It's About Us

Background and development

In 2013, Alex & Sierra won Season 3 of The X Factor. Their prize included a $1 million recording contract from Sony Music Entertainment. Following their win on The X Factor, Alex & Sierra announced they would be making their debut album 'quick' and 'right'. They've worked with Julian Bunetta, Sam Watters, John Shanks, Toby Gad, Jason Mraz and One Direction member Harry Styles, Grammy award winning singer/songwriter John Legend also made a contribution upon the early stages of the album, however the track was not selected to be on the album. On May 3, 2014, Alex & Sierra revealed their debut single, "Scarecrow".

Alex & Sierra have commonly described the album as one that is not just filled with slow or upbeat songs. They hope it becomes one of those albums that you can listen to without the songs ever sounding the same. Also, in an interview with Glamour.com the two shared that they had never written a song before. The duo described it as a really laid-back and magical experience and added that they wrote a total of twenty songs in five days.

The first single "Scarecrow" was released on June 23, 2014 and was written by the duo, Martin Johnson and Sam Hollander. They described the single as "a song about hope, It's about believing in a relationship so strongly that a lack of communication isn't enough for you to give up on the other person. Everyone has trouble communicating sometimes... Or all the time, and everyone deserves to be believed in."

Promotion

Alex & Sierra began promoting the album by performing on Today and Yahoo! Music on June 23, 2014 as part of the promotion for their single "Scarecrow". They also promoted the single on popular blogging sites such as perezhilton.com and rickey.org A lyric video featuring puppets instead of the singers themselves was released on May 27, 2014. While they released the official music video for the song on July 11, 2014.

Critical

Matt Collar of AllMusic gave a positive review of the album stating "Alex & Sierra have delivered an album that showcases their crowd-pleasing musical chemistry."

Commercial

It's About Us debuted at number 9 on the New Zealand Albums Chart the week ending October 13, 2014. The album debuted at number 8 on the Billboard 200 with 27,399 copies sold within its first week of release. The album has sold 86,000 copies in the United States as of August 2016.