Welcome to the Ele Ivory’s drama club days - the best days of your life
Ele Ivory is an indie-pop artist from Nashville. Her music is inspired by both musical theater and piano-based elements. She creates a whole musical theater experience with strong storytelling and sweet, dynamic instruments throughout her latest album Drama Club Days. With stunning captivating vocals Ele introduces us into the beautiful world that she created within her album. This whole experience truly feels like witnessing a play on stage or watching a movie.
MARIA: How did you get into music? When was the day when you woke up and decided that this is what you wanna do now?
ELE: I've thought about that a lot and I've never really known when I didn't want to do music. It was just always a part of my life. I can't think back on a time when music wasn't in my life somehow. I grew up singing in a church. My dad was a music minister and so I was always singing in productions there. And then I started acting and was really involved in musical theater when I was a kid in Atlanta. And so it was just kind of always something I did like, I just love to sing. It was just a part of a part of my life for a long time and I always remember writing little duties or singing songs to myself, just like making whatever random thing up when I was a kid. And so I wrote my first song when I was 11. And I was kind of like, this is it, this is what I wanted.
MARIA: How would you describe the genre of your music? And has it changed since you started writing your own songs.
ELW: I do identify with a pop genre and I think pop can obviously mean a lot of things. But I'm very story based in my music. I love the nuances. And I love the poetic aspects of lyricism and it's definitely changed over the years. When I first started writing songs, I just knew I wanted to write songs. And I remember having a conversation with a co-writer when I was in high school, and I was just like, I don't know what my genre is, I don't know what I'm doing or what kind of music I'm making. What do I tell myself? What do I tell people? She was like “Stop worrying about that, you're worrying about the wrong thing, just make the music and then see what it can be called or what people see”.
And then all these elements of my musical theater past and my love for an arrangement and orchestra, all of these are all coming together to create my sound.
MARIA: You mentioned that you really like musicals, maybe some musical theater moment that inspired your sound?
ELE: Growing up I was just obsessed with The Phantom of The Opera. I remember I entered this talent competition. I think I was eight years old and I was like “I'm gonna wear my pink Sleeping Beauty costume and I'm gonna sing “Think of Me” from The Phantom of The Opera”. The most melodramatic eight year old ever! And I just loved those moments in theater that were so cutting that you couldn't avoid them. And I remember my parents took me to see The Phantom of The Opera at Fox Theater in downtown Atlanta and it was the most magnificent thing I had ever witnessed. And I love the storytelling through everything, it's not just the music, it's the costumes and it's the staging and it's the props. So when I was creating my record, my debut album, I was like okay, I want to make an album, but I don't want it to just be an album. I want to create a visual world with it and create a bunch of music videos that get to tell the story too. And I want to create instrumentals that kind of book into this record of having an overshare and a finale and having an intermission and that way, it's a whole moment weaved together within this collection of songs. In the end musicals definitely shaped everything with my music. Then I just love the piano, rock girls of the 90s and early 2000s: Kate Bush and Fiona Apple, Sarah Morales, Regina Spektor. I love that era and I feel like it's coming back. So I really want to be a part of that.
MARIA: What was it like writing your song “A Little More”?
ELE: So “A Little More” was kind of a funny song because I sometimes will have a specific moment or a specific conversation that spurs a song into existence. But “A Little More” was kind of one of those songs that flowed out. But I was thinking about it afterwards “What inspired this song? Why did it happen like that?” And I think it was years and years of having these conversations and friendships and relationships, whether personal or through music, where I just could feel censoring myself more and more. I am censoring everything I'm saying because I'm such a people pleaser. And so it was just a moment to break out of this habit. And I still do it. I am very much a people pleaser, and I want to work on that for myself. But that song was a therapeutic moment of what's been going on and things I just need to admit.
MARIA: What is the general message that you’d like to send to your listeners through your songs?
ELE: I started writing songs when I was 11. I'm an only child, a music nerd. Through music it was where I felt a connection with people and where I felt heard. So when I started creating my own music, it was really to give a voice to the things I was feeling that I didn't think I could tell anyone or had the words really to say unless I was writing them in lyrics. And so that's what I really want to give other people with my music. To give them the space to feel like, oh my gosh, I've been feeling that way and didn't even know what to call it until I heard it in that song! Because that's just what's so amazing about music is you can be experiencing all these emotions and not know how to process it and music just gives you an outlet.
MARIA: What advice would you give to someone who would want to follow into your footsteps?
ELE: I would say just start the thing: write, write the song. Try to get out of your head a little bit because I know, when I start spinning out and I feel stuck in taking the next step, it's because I'm just in my head too much and I need to create. I need to get back to the piano, to just start doing something and try to get it out. Start surrounding yourself with people that believe in what you're doing. That makes all the difference. And don't be discouraged if people think what you're doing is weird. Or don't get it sometimes because, you know, there's so many different types of art and everything's not going to resonate with everyone. But you will find people that it does resonate with.
MARIA: Do you ever have a writer's block? How do you get out of it?
ELE: Yeah, I usually like to write songs from the top down. There's a lot of emphasis on the hook like “Let's start with the hook and then write kind of backwards”. So I'm writing a story whenever I get stuck on a line that doesn't make sense. The line that isn't captivating enough. I usually try to flip myself out of that habit and start with the chorus or do the Nashville thing and start with the hook. Just start somewhere else. Or if I'm stuck in a specific chord progression or stuck in a certain sound I just try to make the complete opposite thing. For example, I'm not allowed to write in the key of E anymore because everything's the same. Whatever it is that becomes a pattern to me and it becomes too familiar and so I'm stuck. So I just tried to do the opposite. And that usually works.
Maria: If you can have your fans remember one thing about you what would it be?
Ele: I guess I would want them to remember that their story is important. For me, finding my voice and being able to feel comfortable in actually expressing myself has been such a game changer. And, you know, I know that I'm not replaceable, and I know that you're not replaceable. I know that whoever's listening to my music isn't replaceable and their life and their story matters. And so I would want them to just remember that when they're listening to my music and remember that when they come out to show, that they're important and that there's nobody like them. I never want that to sound cheesy because it's not. It's just the truth.
Maria: Do you have any upcoming projects?
Ele: So since this is a visual album, I'm releasing the music videos slowly but surely. And I have two more videos. So my video for Jen that I'm super duper excited about. It's very like Twin Peaks inspired. So I just can't wait to see it because it's something I've been ruminating on for a really long time. So the music video for Jan is going to come out in late February or March. And then I have another video for my song that's also on the record that's going to come out later this spring as well. And I also have been working on a live version of the title track of the record for drama club days. So there's gonna be a live version of that song in a video to go along with it.
So lots of lots of videos for the spring and then I'm just really excited to get back in the studio and work on the next songs and share those soon!
Make Sure To Check Out A New Official Music Video “Gin” By Ele Ivory!