Growing up in Deerfield, Ill., Alexander 23 wanted to be like his hometown hero, Michael Jordan. When high school ended, he was forced to accept that basketball stardom wasn't in the cards for him. Luckily, music was waiting for him all along — and a decade later, he's become an MVP in his own right.

Born Alexander Glantz, Alexander 23 is now an in-demand songwriter and producer for some of pop's biggest names, including Olivia Rodrigo, Tate McRae, Joe Jonas, and Addison Rae. His attention to detail, both musically and conversationally, and his warm demeanor allow artists to let their guards down; such vulnerability has translated into hits like Rodrigo's "get him back!" or McRae's "boy x."

Alexander 23's trustworthiness as a collaborator might be most apparent in his partnership with Reneé Rapp. They immediately developed a tight friendship after a chance meeting in January 2023, which evolved into Alexander 23 executive-producing Snow Angel, her debut LP released that August.

"I think my dream as a producer was always to do people's albums," Alexander 23 tells GRAMMY.com. "Doing Reneé's first album was really fulfilling — just being trusted with a body of work from someone you really respect."

The natural first choice to help shape her sophomore effort, he is credited on 11 of 12 songs on Rapp's newly released BITE ME. While discussing the album with GRAMMY.com, Rapp praised Alexander 23's knack for genuine connection: "It's important to have somebody who loves every part of you in the room. Alexander loves the things about me that I'm not able to love about myself. He'll champion the parts of me that I think are crazy, and he believes in me when I don't believe in myself."

While it's far from his adolescent hoop dreams (although playing in the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game is still No. 1 on his bucket list), Alexander 23's musical prominence wasn't a fluky backup plan. He picked up the guitar at age 8, wrote his first song in seventh grade, avidly performed around town as a teen, and joined a band called The Heydaze during his one year at the University of Pennsylvania. By the time The Heydaze disintegrated in late 2017, he'd learned enough to go solo and worked on figuring out "how the f— to be able to do this forever."

Initially, Alexander 23 wrote and produced for others as a means to fund his first solo project, but the two soon became intertwined. He released his debut single, "Dirty AF1s," in April 2019, the same year he landed his first major cuts with rising pop acts like Role Model and AJ Mitchell; by 2021, he'd scored his own viral hit with "IDK You Yet" as well as his first global smash with Olivia Rodrigo's "good 4 u." Collaborating went from a means to an end to being the axis from which everything spins — he's at his best when worlds collide.

As his role as a collaborator continues to expand, however, Alexander 23 doesn't want to lose himself. He has felt mounting internal pressure to follow up his debut album, 2022's Aftershock, and often found himself hoping for a song that stuck out as the centerpiece for his next LP — similar to how Joe Jonas was inspired to make Music For People Who Believe In Love after they worked on a track called "Only Love."

"I was putting so much pressure on myself to get that; I was going in every day trying to make the best song ever made, and that's a really hard exercise," he says. "Whereas, the truth is, the way ['Only Love'] happened is we were just making stuff that we thought was cool and not worrying about what it was. That's actually how you get the greatest stuff.

"I was just so scared, and I dressed this fear all up in ambition," he continues. "A couple of weeks ago, I had to sit myself down and give myself a talk. Ever since then, I feel so free to make things and not worry about what they are. I haven't written the best song ever every day, but every day, I'm getting more comfortable sitting with myself again, both as a songwriter and a person."

Below, Alexander 23 pulls back the curtain on his mindset toward collaborating with big-name artists, rediscovering his voice as a solo artist, and his perspective on his formative years.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

What has been occupying your mind recently?

I'm starting to work on my music again — for real. I feel this psychological block of if I don't do my music now, I don't know if I'm going to be able to fully do other things. So, it's put me in this terrible but amazing position where I feel like I just have to figure out what my music sounds like, which has been really hard. I've been trying on and off for two years now to figure out what that means without a terrible amount of success and a good amount of distractions, both desired and undesired.

Did working on BITE ME monopolize your time?

For sure. I mean, it was intentional. I knew what I was getting myself into with Reneé and believe in her as an artist, so it didn't feel like I was tasked with this thing that was distracting me from my purpose. It was very intentional. We're trying to make something awesome that's going to stand the test of time that, most importantly, we're in love with. That's not a part-time job, as much as my brain would have liked to think it was going to be. 

That's another big thing I've been thinking about. I don't know if there's a strong correlation between how long I've worked on something and how good it gets. I've been trying to check in with myself along the way — Am I making this better, or am I just still working on it? 

I've talked to a lot of artist friends — and producer and writer friends — about this. There's a safety in working on the song because you actually don't even really need to confront how good it is or how good it will be or will be received. This is the only place in the song's existence, after you wrote it before it's out, where there's this incredible oasis. You're just like, Man, this doesn't exist yet to anyone but me, and I can't be right or wrong about it.

