Singer passing on advice and helping deal with online hate
Pop singer who suffered social media abuse helping pupils
AS an 18-year-old, Alex Grewcock was living out her dreams of pop superstardom.
She had been signed by a record label and was part of girl group Oh My! and toured the world with The Saturdays.
And for the most part it was an incredible experience for the young singer-songwriter, who had dreamed of being a performer since the age of three. But with success also came hardship.
The former student of Hinckley’s John Cleveland College, now aged 27, said that for every 20 positive online comments there were always a handful of negative ones.
“Which comments do you think I went to bed thinking about?” said the Stoney Stanton singer, known by her stage name, Lexie.
“I suffered with anxiety and I didn’t handle it very well at all. There were people saying ‘you are disgusting’ and ‘you can’t sing’ and ‘what were you wearing?’ I was consumed by it and it made me miserable.”
These comments put a dark tint on what was meant to be an incredible part of her life, a situation recently put in the spotlight by Little Mix star Jesy Nelson, in her Odd One Out documentary.
Jesy revealed that brutal tweets from trolls led to her starving herself before Little Mix returned to The X Factor for a performance in 2013 and was then left broken when Katie Hopkins tweeted “Packet Mix have still got a chubber in their ranks. Less Little Mix. More Pick n Mix.”
Lexie said she was given amazing support and was “looked after well” by her then label, and was able to pull through.
Now, as well as being a successful artist who travels the world performing at festivals and private events, she tours schools warning children of the dangers of social media.
“I do a few shows here and there and it can be quite tiring, but it is also one of the most rewarding parts of what I do,” she said.
“I go in and do assemblies and we have a right old laugh and I sing some of my songs but we also talk about things like cyber-bullying and mental health.
“I think it’s nice for them to hear from someone who’s not a teacher, who they have to listen to every day.
“I think that they can relate to me a bit more and it’s nice to be able to share my experiences with them.
“The Year 9 and 10 kids are a bit cooler than the others but they are really more vulnerable because they think they’re adults.
“Some of the things I hear that kids say to each other, like ‘kill yourself’ – it’s crazy. But the kids are so exposed to this and if I can help maybe two or three kids to stop and think about what they’re saying then that’s amazing – every little helps.”