Alice Cooper didn’t just inspire Lzzy Hale’s taste in music — he helped her learn to embrace being different.
The Halestorm frontwoman says hearing Cooper’s 1971 classic “I’m Eighteen” as a child was a defining moment, one that ultimately gave her permission to stop worrying about fitting in.
"When I was about 11 years old, the song that really got me was Alice Cooper’s ’I’m Eighteen,’’ from Love It to Death," Hale tells Metal Hammer. “I actually ended up taking the CD to a sleepover, and the girls all looked at me like I was an alien from outer space.”
Rather than discouraging her, the experience helped confirm that she was on her own path.
“Now as an adult, I’m out here owning my weird, and it probably was because of Alice Cooper,” she says. “He gave me permission to find my own path.”
Hale was discussing the 10 albums that changed her life, a list that includes Cooper’s Love It to Death alongside records by Black Sabbath, Jeff Buckley and Soundgarden. But Cooper’s album stands apart because of the impact it had on her at such a formative age.
Speaking previously with Guitar Player, Hale recalled discovering the record in the mid-1990s, just before she and her younger brother, Arejay, began the musical journey that would eventually become Halestorm.
“My friends were listening to Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey; I was listening to classic rock from my parents’ generation,” she said. “They gave me a few records, like, ‘Listen to this. This is real rock,’ and Love It to Death, and it hooked me right away.”
After the sleepover, Hale told her father that the other girls thought she was weird because of the music she liked.
“I said, ‘I don’t know, Dad. They didn’t like my music. They think I'm weird,’” she remembered.
His response stayed with her.
“He said that was a good thing. He said, ‘You listen to Alice Cooper not because the other kids listen to it. You listen to Alice Cooper because you love it, and that's amazing.’”
Looking back, Hale sees that moment as a turning point — the point at which she stopped trying to follow the crowd and started trusting her own instincts.
“I didn’t care if nobody else liked my music. I liked it, and that was enough,” she told Guitar Player. “It can be hard at times to find your crew — the people like you. But then once you find them, you can develop and become a force to be reckoned with.”
For Hale, Alice Cooper’s music didn’t just introduce her to hard rock. It helped her realize that being different wasn’t something to hide — it was something to build a life around.
Hale has proven to be a trailblazer, too, becoming Kramer’s first female signature artist with her X-shaped Voyager guitar, and was also named Gibson’s first female Brand Ambassador. Her pre-programmed defiance, she says, is her superpower.
“I didn’t care if nobody else liked my music. I liked it, and that was enough,” she tells Guitar Player. “It can be hard at times to find your crew — the people like you. But then once you find them, you can develop and become a force to be reckoned with.”
