The Alchemist: When Your Higher Self Is a Baddie

How Qveen Herby Transmuted Small-Town Shame Into Witchy World-making (and Business Building!)

I didn’t realize how hungry I was. That’s the thing about starvation—you can forget what nourishment feels like when you’ve been surviving on crumbs for so long. But there I was on a podcast, unable to stop quoting lines from The Alchemist, Qveen Herby’s 2024 EP that has become something like scripture for my psyche. Lines about magic and intuition and “witchy dispositions”.¹ About being an entrepreneur, not a pop star. About art as a reminder of power—mine, hers, yours, ours.

And suddenly I understood: I’d been starving for art that spoke to the specific intersection of myself that our culture pretends doesn’t exist. The woman on a healing journey who’s also wildly ambitious. The one with tarot cards on her desk and a business plan in her laptop. The energy that refuses the male gaze while building a business. The witch-entrepreneur who won’t choose between crystals and commerce.

Qveen Herby is serving a feast, and I am finally eating.

Part I: The Death of the Good Girl

To understand The Alchemist, you have to understand what died to make it possible.

Amy Renee Heidemann was born in 1986 in Seward, Nebraska—population 7,000, where Friday night lights and Sunday morning church were the twin pillars of respectable existence.² She grew up in what she calls “Jesus town,” in a strict Christian household where karma was considered an edgy concept and anything outside Christianity simply didn’t exist in her worldview.³

She had talent. She had ambition. She went to Berklee College of Music, met Nick Noonan, and together they started making music—rap covers on YouTube that showcased her genuine technical skill.⁴ But when Epic Records came calling in 2011, they didn’t want her rap. They wanted something that would make money. Something palatable. Something for the whole family.

They got Karmin.

And Karmin gave us “Brokenhearted”—described by critics as “sugary, teen-friendly bubblegum pop” and “the sunniest song to ever bear a title like ‘Broken Hearted.’”⁵ It was a hit. Top 20 in the US, top 10 in the UK, Australia, New Zealand.⁶ The kind of success that looks like winning from the outside.

But Amy was suffocating.

The label controlled everything. When she and Nick got married in 2016—after more than a decade together—they were told it “wasn’t marketable.” So they had a secret backyard ceremony to save the label from what they considered a “marketing disaster.”⁷ Even her love had to hide itself for her career to be commercially viable.

She describes Karmin as music “for my family”—squeaky-clean enough to play at Nebraska reunions, sanitized enough that no one would be uncomfortable.⁸ She was performing palatability. She was the good girl from Jesus town who made it big without threatening anyone’s worldview.

And that version of herself was dying.

Part II: “Karmin Is Dead, Long Live the Qveen”

In 2017, every Karmin social media account suddenly displayed the same message: “Karmin Is Dead, Long Live the Qveen.”⁹

It wasn’t a rebrand. It was a resurrection.

Amy chose the name Qveen Herby deliberately—”Qveen” from a college nickname, “Herby” from the Nebraska Cornhuskers mascot (later discovering it means “warrior”). And that V? She put it there for “vagina or female empowerment.”¹⁰ She literally encoded her reclaimed feminist power into her name.

But here’s what makes this transformation alchemical rather than just aesthetic: she describes Qveen Herby as her “higher self.” When asked about her visual choices—the Louise Brooks bob, the 1920s glamour, the Bride of Frankenstein gothic elegance—she explained: “When I started Qveen Herby, I actually saw her as my higher self. Because when I’m writing music, it feels like I’m channeling something from somewhere else. So when I’m dressing her for her character, it’s kind of the same thing. It’s like, what does SHE want to wear? What’s her most dynamic silhouette? What is her uniform?”¹¹

Notice the pronouns. She refers to Qveen Herby in third person—not as dissociation, but as aspiration. She’s asking what her most powerful, authentic, liberated self wants to express. Not what will sell. Not what men will approve of. Not what her family will accept. Not what the label demands.

She wants everything they told her she couldn’t have.

Part III: The Witch-Entrepreneur Refuses to Choose

Our culture loves a binary. You can be spiritual OR ambitious. Healing OR building. Crystals OR commerce. Choose one lane and stay in it.

Qveen Herby burns the lanes down.