Dodson Alum Alyssa Grace Proffitt Rises on Charts With ‘bloodstream’

By Hannah G. Morris, Columnist

Alyssa Grace Proffitt, a 19-year-old singer-songwriter and former Dodson Middle School student, is rising in the music charts with her hit song bloodstream.

The young folk-pop artist has a sizable and quickly growing fan base, with nearly 6.4 million monthly listeners on popular music streaming platform Spotify. However, her fame began on TikTok, where she sports more than 890,000 followers.

A song that her early TikTok fans once begged her to release, bloodstream currently has more than 64 million streams on Spotify. An ode to putting yourself first even when you love who’s hurting you, vivid emotion surges through the song with each voice crack and passionate refrain.

Capturing the desperation of a failing relationship, Alyssa sings, “I’m crying on my mama’s floor, why don’t you want this anymore? / And I’m craving you to change for me / You’re saying, ‘I hear you, and I love you, but my heart, it hurts for you / And I just cannot give you what you need.’”

As the raw emotion in her voice rings out alongside her acoustic guitar, Alyssa captures the intertwined passion, frustration and deep sadness characteristic of a toxic relationship. 

Yet, her lyrics find strength in the pain as she cries out, “And something deep inside of me tells me that you’re not better now / And I’m sorry that I couldn’t help, but I’m so glad I made it out.”

Throughout bloodstream, auditory surges and declines carry the listener through the powerful highs and lows of a strained romance. But still, the highest high comes as the singer finds the strength to stop begging for love and answers.

In a recent interview with Genius about bloodstream, Alyssa said, “The only way that I was going to get better, in that sense, was by kind of focusing on myself and following my own journey. It’s helped validate a lot of my feelings and in a lot of different ways.” She added that “it’s just kind of cool that I get to go through that journey with the people that listen to my music, too.”

As Alyssa’s emotionally honest style has resonated with more and more listeners, she has not only released her debut EP “spilling my guts” on July 24 with music label Artist House but also signed with Warner Records — one of the “big three” of record labels.

She will also be opening for singer and TikTok star Alex Warren this fall in Australia and New Zealand during his world tour “Finding Family on the Road.”