’I Want To Be The Example I Needed Growing Up: Your Next Pop Obsession Eli On Living Her Dream

US singer-songwriter Eli is celebrating the release of her debut album Stage GirlIf there’s one thing to know about the singer-songwriter Eli, it’s that she loves pop music. Like, really loves it, with an appreciation that stretches right back to her childhood, a knowledge that verges on encyclopaedic and a passion that shines through not just in her music and her visuals, but also when we catch up with her just days before the release of her debut album, Stage Girl.The first time Eli recalls being stopped in her tracks by pop music was hearing Mariah Carey’s Christmas album as a child in her family home.“I know it’s a random one. I wish I could say that Glitter was being played in my house, but it wasn’t,” she tells HuffPost UK, referring to the oft-forgotten Mariah soundtrack album that eventually became a fan-favourite many years after it was initially released.“My parents would play that album during the holiday season, and it was one of the first times that, in an insanely impactful way, I was hearing something and I was like, ‘what the fuck is entering my ears right now?’.“I hate to say this, because people say this about a lot of singers and it’s cliché, but it felt like heaven’s gates were opening. Hearing her, while I was hanging ornaments on the tree, I was like, ‘I need to Shazam this’ – too scared to ask my parents like, ‘hey, who is this?’.”From then, a young Eli quickly became obsessed with Miley Cyrus – or, more specifically, her Disney alter-ego.“I live for Hannah Montana,” Eli enthuses. “Now, later in life, I’m owning the fact that she was such a big influence, because maybe from 15 to 20 or something, I would not want to say that. I would be like, ‘no, I love Björk’, or like, ‘I’m really into cool shit’. But Hannah Montana is cool as fuck.”Eli has been a pop fan since childhood, which she's channelled into her much-hyped new albumLooking back, it’s not too hard to imagine why Eli – growing up as a queer child in suburbanMassachusetts, with what felt like impossible hopes of pursuing her own dreams – would feel an affinity to Miley’s character in the show,an unremarkable schoolgirl by day, who could don a blonde wig and become someone else entirely.“There were so many layers underneath what the Disney corporation was putting forward,” she says of Hannah Montana. “That is my favourite stuff, when it peeks through. It reminds me of myself, and my little repressed life.“Until now, I feel like a lot of things were being hidden, that were trying to shine through – things that I love about myself as a human now.”Eli’s love for Miley continued as the former child star’s career evolved, and she shed her Disney image on songs like Can’t Be Tamed and during her headline-grabbing Bangerz era.“Seeing it all unfold, it was so cool to see someone escape this place that may have been a bit repressed, or conservative, or ‘got to be bottled up’, ‘got to appeal to the masses’ and ‘appeal to the conservatives’ or whatever,” she says.“I don’t want to intellectualise it too much, but it’s freaking incredible. And Hannah’s also a drag queen, and also I’m Trannah Montana – so I live for all of it.”There’s an obvious reason Eli’s love of pop runs so deep. For the 25-year-old, it often felt like a lifeline during the more difficult and isolating times she faced in her own adolescence.“Growing up in the prime MTV music video era, I’m seeing Britney Spears, and I’m thinking ‘who the fuck is this woman?’, and everything I ever wanted is being reflected back at me,” she recalls. “And I’m feeling ashamed about it, and confused about it. I’m also feeling invigorated and excited.”Eli on the cover of her new album Stage GirlFor that reason, Eli is particularly upset about how pop has historically been so readily dismissed by so-called “serious” music critics and commentators, which she puts down to the fact it has always been a genre enjoyed by women and the queer community.“It’s misogyny, and it’s patriarchy,” she states. “And it’s like, fuck your rock band. Fuck your boring dad music. It will never be Britney, it will never be Rihanna, it will never ever be Beyoncé, it will never be Madonna, it will never be the glitz, the glam…”“And not even the glitz and glam!” Eli continues, interrupting her own train of thought. “They tried to do the glitz and glam with fucking glam rock. It’s such an annoying thing, too, when people value [men embracing ‘glam rock’] as high fucking art. And I’m like… from California Gurls and Teenage Dream, I’m getting double, triple, quadruple artistry in that than any of these boring rock bands.”“Not David Bowie,” she quickly points out. “Sorry, David Bowie, it’s not about you. But some of these examples – what? You fuck with them because they’re men, and they can wear their hair all colourful, and wear a jumpsuit, but [women] can’t? Fuck you!”She laments that this “double standard” even permeates those who love pop, pointing out: “Growing up with Kesha and Rihanna and a lot of others, it was like, ‘they can’t sing’. And that shit got to me. I was like, ’oh can they not sing? What is this?’.“It’s not good, because it affects everyone. You’re so young and impressionable, and there’s so much internalised misogyny, homophobia, all these horrible fucking things.”Because of this, Eli found that she often felt a mixture of emotions about owning up to loving the pop stars she idolised when she was growing up.Listing key moments like seeing Katy Perry’s debut album cover for the first time at Barnes And Noble, or watching tour clips of Ariana Grande on YouTube, Eli remembers “crying in my bed, feeling like, ‘oh my god, I could never be a beautiful feminine woman who embodies everything that I feel like life is about’”.