FEATURE: Spotlight: Eli — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Eli

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THERE is a lot of excitement…

around the release of Eli’s debut album, Stage Girl. That is out on 31st October. I am going to come to some recent interviews where we can learn more about this extraordinary artist. I am going to start out with an interview from Capital FM, and their My Life in 20. It is fun and insightful, and there are a few questions and answers that particularly interested me:

“20) What album could you listen to 20 times over and not get bored?

I’m gonna go with SZA's Ctrl. It’s the most absolute classic timeless album, especially for my generation I think. It was truly the first album I was proud to call my favourite.

19) What topic could you talk about for 19 minutes straight without notes?

The cultural impact and shift that is, was and will forever be 'Diet Pepsi' by Addison Rae.

18) What was the most important thing to happen in your life when you were 18?

I started to accept my mental health issues like OCD and depression. I also began to try, and fail, to work on coping with and managing them. It was a moment of clarity and fear but an important step in my mental health journey.

12) If you could live the life of any other person for 12 hours, who would you be?

Simone Biles. I wanna know what’s it like to fly.

7) Which of the seven deadly sins are you most guilty of?

Honestly, I don’t know what a seven deadly sin is and I even tried to google it but I am gay so that’s apparently a sin or something.

6) You can invite six people to your dream dinner party, who would you invite?

Ariana Grande, Mariah Carey, Nicki Minaj, J.Lo, Rihanna and Frances Whitney.

1) Who or what is your one true love?

Halloween is my one true love. Also Nathan Fielder and Alex Consani, strictly parasocial”.

The next interview I am going to source is from June. Eli released her Girl of Your Dream E.P. that month, so there was a lot of intertest in her unique and outstanding music. Although perhaps not as known in the U.K. as she is in the U.S. and especially in L.A., there is growing interest and exposure here. This “Massachusetts-to-LA transplant making music that sounds like it’s 2003” is being hailed as Pop’s new sensation. She has co-signs in the form of Addison Rae and Troye Sivan. The brilliant i-D spoke with Eli in the summer about her extraordinary E.P. and her burgeoning sound and career:

“She’s been hustling for a while. Eli spent a few years as a Vine kid, and dropped early tracks released under a different name (she signed to Zelig Records, home of King Princess, in 2023). At 24, she’s finally having her moment, even if some influences she’s pulling from were barely on her radar growing up. Like the aesthetics of Stacie Orrico (she doesn’t know who she is), or the sounds of Imogen Heap’s 2005 record Speak For Yourself. What is real, though, are her lyrics: inspired by her life in America’s coastal cities, run-ins with nepo babies who brag about screwing The Dare, embracing a DIY attitude, and a series of dumb men she’s since left behind.
Eli writes and produces almost everything herself—albeit guided by the musical friends she lives with in East LA. She describes herself as “a Victorian woman trapped in 2013.” We called her up to talk about persona, pop girls, and why all of a sudden the world is ready for her sound”.

Tell me this lore. You’re from Massachusetts right?

Yep, I grew up Catholic in suburbia. Now it’s Trumpville. I was itching to escape. I went to a scary public school and didn’t have friends. Singing online was my escape. That’s where it started—making music alone in my bedroom. Then I moved to New York for school for a bit.

What did you study?

A BFA in music. But it was during COVID. Then there was an abroad semester that I took. I went to Berlin for just five months. It was also still COVID, so not the rawest Berlin club experience. So I was like, “Okay, I’m out of New York now. I have a moment to evaluate who Eli is out of Massachusetts and New York. What am I trying to do?” Where do people go? Los Angeles.

When did you make the move?

2023. I was in love with a girl, so I impulsively moved back to New York for a year. That’s what “Marianne” is about. It was the craziest decision I’ve ever made. I could see myself staying here for five years, then I’m going to Italy.

What’s LA done for your songwriting?

It’s been instrumental. It’s helped me understand the entertainment world. I’ve gone to the clurbs, I’ve gone to Tenants of the Trees, and left uncomfortable or pissed off enough to write a song about it. Everybody has their own journey, but there’s a lot of people who are kicking their feet up, yet they’re killing it. That’s [what inspired] “God Bless the BFA.”

I wanted to talk about the mood and the aesthetics of the music. Where did that come from?

I’ve heard the Disney Channel storyline of “Be yourself.” I’ve had therapists tell me to be myself. I have a lovely “Live, Laugh, Love” mom who has “Be Yourself” hung up all over the house. But I did not fully grasp what that meant until this past year. I realized how much I was running from as a queer person. After moving here and being around people that I love, for the first time I had the space to figure myself out. Now, everything has hit me artistically in all the right places.