Does collaborating and producing so much for other artists muddy the waters or offer clarity for your solo music?

When I was first making music for myself, I never really needed to decide what to sound like because I wasn't good enough to even have a menu of people I felt I could be. I just had a guitar, a microphone, one little synthesizer, a pack of drums, and a little drum kit. Those were my tools. I never had to think about what kind of song I was going to make because I had three things and two sounds, so it was easier to make.

Now, I think I've grown a lot as a producer, in large part, because of the amazing artists that I've gotten to work with. I've learned so much about working with other people, but I think it's made it a little bit more difficult when I retreat to my own music — to have this toolbelt that's much more vast. It's seemingly somehow confusing to me, which is crazy because when I work with another artist and they play me something, I'm fairly decisive about what I think and how I think it should be. But when it's me, it's hard. I think part of that is also just not being 21 anymore.

When you're 21, everything you do has this existential weight to it. One girl sent me one text message, and I could write an album about it. Now, I could get the craziest text message ever, and I forget about it. It's made me a lot happier and more stable, and I think a better person to be around. But it definitely makes things more difficult as a writer.

There's a part of me that is almost embarrassed by the feeling that I want to write about my life and have people listen to stuff about my life. Then, I am in the room with other artists who I think are great, and they're just telling you about their lives. And I'm like, Wow, there's nothing wrong with wanting to make art about yourself. You can make anything seem stupid if you say it in a silly enough voice in your head, but if you say it with your chest, it can be cool.

I do subscribe to [the idea that] the more specific you are, the more general you'll be. Also, no one has to listen to it. I've been trying to just be more conscious of what's signal and what's noise, and fix my ratio a little bit. It's always easier not to do something. There are always a number of reasons not to do it, and sometimes, the reason to do it is just to do it.

Does it bother you when you're recognized as an artist's right-hand man instead of your own artist?

No, not at all. I wear that hat proudly. I'm so honored. I know how fragile I am with my music. People I love trusting me to help their music come to fruition is a badge that I am very, very happy and honored to wear.

Just in the past five years, you've co-produced big pop albums like Olivia Rodrigo's SOUR and Tate McRae's I Used To Think I Could Fly, and you've become Reneé Rapp's go-to collaborator. Why do you think all of these artists keep wanting you in the room?

I definitely really try to make [it] a priority that the artist knows that I'm on their team. In a perfect world, their manager, label and publicists are happy. But in my world, it's kind of like, Are you happy? 

I know what it's like being an artist, and I know that most of the song's life lives outside the studio, so I'd rather make something that they love, that their fans love, than something that is huge that they don't like. Hopefully, it's all huge and everyone loves it, but they're the ones who are going to have to play it, not me. So I want them to like it.

I am really, really, really selective. It's not an ego thing. It doesn't matter how big or small of an artist you are. It's just that I only want to do it if I feel like I can help you. There are great artists who have wanted to work, and I just feel like I don't know if I'm a person who's going to be a multiplier on your talents and your art. I like to listen to people's music and sometimes even meet for coffee before we work because I want to get the most out of it.

If you talk to songwriters in L.A., a lot of them will tell you that it's pretty exhausting just being on the carousel of meeting new people and having to regain that comfort with someone every time. I found that really exhausting too. And so, I made it my goal: As I get bigger as a producer, rather than chasing bigger songs or even bigger artists, I just want to chase bigger worlds that I feel like I could really sit in for a while, get comfortable, and try to expand and challenge. I think I'm good at growing with artists and really trying to understand their world.

I know you bonded deeply with Reneé during the making of Snow Angel. How did that carry over into BITE ME?

We just have the rapport, in and out of the studio, and I think it allows us to start on hour three or four of the day every time. I already know everything that happened in her life. We talk every single day. I already know what's going on, how she's feeling about it, how she's feeling in general. We're fluent in each other's languages. There's a lot of shorthand, which I think can help in the studio, obviously.

Is that the case with other people you work with consistently?

For sure, especially if I'm doing your album or at least a large chunk of it. I want to be able to think like you. I want to be fully in your world. It's such a cool way to get to know people just on an anthropological level. There's something really beautiful about it, even if you put the music aside.

I love getting to a point with an artist where you have shorthand and you can move so much more fluidly through the songwriting process. I could be with Joe [Jonas], and we could be in the middle of the song, and he could say, "Remember that thing that happened last night in Miami?" He doesn't have to say any more. I know the whole four-hour story. Reneé comes to the studio and is talking about her life, and I get it. She doesn't have to explain more than the details themselves.

Right now, I'm producing an album for a band called Laundry Day. It's been very different from the Reneé experience, but it's been awesome and so fun working with a band. They're so my speed of being funny, but not a joke. That's what I want my whole life to be. That's a world I was so happy to be in, especially coming from playing in bands. I was like, I know this world. I know this environment. I'm comfortable here.

