Lizzy McAlpine Watched 'Ceilings' Go Viral in Real-Time — Even Though She 'Wasn't Expecting' It to Be a Hit

In April 2022, Lizzy McAlpine released her second studio album, five seconds flat, and started a bet with her manager. McAlpine bet on "all my ghosts" — an upbeat track about fearing how your past can interrupt your present — to be the most-streamed song from the album when they checked back a year later. Her manager bet on "reckless driving," a collaboration with Ben Kessler where McAlpine worries about just how far her partner is willing to go when it comes to their relationship.

There's still a month and a half to go before the one-year anniversary of the album's release on April 8, 2023, but it's likely that neither of them will be winning the bet. McAlpine's "ceilings," which lies as close to the middle as it can get on the 14-song album, has emerged — seemingly out of nowhere — as the record's undeniable hit. The streams (over 52 million on Spotify alone) speak for themselves.

"I wasn't expecting 'ceilings' to be the most streamed," McAlpine, 23, tells PEOPLE of the song that she says sounds almost identical to the original demo she recorded. "I just knew immediately what I wanted it to sound like."

A ballad that imagines the dreaded end of a night with a partner — "I don't wanna leave / But I have to go" — "ceilings" is a reflection of what it feels like to look back on a relationship you're no longer in.

"I had just ended things with someone and then went to London for three months to … not escape that [relationship], but also, kind of, do that," McAlpine says. "And this song is basically just a reflection on that relationship — but not being in it anymore."

The song's final verse, "But it's not real / And you don't exist / And I can't recall the last time I was kissed," brings a shocking turn of events as McAlpine reveals that it's all just a daydream — or, maybe, a memory of what used to be.

It wasn't intended to be the show-stopping moment it's become, she says. "I wasn't thinking, like, 'Oh, I'm gonna put a plot twist in.'"

The so-called "plot twist" at the end of the song has resonated most with fans on TikTok, where McAlpine has seen a tremendous amount of growth in recent weeks.

She says she "definitely noticed" how many people were using the "ceilings" audio on TikTok, but it wasn't until she released a sped-up version that she realized, "'Oh, OK, so this is real.'"

There are more than 27,000 videos posted on the app using the sped-up audio, which is just the final verse of the song, the "plot twist," at a faster tempo. "I just watched it all happen in real-time. It was crazy. It's really cool."

In the music video for the song, released Tuesday, McAlpine "hard launches" her boyfriend, Michael Hanano, which she revealed in an Instagram post following the video's premiere.

She had previously teased that she had a new beau in her life on Instagram, with a "soft" launch posted in December of the couple. The three-slide post never showed Hanano's face, just the two of them together. "Officially launching kind of softly," she wrote in the caption.

McAlpine, a self-proclaimed "huge theater kid," pulls from the heart when it comes to her songwriting, which is largely based on her own life. "I don't know how to write about anything that's not something that I've experienced personally, firsthand," she explains.

Her storytelling lyrical style likely comes from her love of Broadway. "The storytelling, and the way that musicals are structured, are just so genius. And I think that – I don't know if it's consciously, or probably a little bit subconsciously — had made its way into my music," says McAlpine, who collaborated with FINNEAS on five seconds flat after DMing him on Instagram out of the blue. "That's all I do," she says of reaching out to fellow artists on social media. "That's how I make all my connections."

Her love of musical theater comes in part from her own background in acting, which she did a lot of in her youth and throughout high school. "I almost went to college for acting," she says. "I was very, very close to doing that. So it's a huge part of my life."

Though she ended up going to Boston's Berklee College of Music — "I took the easy way out," she jokes — acting is still something she has her sights set on. "I'm actively attempting to act again."

Aside from seeking out opportunities to act again, the Philadelphia native says she'll be spending the year working on producing her upcoming third album. It's been written for a "long time," McAlpine says of the forthcoming record, and now she's working on writing for her fourth album.

Though she can't share any details about when new music might be making its way onto fans' playlists — "It's taking a long time," she says of the third album — she is shedding light on the "different vibes" of her next two records.

"They are about completely different things," she says, describing the third as "very sad," and about "similar themes" to five seconds flat, while the second is — finally! — about "healing."

In the meantime, McAlpine is getting ready to embark on her second headline tour, "The End of the Movie," which will hit 18 U.S. cities in April and May before heading to Europe in June. She had also been slated to support John Mayer on his upcoming solo acoustic tour, but later pulled out due to reported scheduling conflicts.

While she's "excited" to get on the road again, performing live is difficult for her "emotionally."

"It's just very draining," she says. "I'm so sensitive — it's insane. I get so overstimulated and overwhelmed so easily that it's very difficult for me to play shows."

It's likely that the often-heavy emotional themes of her music play a role. That's part of what makes "orange show speedway" her favorite song to perform live. It's one of the more upbeat tracks on five seconds flat, so she saves the best for last.

"It's really fun," she says of the song that is an ode to falling in love at the California racetrack. "It's the closer of my set. So it's so much fun to see people dance to it."

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While it may not be her favorite, it wasn't until she toured that McAlpine realized just how substantial of a fanbase she had amassed since the pandemic, which she called "a turning point" in her career.

She began posting covers of songs on Instagram in 2020, watched her follower count grow, and then released her first album that summer. "I was just able to reach more people because no one was doing anything and they were all just on their phones, so I capitalized on that," she says. "It has just been a steady incline since then."

After releasing original music for the first time during a time of isolation, it took performing live for McAlpine to "contextualize" her fan base.

"I couldn't really place it, and then I toured and I was like, 'Woah, there's actually people that wanna see me!'" she explains.

Her astonishment at that is on par with how she feels about everything else taking off in her life.

"I feel like I have such low expectations, that everything that happens is very surprising to me," McAlpine tells PEOPLE. "It's all exciting."