The experience of growing up in different countries, absorbing a variety of influences, and the transience of her childhood itself helped craft the worldly progressive pop leanings of Alice Merton. Her style is also marked by slick, assertive hooks and a likewise strong vocal presence. Featuring her 2017 breakout hit "No Roots," she made her full-length debut two years later with Mint. It went as high as number two in her base of Germany. Merton co-produced the follow-up, the pandemic-informed S.I.D.E.S., which saw release in 2022.

Born in Frankfurt, Germany and raised in Canada, the U.S., Germany, and England, Merton first learned classical piano and singing as a child in Ontario, Canada. When she was a teenager, her family moved back to Germany, where she would pick up the guitar and write her first song. Later, the family relocated again, this time to England. In 2013, Merton enrolled at the Popakademie Baden-Württemberg in Mannheim, eventually earning a degree in composition and songwriting.

These frequent international shifts played a key role in the songwriting process for her first release, 2017's No Roots EP (Mom + Pop Music). The four-track effort included the song "Hit the Ground Running," which won Merton the Jugend Kulterell Prize for Acoustic Pop. Another track, "No Roots," reached the Top Three of the singles charts in France, Germany, and Austria as well as cracking the Billboard Hot 100. With Merton by then based in Berlin, "No Roots" resurfaced on her full-length debut Mint, which arrived on Mom + Pop in January 2019. The album was produced by Nicolas Rebscher (AURORA, Balbina), who also co-wrote many of the songs with Merton. Mint went to number two in Germany while landing in the Top 20 of the Billboard Heatseekers and Independent Albums charts in the U.S.

After spending some time writing and trying out songs in the studio, she returned with the Stephen Koz Kozmeniuk-co-produced "Vertigo" in April 2021. It was one of 15 tracks, all co-written and co-produced by Merton with various collaborators, to appear on June 2022's S.I.D.E.S. ~ Neil Z. Yeung & Marcy Donelson, Rovi