between us every chance we got. The secrecy was its own drug. Every stolen hour had this charge to it, a throb you feel at first sight, ending with your nails marking territory across his back. I’d walk back into a room full of people still warm from him and smile at everyone like I hadn’t just been completely taken apart. I knew it wasn’t going anywhere real. My body had already voted and it voted unanimously. ‘What Else is There to Do?’ is Alessiah inside that feeling, and she gets every fucking detail right.
‘What Else is There to Do’ is a dark rhythmic pop track with intimidating hot girl energy about the kind of love that burns itself onto your skin like a tattoo. She knew it was going to wreck her from the first night but she chose it anyway. It’s the kind soaked in intrigue, where you’re already wet before he even touches you. There’s a surrender here that’s almost violent, giving over total control to someone who probably shouldn’t have it, letting him inside in every way that counts, and knowing it, and not stopping. The guilt makes it fucking hotter. It makes the whole thing feel more dangerous, more addictive. And then the loss hits slow, a devastation she has to keep living inside. She was the one who actually saw him, the one who knew what the others didn’t, and she still lost. That’s the cruelest part, and he’s still going to be there next summer, close enough that she can feel him in the room, and she’s going to have to act like that doesn’t fuck her up completely.
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The opening verse is where you realize Alessiah knows what she’s doing. She knows the whole situation is a disaster and she’s staying because that’s what makes it so goddamn good. That specific energy of “I know this is going to blow up and I’m watching myself not care” is so fucking real I felt it between my thighs. “Oh what they would say if they would know? / the pure and innocent love is enough / and i don’t wanna notice / if we do wrong and blow this / i knew it was hard right from the start” – she sees everything clearly and stays anyway because the pull of him overrides every goddamn rational thought she has. I said what I said and I’d say it again sober. There’s a woman who hears that and feels immediately seen, and we are her, and we are not apologizing.
God, the chorus. I need everyone I’ve ever been obsessed with to hear this and know it’s about them. Alessiah has surrendered so far past physical it’s almost spiritual, and that kind of surrender is its own climax, honestly. “I should’ve moved on / but at dawn / It’s my soul / in your control / I should’ve kissed you / When I missed you / Now you’re gone / What else is there to do?” She held back at the second she should have gone all the way in, and now she gets to live in that wreckage. The regret of not fucking someone when you had the chance is a very particular kind of torture and she put it into three minutes of pop music that’s going to ruin your week.
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And then she goes there, the part that makes you put the song on repeat. He came to her already emotionally screwed, completely open, the kind of vulnerability that bonds you to someone at a molecular level. “Always the last standing in this love / The other girls never knew your heart / You loved me as I’ve fallen / kissed me with eyes swollen / miss next summer cause you’ll be around” That last line is what gets me every damn time. He’s not even gone. She doesn’t get the mercy of his absence. He’s going to be right there in every room and she’s going to have to perform okay-ness around someone who had her completely. Having to hold yourself together around that is its own kind of hell, and I’ve been in it, and it is exactly as bad as it sounds.
Alessiah walked into the music industry at seventeen years old like she already owned the room, and honestly? She does. This Bucharest-born singer-songwriter started begging for music lessons at age four and by ten she was already releasing her own tracks because waiting around was never her thing. She became the youngest artist signed to Universal Group Romania and spent her teenage years filming music videos across Japan, Zanzibar, Dubai, and every other place the rest of us only see on someone else’s Instagram. Now she’s dropped her debut album Obscentra and the girl who used to make breezy dance-pop has fully grown up into something darker, wetter, and way more dangerous. We’re talking toxic desire, emotional wreckage, self-discovery that sounds like a late night you’re not going to apologize for. Confidence is foreplay and with tracks like ‘Boy Toy,’ ‘Hot Like This,’ ‘Deep End’ with Tobi Ibitoye, she stormed the room and took that shit without asking. Alessiah is eighteen fucking years old and already making the kind of music that makes you do wicked shit at 2am, and we are so here for all of it.
Four months ended the way those things always end, badly and right on fucking schedule. I knew going in it had an expiration date and I chose it anyway, every single time, right up until I couldn’t anymore. I still don’t regret a damn thing. I’d do it again tomorrow if the situation presented itself because my body has always known things my brain takes months to figure out. Alessiah gets it. The song looks you dead in the eye while you’re doing something you shouldn’t and cheers you on.
