Does She Look Familiar?

If the woman pictured above looks familiar, you've probably been watching Hulu lately. The mystery lady is Andy Allo, star of Wells Fargo's "Sydney" commercial. You know the one. A young musician named Sydney is shown looking at instruments, refusing to sell her car, and performing on stage, when suddenly it's revealed that a Wells Fargo banker is just explaining Sydney's financial success story to two new customers. Well, Sydney is not played by just a random actress, Andy Allo is a real musician.

Allo is a Cameroonian singer-songwriter-guitar-player who has toured and written music with Prince, released two albums, UnFresh and Superconductor, and performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live. You could says she's a bit more successful than her commercial counterpart. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Allo spoke about her role and how it relates to her real life.

It is very close to my story, actually quite spot on. Before I got the opportunity to tour with Prince and do all these amazing things, I was a struggling artist, and I went to a bank and asked for a loan. Because I didn’t have any credit history or anything like that, I wasn’t approved.

As for her name being changed to Sydney in the commercial, she's fine with it. "I think the idea behind changing the name and putting a character to it is to make it a little more universal."

Even though her career took off through her collaboration with Prince and she recently had a European tour, Allo was still excited about being featured on the Wells Fargo commercial. She wrote on her Facebook page, "Have You Seen The New Wells Fargo Commercial Featuring Yours Truly? So excited I got to sing the song too!" The song is not one of Allo's originals, but was written specifically for the commercial. It's called "Unstoppable" and Allo went on to record a full version. She says, "We’re still figuring out when it will be coming out and the way they’d like to release it."

Check out "Unstoppable" and Andy Allo in action for yourself.