Lizzy McAlpine Isn’t Your Average Broadway Star

For anyone out there who doubts the power of manifestation, Lizzy McAlpine may just make you reconsider your stance. In 2021, the singer-songwriter tweeted at her favorite Broadway star, “in case u guys were wondering my goal in life is to sing with @JeremyMJordan.” (Jordan, for his part, responded, “I’m in.”)

This spring, she’s doing just that. The 25-year-old singer-songwriter—who first found fame with intensely personal, social media–friendly songs like “Ceilings” and “Pushing It Down and Praying”—is currently starring opposite Jordan in a new production of Floyd Collins at Lincoln Center Theater, marking her Broadway debut.

Lizzy McAlpine and Jeremy Jordan on the opening night of Floyd Collins.

Photo: Chasi Annexy

Days ahead of the show’s opening night on Monday, McAlpine meets me for chamomile tea at a midtown hotel. “I am having the best time of my life,” she says with a giggle, her large green eyes widening.

During her senior year of high school, McAlpine applied to college not for music, but acting. “I was really shy in middle school, and even the beginning of high school,” she explains. “It took me a while to come out of my shell, and theater helped me with that so much.” Yet she ended up at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she would write her first album, Give Me a Minute, and meet Philip Etherington, who produced her first two.

“When I got into Berklee, I thought I might’ve made the wrong decision, but I stuck with it,” McAlpine says. “I think about this all the time. I don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t gone.” But now, with a third record—2024’s Older—under her belt, McAlpine, who once starred as Penny Pingleton in her high school production of Hairspray, is circling back to her first love.