Northern Dial Artist Profile

Alyssa Reid

Ontario, Canada

Edmonton-born and Ontario-raised singer-songwriter Alyssa Reid moved from teenage talent-show exposure into one of the more distinctive Canadian pop breakthroughs of the early 2010s. After appearing on The Next Star, she signed with Wax Records and released "Alone Again," a reworking of Heart's 1987 hit "Alone" featuring Canadian rapper P. Reign. The single became a major Canadian radio record, reached the Top 20 of the Canadian Hot 100 and later crossed into the United Kingdom, where it reached No. 2. Its success drove Reid's 2011 debut album The Game and earned her a 2012 JUNO nomination for New Artist of the Year.

Rather than disappearing after the scale of that first hit, Reid continued developing as both an artist and songwriter. Time Bomb arrived in 2014 with a more personal singer-songwriter emphasis, while later releases moved between polished pop, piano balladry and darker electronic production. She also spent a period releasing music under the name ASHS, using the alias to explore a moodier pop vocabulary away from the expectations attached to "Alone Again." Across those shifts, Reid maintained a strong connection to songwriting as the through-line of her career.

That writing work has increasingly become part of her wider significance. Reid has written for other Canadian and international pop artists, including Virginia to Vegas, bülow and Alessia Cara, extending her impact beyond her own recordings. A decade after "Alone Again," Billboard Canada noted that the song had sold more than a million copies worldwide and accumulated tens of millions of streams. Reid's career captures a particular early-2010s Canadian pop moment when domestic radio, MuchMusic visibility and international licensing could turn a homegrown single into a cross-border hit while also opening a longer career behind the scenes.