“They felt like these incredibly important moments in my life, that for a while I was embarrassed by, because of, probably, a lot of the judgement that comes from a lot of the, like, horrible things that men do…” she admits.For that reason, when Eli was putting Stage Girl together, she had in the forefront of her mind that she wanted to create something her younger self would be proud of.Eli counts pop legends like Katy Perry, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus' Hannah Montana years among some of her earliest inspirations“Everything from the titles to the lyrics to the sound choices in my production to the cover art of the singles and the cover art of the album, it’s all about little five-year-old Eli, six-year-old Eli, 12-year-old Eli… what would have grabbed her?” she says. “What would have sucked her into this project and made her feel like, ‘I want to listen to this’?”Much has been made of the Y2K aesthetic Eli appears to be leaning into in the sound and visuals for her new music, something many other pop artists have had success with in the last few years.For Eli, though, there’s a deeper meaning to it all.“It’s not a Y2K project, it’s not trying to recreate any kind of sound from the past,” she insists. “But it’s using sounds and things that existed at a time when I was not feeling safe, and was feeling dysphoric and very detached and a lot of the hard things that [still] make me [sad] – and reclaiming and to trying to give newer generations a place to escape into.”Eli affirms that she’s happy she’s reached a place where she feels more comfortable “really showing up as me, and really letting myself exist as I am, even in a time when it’s scary to me”.“It’s always, I guess, been scary to some extent,” she says, pausing, before changing tact. “But also fuck that, who cares? Let’s ignore the fact that it’s scary. No it’s not scary, actually, pause! I’m living!!”At this, she beams a smile and lets out an excited scream.“Being able to be in my body and showing up to music in such a new and exciting way for myself” is something she suggests “subconsciously unfolded” more and more as work on Stage Girl got underway.“Everything was falling into place as I made pop songs that were just kind of out of… inauguration [terror],” she explains. “The [2024] election to the inauguration is when it started. It was like, ‘maybe I will be locked up and killed’, I was very scared, and still am scared! But…” she trails off again. “Ugh, we’re back to the scared.”“But,” she insists. “I wanted to to lean into the joy, and lean into the glamour, and I think that is the driving force.I need that example, and I needed that example, and I had that example from women. And under the family tree of women, how amazing would it be if I’d had that from a trans woman?”“It’s a small part of the work to be done,” she concedes. “But I do think art has an important place to [create that space] where a young trans woman or a young queer kid could dive into and could exist in, and – on the surface level, – dress up in a costume and have some fun.“But under all of that, they could really explore, and unpack, and reclaim things that newer generations will also have to face because unfortunately, things are regressing in some ways. I would love to exist on the joyful side, or exist on the side where I am providing the escapism that I needed.”Eli hopes that Stage Girl can be an antidote to some of the fear and anxiety many within the LGBTQ+ community are feeling in the current political climateAnd it’s not just her own complicated past she wants to reclaim on Stage Girl.For the last few years, there’s been something of a reckoning over 2000s pop culture, whether that’s the way certain female pop stars were treated by the media, the overworking that many young musicians faced or the exploitation of contestants on shows like The X Factor and American Idol (Eli notes that she tried out for almost all these shows, but never got anywhere with any of them).Alongside the Stage Girl album, Eli’s accompanying visuals have centred around a fictitious reality series of the same name, with which she hopes to create a more inclusive and welcoming space out of something that could previously have been associated with bullying and toxicity.“There were some lovely, incredible things about seeing somebody who I saw myself in, who was like, ‘I’m working this day job’, or ‘I’m a 16-year-old girl and I’m from a random town and here I am, Jordin Sparks, here to perform’,” she says of her younger years spent watching American Idol. “That is amazing in itself. Her standing up there and showing the endless bounds of talent she has, that is beautiful.“What’s not beautiful is… I don’t know if I should go into detail. But even watching back Jordin Sparks’ audition, I’m a little off-put by the way these male judges treated her. I mean I’m very off-put, honestly, by a lot of the moments that happened in all of those seasons. There were so many examples.”Eli’s exposure to those kinds of shows from a young age, and the “abuse and bullying” faced by the contestants even led her to question whether the music industry was for her.“I loved singing when I was little,” Eli explains. “I loved singing so much, it felt so joyful. But for the person who grew up watching all those shows – and has now made a project that touches upon talent shows and that kind of thing – there was something so horrifying, that I carried with me for years, watching these judges abuse and bully people, who were showing up with their ambition or with their dreams, and just getting completely made fun of in a very terrifying way.