Alexandra Savior

The album initially had the working title Strange Portrait, but was retitled Belladonna of Sadness after the 1973 Japanese anime of the same name.

Savior initially planned to release the album under the stage name Alexandra Semitone, but Turner advised her to change her name and use her middle name as the last.

Alexandra Savior McDermott (born June 14, 1995) is an American singer-songwriter originally from Portland, Oregon.

Alexandra Savior McDermott was born on June 14, 1995, in Portland, Oregon.

Her mother was diagnosed with cervical cancer when she was pregnant with Savior but during her pregnancy she was cured.

Because of this event, her father chose “Savior” as her middle name.

Savior was raised in the Portland suburb of Vancouver, Washington.

At age 12, her parents divorced, and her father relocated to New Orleans, Louisiana.

She first became interested in songwriting at age 14, in part inspired by her older brother, also a musician.

Savior grew up listening to "a lot of soul and grunge", including her father's records by artists such as Pearl Jam, Otis Redding, and Jimi Hendrix.

As a teenager, she was also an admirer of Jack White, Etta James, and The Velvet Underground.

She began taking singing lessons as a teenager.

As a student, Savior struggled socially and had to change high schools due to being bullied by peers.

She first came to public notice at age 17 in 2012 after being publicly lauded by Courtney Love, who saw a video of Savior performing cover songs that were uploaded on YouTube.

Savior first achieved public attention in September 2012 at age 17 after rock singer-songwriter Courtney Love publicly complimented her after viewing a cover of Angus & Julia Stone's "Big Jet Plane" that Savior had uploaded on YouTube.

"She’s going to be huge," Love declared.

"I am not ever wrong when it comes to spotting talent."

Love began corresponding with Savior by email and, eventually, by phone.

Savior reflected on the incident:

"I was really shocked. It wasn't my intention to go anywhere with music really; my friends and I were having fun on a snow day. When Courtney reached out to me, it was surreal. I had a lot of strange phone call conversations with her. We would talk on the phone when I'd get home from school. Our home phone was a tomato, and I would sit on the kitchen floor and talk into this tomato and be speaking to Courtney Love. It was only a couple of weeks or so that she would send me these long, long emails with these Stevie Nicks references and different music and stuff."

Shortly after graduating high school in 2013, Savior pursued a music career in Los Angeles, and was signed to Columbia Records later that year, after which she began recording material with producers James Ford and Alex Turner.

By April 2013, Savior had done some modeling for Erin Fetherston and said she hoped her first album would be out soon.

She graduated from high school in June 2013 and had plans to attend art school, but opted instead to relocate to Los Angeles and pursue a music career.

"I moved to an apartment in Hollywood behind a strip club called the Seventh Veil," she commented.

"It was terrifying. I got signed about a month later. I moved immediately."

Around September 2013, Savior was signed to a recording contract by Columbia Records, which she later admitted she was not prepared for artistically or socially.

Despite this, she stated that Columbia was the best choice given that other labels were interested in modeling her after established pop artists such as Katy Perry or Pink.

In October 2013, Linda Perry was publicly comparing Savior's potential to that of Fiona Apple.

In 2014, Savior began writing and recording her material for her debut studio album in Los Angeles with James Ford of The Last Shadow Puppets and Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys as producers.

Belladonna of Sadness was mostly completed by June 2015, during which time Savior gave limited concert appearances, usually before industry audiences in the media capitals of Los Angeles, New York, and London.

These appearances utilized members of the musical group PAPA as backing musicians.

In 2015, a demo from the album, "Risk", was featured on the soundtrack of the second season of the television show True Detective.

"Miracle Aligner", a song written by Savior and Turner during the recording sessions, though cut from the album, was re-recorded by Turner's band the Last Shadow Puppets and later featured on their 2016 album, Everything You've Come to Expect.

Speaking of the album's pending release in October 2016, Savior said: "It's been very difficult... The most important thing about the music industry I've learnt is that it's total bullshit, and that the thing you should focus on the most is just the art."

Savior subsequently released a series of singles from the album, beginning with "Shades" on June 17, 2016, followed by "M.T.M.E." on September 8, 2016.

Reviewing "M.T.M.E.", the British newspaper NME wrote: "The striking and smoky vocals belong solely to Savior and ooze a burgeoning star power well beyond her tender age of 21."

A third single, "Mystery Girl" was released on November 21, 2016, alongside an announcement of the album's upcoming release.

Her debut studio album, Belladonna of Sadness, was released on April 7, 2017, by Columbia.

After being dropped by Columbia Records in 2019, Savior was signed to Danger Mouse's independent label, 30th Century Records, who released her second studio album, The Archer, on January 10, 2020.

The album was met with critical acclaim.