Alexzandra Spencer Johnson was born on 4 November 1986 in New Westminster, British Columbia, and raised in nearby Coquitlam. From age three, she often sang for her large extended family, and by age six she was receiving vocal training, participating in festivals with her local youth choir by age seven, and giving solo performances at school and community functions. By the age of nine, she had entered the P.N.E. talent search, becoming a finalist, and she participated in many talent contests and festivals, winning a National Anthem Contest at the age of 11 with her rendition of the Canadian National Anthem 'O Canada', leading to her singing the Canadian National Anthem at games for the NHL's Vancouver Canucks and the NBA's Vancouver Grizzlies. Although she was mainly focused on a music career at the time, she decided to pursue a career in acting at the age of 11, and she auditioned for the Disney Channel original series 'So Weird', where she was cast in the lead role of Annie Thelen, which combined her acting and musical talents, co-writing one of the songs for the show. After the cancellation of 'So Weird', Johnson continued her interest in song-writing, co-writing with her brother Brendan Johnson, and although several labels offered her contracts, she held off as she wanted more creative control and a hand in the song-writing. Throughout 2004, Johnson made various appearances on Canadian television series and made-for-TV films and in February 2004 she sent in an audition tape to the producers of 'Degrassi: The Next Generation' for their upcoming show 'Instant Star'. Hers was the first audition tape Executive Producer Stephen Stohn received, and he was convinced she was perfect for the role of Jude Harrison, being proved right by her three nominations for Gemini Awards (the Canadian equivalent of the American Emmy Award) after its first season.
Johnson sang all of the songs that her character Jude performed on the show, and recorded soundtracks for each of the four seasons of 'Instant Star', writing or co-writing five of the songs on the first season's soundtrack. Johnson had written a number of songs in 2005 which were originally planned for her debut album, but she had yet to find a major label to help record and release them, having left indie Canadian label Orange Records in search of something to showcase her as an artist, rather than her fictional counterpart, Jude Harrison. After landing the role of Erin Ulmer in 'Final Destination 3', and giving a Leo Award-nominated performance in the Lifetime movie 'Devil's Diary', the funding for 'Instant Star' was pulled after the fourth series, and the cancellation of the series allowed Johnson to go back to focusing on her music. In 2007 she announced that all of her songs had been written and recorded for her debut album, and she was shopping around for a label to release it in the winter. In February 2008 she signed a deal with Epic Records, expecting the album to be released in the fall, and while five songs were posted on her MySpace page by her record company, in 2009 she went back to acting for a while, appearing in the 'Smallville' TV series, and the made-for-TV movie 'Stranger With My Face'. However, before the album's release date, Epic Records released over a third of their artists from their contracts, including Johnson, which led to her confirming that due to losing her deal with Epic, she would be releasing a different album independently with her brother Brendan producing. 'Voodoo' was released in March 2010, with lead single 'Trip Around The World' appearing a month earlier, and despite the warm reception for the record, fans were eager to hear those earlier songs, and so in 2011 Johnson managed to retrieve the rights to them from Epic Records and released a few of them, together with some original demos and some other unreleased tracks, as 'The Basement Recordings'. However, a number of the tracks from that debut remained unreleased, and so here is the original 'Weight' album as it would have appeared had it come out in 2009.
Track listing
01 Running With The Devil
02 Swallowed
03 Mailman
04 Chicago
05 Golden
06 Lost And Found
07 Saving The Train
08 Weight
09 Easy
10 Shout
11 Wings Of A Dove