“There was a period of years, where I was like, ‘well I can’t be a singer, because not only am I going to be bullied by these people and judged and ridiculed, also how do I know how what I’m showing up as, and what I think sounds beautiful, is going to be received?’”As for Eli’s own pop dreams, they’re something that were established when she was a young child and “never left” her.“My parents always tell this story,... we were at some kind of family gathering and I was just jumping on the tables at, like, four years old singing The Wiggles, trying to perform,” she enthuses. “And then I would put on shows for my family. My brother and I thought we were like The Jonas Brothers. And then [came] the internet – freaking singing on the internet, because where else was I gonna do it?“I went behind my parents’ back because they were a little conservative. They were like, ‘you can’t make a social media account’ – which maybe is kind of fabulous of them, looking back. But I didn’t listen. I was just posting covers with tons of hashtags… I had a business email in my bio, and I was like, ‘I’m going to be a fucking star’.”“And that never went away. I’m still mentally ill,” she adds with a laugh.Anyone who’s engaged with Stage Girl so far will know that Eli’s sense of humour is an important part of her personal brand. Her videos have a home-made, DIY feel that allow her warmth and charm to shine through, and she’s also not afraid to lean into the ridiculous side of things to raise a smile or a laugh.Eli says it’s “refreshing” to be releasing music at a time when other artists (she specifically lists Sabrina Carpenter, Audrey Hobert, Zara Larsson and Chappell Roan, while also pointing out that early Katy Perry was also an influence on her) are allowing their senses of humour to shine in their artform.“It’s disarming, and it’s also so inviting,” she says. “We need to laugh!”However, she admits that injecting humour into her art is also something she’s still “trying to find the balance” with.“Obviously laughing is actually the life force, laughter is amazing,” she says. “But it’s also sometimes used to mask up serious things, and I’m trying to make sure I stay away from that.“I sometimes lean into the humour to take away from my sincerity. Sometimes. So, as much as, yes, in my music there’s always going to be humour, and I also think humour is being explored a lot more in pop music in a fierce fucking way, and I also love being able to have the humour and also be like artistic seriousness and have them exist at the same time and have that be a beautiful collage of it… this past month for a second I was like, ‘OK, wait, I’m being a little too silly’.”“I just don’t want to make a mockery of myself,” she admits. “I don’t want to be a parody act. I hate that word. Sometimes industry people call the Girl Of Your Dreams music video a parody, and I’m like, ‘baby, no’.”Eli points out that her humour has also had its uses while navigating the music industry behind the scenes, too.“I thought I needed to show up to a big label meeting with all the big dogs, and really wear my business casual whatever or serious suit, serious face,” she shares.“But how fabulous to be in those rooms [as myself]. And the humour sometimes can be used as a force to be like, ‘guys what the fuck are we doing here? Why are you doing this? Why are you exploiting me? Why are you exploiting tons of artists?’. It also challenges a lot of things that need to be unpacked within our systems, here in America, the crazy capitalistic music industry jargon and legal things that exist.”“It needs to be challenged by a chubby 25-year-old trans woman who is just making a mockery of some of this behaviour,” she says. “Girl. Oh my god.”View this post on InstagramA post shared by Eli (@journalofadoll)Having been “working at this forever”, Eli says she’s still a little in disbelief that her debut album is now within reach.“I thought I was just going to feel like every other release, like, kind of complex feelings of, like, ‘oh why am I not Beyoncé?’, but also, ’oh my god, amazing that anyone is listening to this’, which is the usual way it goes with the singles,” she admits.“But I went to bed last night, and I had this, like, tickle in my tummy that felt like before Christmas. I was like, ’oh, it’s release week’. I was so excited.”“In some ways… that feeling is similar to, like, when Yours Truly came out,” she admits, referring to the debut album by Ariana Grande, another of Eli’s personal idols. “That is kind of the epitome of a perfect pop album to me, a life-changing album.“When that came out, I was, like, on the Instagram, Twitter, social media, internet wave with her, I live for a roll-out on the internet. So, the idea of putting out an album? Living the album roll-out fantasy is, like… it’s crazy that it’s happening.”And for the former Hannah Montana stan, her trademark 2000s-esque fedora has become like her version of the character’s transformative blonde wig, opening the door to her own op dreams.“It really is,” she agrees, accompanied by another excited scream. “We were working with a stylist a couple of weeks ago, which is, like, a whole new thing for me, because usually it’s just me in my bedroom. And they were like, ‘girl, this fedora’. And I was like, ‘hold on!’.“You’ve got to fight for your art! Like, they don’t understand, this fedora represents a lot more than just an ugly hat. Like, girl…”Eli’s debut album Stage Girl is out now.MORE MUSIC INTERVIEWS:Self Esteem: ‘I Achieved Everything I Set Out To Do, And I Was Sadder Than Ever’Jake Shears: 'It Really Feels Like The World Might Need Scissor Sisters Again'Rufus Wainwright: 'Our Rights Are Being Decimated, We Have To Unite''I Can Tell You're Weird, Lean Into It': How Debbii Dawson Became The Next Big Thing In Pop

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