You first picked up a guitar at 8 years old because your dad liked playing guitar, but basketball was your first love. Was music always shaping you in the background, even when all you cared about was basketball?

By the end of high school, I realized that I wasn't going to the NBA, which I could say was delusional. I think most people would've probably realized at age 8 that wasn't happening, but I wasn't there yet.

Because I was spending so much time playing sports, I think music occupied the space that TV or video games occupied for other kids. Something I'm grateful for is that I realized pretty early on in playing guitar that my goal wasn't really to be Eddie Van Halen or Slash. My goal was to use the guitar to coax the best possible songs out of me. Once I started writing songs, I realized that this is what I want to do.

When did you start writing songs?

I remember my first song. Or, the first song I ever remember writing. I recorded it on my family computer at the time. I wrote it in seventh grade after I'd foolishly broken up with my girlfriend. As you do when you're a seventh-grade boy, I realized I'd made a terrible mistake. To her credit, she was like, "I'm not just going to take you back. You broke up with me. You've got to prove that you want me back."

I'd been playing guitar for a couple of years at that point. So, I wrote a song and sent it to her, and it worked. I think that was some reinforcement, like, Okay, I think I know how to do this. If this worked, I might be actually good at this. I still have the MP3, and no one will ever hear it.

It sounds like it was pretty obvious all along that music was the direction you were going, but you were the last one to realize it.

Very, very well put. I would play anywhere. Any talent show. If there was ever a fundraiser for anything in my town, I was playing. It wasn't even a question. A pizza place in the greater area? I was playing.

My band won the Battle of the Bands one time, and the prize — this is actually really funny — was two hours at Sun Studio. First of all, two hours of studio time is barely enough to get everything set up. Two, the Battle of the Bands was in Chicago, and Sun Studio is in Memphis, Tennessee. It was a fake prize. But at the time, that was the closest I'd ever felt to this is real and I could do this. And it still felt so far away.

So, you went to the University of Pennsylvania for a year to study engineering instead. That lasted one year before you decided to move to New York City and give songwriting a go. What changed during that year?

I met some guys who had the courage to do it, and they invited me to join their band. I think all I needed was someone who could show me that there was a way to do it. Not even necessarily the way to do it, but even just to tell me that you could find a way to do it.

How did writing for other people before releasing your first solo music benefit your artistry in the long run?

It definitely sharpened my knives. I really didn't know what I was doing. I learned through doing it with other people, but the biggest thing — and something that I'm feeling a rebirth into right now — is I think it's really easy to say you want to be an artist. It's a cool thing to say, but I think it's a different thing to feel that way. When I'm working with other people and I actually feel like I need to make my own thing, it's validating in a way. This isn't a job to me. This isn't a title that I want to wear. This is something I actually feel like I need to do.

That, to me, is my biggest takeaway. You get to a point where you're just telling so many other amazing stories, and there's a little part of you that's like, Hey, what about your stories? Maybe it's a weird ego dynamic, but there's a part of me that's like, So you're just going to sit there and do the easy thing? I know how I feel after I make something I love, and I want to feel that feeling again.

You also love architecture, script-writing, and the idea of being a teacher one day. Does having several things that light a fuse in you take the pressure off of music?

It ebbs and flows. Sometimes, it feels really helpful. Sometimes, it feels really distracting. And sometimes, I can't tell if I'm doing it because I'm too scared to do music. When it comes from genuine interest, it's awesome. When it comes out of fear, it's probably not awesome. But if my downfall is that I have too many things that I like, I think that's a pretty good life.

There's one more artist [with whom] I've been working. Her name is Leyla. Out of everyone, she's lit a fuse for me to make my own music again. I'm obsessed with her music. I'm obsessed with her voice. More than anything, I'm just obsessed with how much of an artist she is. She's, like, [an] out-of-a-movie artist. She has things inside of her that need to come out, and I can't believe I'm the guy who gets to help get them out.

July marked three years since Aftershock, your debut LP. As an artist and in how you approach music, what's changed since then?

I have been thinking about this concept a lot, because something that's been holding me back is I've been so compelled to be different and just a new version of myself. I think something that's been a huge unlock for me the past few weeks of reflecting is that I don't need to change.

Actually, I talked to John Mayer about this one time. Forgive me, John, if I'm relaying this wrong, but even the wrong version has been very helpful to me. But he was talking about how after his style of playing guitar was solidified as "the John Mayer way of playing," sometimes he would play that way and then feel like, No, that's too me. I've done that. Then, he realized, Well, it's me! It's not a bad thing to be too me! So, I've been trying to be "too me."

I want this music to be so unabashed and unrelenting in how me it feels and sounds. That's not to say that it will be the same as before. This album will be different than the last album because I'll do a better job of being me. If people are going to like it or not, it doesn't really matter. It's just going to be more me.