Joseph Perez (aka, Alex Paris) ’21

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Anthropology major Joseph Perez (his “government name”) ’21, under the stage name Alex Paris, has just released his first single, "Patty Bateman," along with a music video for the song.

The Vietnamese/Filipino-American singer-songwriter writes, produces and records pop songs from his mid-city Los Angeles apartment, which is a long way, literally and figuratively, from his hometown of Houston, Texas. He found that coming to Los Angeles for college was a culture shock – in a good way.

“I was accepted much more as an Asian American here than I was in Texas,” he said.  “Creativity in L.A. is rampant; people are encouraged to express themselves, dress however they want, etc.”

He was on the pre-med track for a while, but then I realized he wanted to pursue art.

“I enjoyed school; I did relatively well in my classes.  I would go home in the summers, work and make music with my friends, then go back to school and do it all over again, for four years.”

That last year, because of COVID, was tough though.

“I went home and, like many of my peers, fell into depression. I wasn’t really inspired to work on music; I was really trying to focus on my mental health, just stay above water. My parents helped me through that.”

Post-COVID, Paris came back to L.A. and started working in the fashion industry.

“I’ve always been interested in fashion,” he said. “There was actually no creativity going on at home, so I needed to just flip the switch – that’s why I decided to intern and then work in fashion. But my true north has always been music; I’ve been singing since I was about 10 years old. I decided to try networking, meeting people and spent time working on my songwriting and production as well. I still do graphic design work for the fashion projects – like T-shirts and hoodies – but I can do that remotely.  I do a little modeling on the side, too. Apart from that, I’m concentrating on the music.”

That networking – inside and outside of the fashion industry – has already paid dividends in Paris’ fledgling musical career.

“In the fashion industry I met a lot of people who were multi-hyphenate kinds of creatives – people who wear a lot of hats,” he said.  “A lot of creatives I met were interested in the visual aspect of music and some of my friends and I decided it would be a good idea to shoot a little visualizer for this track. My friend Amelia is the love interest, the psycho, Patty Bateman; she’s a model, an actress and also makes music.  The videographer, my friend Sammy, is a pretty well-known photographer; he’s shot the likes of Drake, Kendall Jenner, Frank Ocean, a lot of different celebrities. This was his debut in the world of videography. There were a few other people who were involved, such as my friend who’s a producer.  People do a lot of different things at this stage of our artistry.”

Paris explained what inspired the song’s lyrics and title – and the content of the video. “The chorus is ‘Patrick Bateman played my heart again.’ The idea is that this person I’m singing to is a psycho; she’s crazy, not completely coherent. I’m relating her to the lead character in the film ‘American Psycho’ – the investment banker / serial killer Patrick Bateman, played by Christian Bale – who never made binary decisions; he was always going back and forth, see-sawing in his mind. I’m relating Amelia – Patty Bateman – to this person from my personal life, who is similar to the character in the film.”

In addition to writing and singing the song, Paris plays guitar and piano on the recording and also inputs the Midi drums.  His producer from the Bay Area came down and did some of the bass lines and some of the synthesizers.

Paris prefers to write a song based on inspiration, rather than on using musical training to “craft” one on demand. “I’m a big believer in artists and music being a vessel for energy in the universe – like you’re checking out a book from the library of the cosmos,” he said.  “Being diligent and forward-thinking is important, but the less forced it is, the better, in my opinion.”

When it comes time to record, Paris explained, “Usually I start with a melody and the lyrics and I sing over a beat with the basic chord structure, then we add the rest of the instrumentation later.”

Paris is in the process of mixing and mastering a lot of different tracks – but that’s only part of the package. “We realize the marketing is the most important thing.  We’re going to continue to do the visualizers single-by-single, and the plan is to have an EP out by summer.”

The final piece of the puzzle will be live performances – which he has never done, “Except,” he said, “for family karaoke – that’s a big thing for Filipinos.  I don’t plan on performing until I have more songs out; that’s the goal, hopefully sometime this year.”

Paris says that if a playlister were to categorize “Patty Bateman” by genre, they might say “bedroom pop” – what you would think Katy Perry or The Weeknd would be making if they were recording a song on equipment in their bedroom, with tight-sounding drums, etc., as opposed, say, to stadium rock.  He says his new songs are more “indie-alternative,” but not too dissimilar from his initial single.

As with most things in this artist’s life, the “Alex Paris” pseudonym is not just a random choice.

“My real name is Joseph Ethan Alexander Perez,” he said. “I had never gone by Alexander, so I thought I would give it a try. Paris is a take on Perez.  I’ve been to Paris, France, three times. I would see people working in creative spaces there, but felt like I wasn’t really a part of that world or that I could ever be a part of that world because I was just a kid from an American suburb who wouldn’t be able to make good art. So a big part of ‘Alex Paris’ – the name and my goal – is to be in that creative realm and also inspire people that were like me growing up – just ‘normal’ kids like me – and show them that we can pursue the arts and have a meaningful impact on others through it.”