Alice Merton, courtesy.

On first glance, it would seem obvious that the sophomore album from singer-songwriter Alice Merton is about a breakup. In fact, it’s about two of them.

On the surface, Merton tries to get to the other side of a failed romantic relationship on S.I.D.E.S., her first record since 2019’s Mint. But what affected these 15 songs even more is a breakup with a longtime producer whom she’s counted on for years and who, up to this point, had been instrumental to her music career.

“I was basically told if I wanted to work with other producers, he would never work with me again,” Merton said in a recent video call from her current home in London, where she moved from Germany to be closer to her family in 2021. “It was a friendship we always had, but it really felt like someone was putting a gun to my head. … I took it very personally, also because it was a very personal issue.”

Merton, who broke out as an independent artist in 2016 with massive radio hit “No Roots,” followed by ear-pleasing alt-pop numbers like “Lash Out” and “Why So Serious,” has more than 1 billion streams worldwide, has become a chart-topper in Europe and was a judge on “The Voice Germany.”

She said she’s faced people wanting control over her career before. It is, after all, why she chose to chart her own path, forming her own label, Paper Plane.

“People want some kind of ownership over you when that’s not what music is about for me,” she said.

She said she loved working with this person—who she didn’t name, but it’s easy enough to compare liner notes between the two albums and see who’s missing. But his ultimatums forced the issue.

“I felt like a puppet, in some regards, of always trying to make this person feel good and make sure that they’re happy with everything and bend over backwards. I totally forgot that we should be treating each other with the same respect, rather than me treating them with more respect and them not really returning it. I was always on their time. … In the end, I wasn’t even the stronger one to pull away from it. I said I want to work with various people … and that person just said, ‘OK, bye.’”

Merton describes herself as someone who, when she finds people she loves and trusts, works hard to hang onto them. That made the two breakups extremely difficult to cope with. The pandemic was also extremely difficult for her because she lost her grandma during this time. Reading horrible news headlines and seeing bodies piled up in trucks because there was no space in morgues for them sent her spiraling into a dark hole, exacerbated by her losses. It seemed to happen all at once.

She lost her motivation to make music at all. Rather than wanting to turn this pain into art, she just curled up into a ball and dwelled in her sadness.

“I didn’t really get out of bed for a month, and I just let myself be really sad and depressed,” she said.

At some point she came to the realization that she could not live in that bed for the rest of her life. Music always brought her joy, and she wanted to recapture it. Berlin, where she was living at the time, was still under strict COVID-19 protocols. She couldn’t leave the region, so she reached out to some local producers, and a few volunteered to start working with her, masked up and all. That’s how she got started with the album.

All of the songs on S.I.D.E.S. are extremely personal conversations addressed to the people Alice Merton is writing about. She said it’s much easier for her to send the song to someone and tell them, “this is how I feel,” than to speak about it directly. It’s also how she begins to understand, sometime later, how she really feels, she said.

The “gun to the head” metaphor is mentioned directly on single “Blindside,” which has a very similar vibe to “No Roots.” It’s an incredibly heavy song but sounds like so much fun. Rather than toeing the line between the two, it pulls to extreme sides. Merton recorded the song with German songwriter Tobias Kuhn. Surprisingly, she said that the song always puts her in a good mood and sometimes makes her laugh.

To her, it’s satirical how she was facing ultimatums and being forced into a box, given the choice to blame herself, blame the other person, blame fate—when none of that mattered. All that mattered is learning from the experience and avoiding making the same mistake again. That satirical angle is why the song is paired with a humorous black and white video about loving a monster.

Elsewhere on the album, “Mania” tells an angst-ridden story of being let down by those close to you; rock-laden single “Vertigo” is equally dizzying in its tale about being pulled in numerous directions. “Loveback,” which opens the album, is an anthemic fist-pumper about reclaiming your own identity.

On the other end of the spectrum is the poppier, Latin-tinged and moody “Breathe In, Breathe Out,” served with a dose of tinny shakers, the synth-led, reserved “Letting You Know” (“I’m letting you go,” Merton sings. “It’s time I learn to release.”), and the literal light at the end of the tunnel: “The Other Side.”

The title of the album, S.I.D.E.S., has a dual meaning—the acronym-symbolizing periods give that away. The public, literal meaning is about different sides to each story and about finding her way to the other side of her darkness.

“I pictured a Rubik’s cube and myself like this figure on the Rubik’s cube, and I kept going from one side to the next figuring out, ‘OK, how do I feel now, how does it feel now? Am I finally on the other side of it now?’” she said.

But she also wanted to hold onto something just for herself. Those letters have a different meaning; maybe she’ll explain that a few years down the road, she said.

Without her longtime partner, Merton executive-produced the entire album herself, the first time she’s undertaken such a challenge of making 15 songs tell a cohesive story.

While a few people contributed to two or three tracks, most were co-written or recorded with someone different. She co-wrote and co-produced every song on the album with the likes of Koz (Dua Lipa), Jonny Coffer (Beyoncé, Ellie Goulding) and Jennifer Decilveo (Andra Day). Merton had to make sure the songs sounded like they belonged together, and for that, she said she went with her gut.

“It was also rewarding because I let myself have that challenge, and I really enjoyed it,” she said.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.