Ali Tamposi doesn’t write your standard, run-of-the-mill hits, she pens billion-streaming
monsters. Here, Music Week speaks to one of the most extraordinary songwriters in the business about her work with Camila Cabello, Miley Cyrus, Kelly Clarkson and many more...
------------ WORDS: GEORGE GARNER ------------ A
li Tamposi was in the living room of Jennifer Lopez’s LA home when it struck her. As the budding songwriter mingled at a party alongside J-Lo, Marc Anthony and her collaborator Jim Jonsin, four words exploded across her mind like a firework:
‘Wow,’ she realised, ‘I made it!’ And that was before Prince entered the room…
“He was playing on a record that Jim was making,” beams Tamposi as she regales Music Week with what, over 10 years later, remains the most surreal moment of her career to date. “He showed up with his little heels on – that was definitely a ‘pinch-me’ moment!”
Make no mistake, it had been a long journey for Tamposi to get to that point, the songwriter putting in incalculable hours of graft to find herself in such rarefied company. “Since I was 12 years old, my life consisted of being consumed by getting to where I needed to go in the music industry and proving myself,” she reflects today. “I wanted to be taken seriously and I wanted to find my place. It demanded all of my time and emotional energy.” The roots of this world-beating determination can be traced back to So Hard To Move On – Tamposi’s first ever song, and the product of her first experiments on guitar. Was it an irrefutable banger, you may wonder? “It was definitely not,” she laughs, smothering her wincing face with her hands. “But I still I remember the melody so maybe there’s some hope for it yet!” Fortunately, the tracks that have flowed since have seen her become one of the most prodigiously gifted hitmakers
44 | Music Week
her field” Donna Caseine, Reservoir
“Ali is at the top of
of the past decade. While Tamposi made her name in 2008 when Beyoncé recorded her track Save The Hero as a B-side/Bey-side on the deluxe edition of I Am… Sasha Fierce, it was in 2011 that she truly took the world by storm by penning Kelly Clarkson’s ironclad anthem Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You). As with so many of Tamposi’s songs, it’s a track with an acute confessional charge to it. “I was going through one of those clichéd stories of [turning] heartbreak into a song,” she says of the inspiration behind the modern pop classic. “It was an extremely cathartic release for me.” Since that milestone the Reservoir-signed writer has penned songs that have generated a staggering 30 billion streams to date. Indeed, were you to remove just two of her recent collaborations with Camila Cabello – Havana (with Young Thug) and Señorita (with Shawn Mendes) – Spotify alone would be minus three billion plays. Add to this some of the other billion-streaming Tamposi-stamped hits like DJ Snake and Justin Bieber’s Let Me Love You and 5 Seconds Of Summer’s Youngblood and you get an idea of the preternatural talent she harnesses.
Nor has her molten-hot streak shown any signs of cooling down of late: just some of her highlights in 2020 included nine out 12 tracks on 5 Seconds Of Summer’s No.1 album Calm (63,536 – OCC), as well as Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia single Break My Heart. That is to say nothing of her work on Miley Cyrus’ acclaimed Plastic Hearts album, including the Dua Lipa collaboration Prisoner and the all-conquering single Midnight Sky. Tamposi clearly enjoyed seeing Cyrus embrace her rock side... “When I’m watching Miley behind the mic, it’s like she’s been doing this genre her whole career,” says Tamposi. “It’s extremely therapeutic for her to get this stuff out. It’s a combination of that and her feeling extremely comfortable in singing rock music,
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PHOTOS: Christina Arza/Miles Davis
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