I wasn’t even consciously trying to make something really joyous. I was long inspired by pop girls. All of the artwork [for the EP] I made on my phone. I’ve been that girl in her bedroom, not going to class, just sleeping all day then waking up at 3 a.m. to go on YouTube to watch Ariana Grande. I was Stan Twitter adjacent.

All your current songs are from an upcoming album called Stage Girl, right? What’s the vision?

I believe that singing is my calling—God put me here to sing. That’s what my mom told me growing up and it stuck. Not saying that I’m here to bring back singing…”.

I guess there will be more interviews with Eli around the release of Stage Girl. I am going to end with a recent interview from NME. If you have not heard the music of Eli yet then make sure you check it out, as she is astonishing. One of the most promising voices in Pop right now. As NME say in the top of their interview,“ the 24-year-old singer delivers a dazzling audition for pop superstardom, bringing with her a heightened sense of self-awareness and authenticity”. Before sourcing from the interview, there are a couple of key observations. How Stage Girl promotes joy and really brings that to the fore. How there is going to be a mix of the best Pop of the '90s and '00s. Acts like TLC and Mariah Carey alongside Disney Channel stars of the ‘00s. Also, Eli is really putting singing key in the mix. In terms of the power and potential of the voice. It is a true singing album. Power, depth, emotion and layers to every song:

“In her childhood, Eli was a “living, breathing theatre kid” who never actually did musicals growing up in the small town of Norfolk, Massachusetts. “I kind of resented the part of my upbringing that wasn’t able to have that outlet,” she reveals, but also owns up to having it in “a weird internet way” as a former Vine star. She later went to New York to study a BFA at NYU – “this arts degree that I didn’t get, but I almost did,” she says cheekily – before releasing a string of singles under a different name and moving to LA.

Drawing from Y2K culture isn’t new by any means, but there’s a heightened self-awareness and authenticity with the way Eli does it in her music now that elevates it beyond nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It’s how she genuinely loves the “mismatched, disgusting, kitschy” outfits of the era or creates lyric videos that look like they were made on Windows Movie Maker, but does so with a nudge and a wink. Much of that comes through on the album’s two breakout singles – girlhood anthem ‘Marianne’ and the “cheesy, cheap piano”-led masterpiece that is ‘Girl Of Your Dreams’. Both have helped her find fans in some of the current pop scene’s leading names, including Troye Sivan, Doechii and Zara Larsson.

‘Girl Of Your Dreams’ was a practice in “instinctual” creation and “pure joy” that happened at the end of a long day in the studio when she and her collaborators (Mike White and Sean Kennedy, known for their work with former NME cover stars Chappell Roan and UPSAHL, respectively) had a bit of extra time. But as much as she works off instinct, ‘Stage Girl’ is also highly tuned and intentional – after all, it is only a 10-song record in an era of 40-song deluxe editions. “I’m a firm believer in cohesion and curation, especially on a debut album,” she says.

s Eli waxes lyrical about the ins and outs of both her brand of pop and her peers’, she stumbles upon a revelation. “This conversation is really honing in on the fact that I’m a fan, and you can be a fan and you can also be a star,” she muses. But, for that epiphany to really make sense, you’d need to view it through the lens of the fictional American Idol-style TV singing competition that the singer has created to accompany her debut album.

On YouTube, Eli has been documenting her path to becoming the next stage girl, from bedroom singer to live auditions. Through the series, Eli is unafraid to both poke fun at herself and live her truth, from a cheeky nod to her being an artist who happens to be trans (one of the characters she plays is named ‘Eliza Mann’) to her story as a “small town girl who’s terrified to leave her bedroom”.

It’s a universe that Eli’s growing legion of fans have bought into wholeheartedly as well, sharing their excitement about Stage Girl online and going to shows in character. “When I’m seeing them be like, ‘I’m the next stage girl’, and talk about how they’re gonna fit into Stage Girl, what their talents are and how they’re gonna audition, I’m still having trouble understanding that they’re real because that’s really crazy,” she says.

It might be hard for Eli to get her head around that reaction, but her imminent debut album should only escalate the enthusiasm around her. As she continues to grow, she’s enjoying exploring all the “joy, potential, worth and value” of her artistry, and has big plans for the future, like bringing her one-woman show, also called ‘Stage Girl’, to New York’s theatre stages, followed by Australia because “they stream my music, they’re killing it”.

I am going to end there. Stage Girl is definitely one of the most anticipated albums of the year. One of the most important debut albums of this year. With huge fans such as Doechii recognising the brilliance of Eli, she is going to have this upward trajectory. So many great times ahead of her! At the moment, there are a few mainstream Pop artists perhaps not at their best. Lacking a certain energy and originality. Artists like Eli are injecting something much needed. She is going to be this global megastar…