When you meet New Jersey-born musician Alexa Tabbacchino, it’s easy to assume that she’s been a fully-formed artist her entire life. However, her path to finding her musical calling was anything but linear. “When I was younger, I kind of resented music, to be honest,” she laughs. “I think I just wanted to be different.”
Though she started on the baseball field, Tabbacchino soon discovered her passion after her sister encouraged her to join the school choir. “Since I stepped foot in that class in eighth grade, I was obsessed. I loved everything to do with music,” she explains. “It took a really long time for me to figure out where I belonged, because a lot of kids had been doing voice lessons since five years old. I was so not like that.”
Tabbacchino has come a long way from that eighth-grade choir room, recently earning her Recording Arts and Production degree from the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University. Whether she’s creating dreamy indie-pop with her college group girlband., performing Handel’s Messiah in a choir, or scoring fashion shows for drag artist Gigi Goode, music threads through every part of her life. She’s currently a singer-songwriter, producer and audio engineer finding her own artistic voice as she prepares to release her original music, which showcases her wealth of musical influences.
“I usually say a blend of pop and folk are my two main influences that you can hear at a base level in my songs, but I have so many moments in my songs that are influenced from different genres like house, EDM, and R&B,” she says. “I’ve been exposed to so many different genres in my life that you probably will hear some lyrics that are a little bit musical theater, or some lead lines that are a little country. I don’t want to say it’s all over the place, but I definitely draw some inspiration from plenty of different foundations.”
Tabbacchino has been writing songs for years, and they are continuously evolving, especially one of the first songs she wrote, “Don’t Know When.” “I sat on my bed with my guitar, and I decided that I’m going to get better at this,” she explains. With heartbreaking lyrics set to mellow guitar, Tabbachino’s songwriting is emotional and intimate, but the song has since evolved sonically, incorporating groovy guitar lines and a driving rhythm.
“It’s definitely gone on the longest journey, and maybe the most in-depth one as well. The way I felt about that relationship at that time versus now is so different obviously. You go through many more things and realize it’s not that serious.” she reflects. “I think musically, it’s kind of evolved in that same way. When I played it alone, it had a very somber tone to it, and now I think I let the lyrics speak for the somberness of what I felt at that time. I let the music speak for how it’s not really something that gets me down much anymore.”
Some of this evolution emerges in the studio, where “the songs you hear live will very soon be able to be listened to wherever you stream music,” says Tabbacchino. As someone who’s been on both sides of the booth, Tabbacchino is no stranger to the vulnerability necessary to create. “It’s a very private thing for me…to have to open up and tell people that these lyrics are a part of my life.”
She didn’t always plan on being behind the scenes. Tabbacchino started her college career with a plan to pursue music education, but a push towards an audio production degree changed her life. “I’d always understood that there’s more to a song than just the person singing and playing,” she reflects, “but when you start getting into the nitty-gritty, so many people go into making one thing that’s three minutes long, and it still blows my mind.”
Although Tabbacchino is more than comfortable behind the sound board, working on her own music has shifted her perspective. “I’m getting a lot better at understanding my own music when people play it back at me. You can only do so much as one person, and it’s influenced the way that I’ve continued to keep writing songs,” she says. “The journey these songs have taken by adding more people onto the project is something I am so grateful for and never would have expected.”
Despite this, Tabbacchino’s artistic identity as a producer remains separate from her own performance. “I don’t really view those things as two of the same because when I’m playing, that’s me exploring my own lyrics and emotion,” she explains. “But the cool thing about when you produce for other people is you get to jump into their world and see the way that they view music. Very different sides of my personality come out depending on if I’m more technical, or more artist/performer.”
Collaboration remains at the forefront of everything Tabbacchino does. While continuing to pursue a career performing, she offers her professional recording services with a focus on women and LGBTQIA+ artists. “I want other people who also want that environment to feel safe and to feel comfortable sharing their music to be able to do so,” she says. “It’s about time that we start giving everyone an equal space to do what we’re all here to do, which is make art and have people appreciate it and listen to it or see it in whatever form that art comes in.”
When considering her future career, Tabbacchino aspires to pursue all of her musical passions, in the vein of other artists and producers, such as Jack Antonoff, or Naomi McPherson of MUNA, who refuse to limit themselves to one lane. “I really like the idea that he’s not going to let the music industry be only one thing,” she says of Antonoff. “He puts so much of his own passion and energy into other people’s projects as much as he does his own, and I think that if I am lucky enough to have the stability to do both of those things. That is totally the dream.”
Regardless of whether she’s headlining her own shows or producing the next generation of superstars, there is no doubt that Alexa Tabbacchino will be making her way into your ears soon, and she’ll be passionate and fiercely committed to her craft when she does. “That’s all I want at the end of the day,” she concluded. “I just want to be so good at what I do. Whatever it is, I just want to be really damn good at it.”
Photos courtesy of Alexa Tabbacchino | Interviewed on November 30, 2025
Leave a comment