- First of all it's it's been a minute since we caught up.
It's good to see you again.
And, and you have a new album coming out.
Congrats on it, it's really, really great.
It's a really special body of work, so congrats on it.
- Thank you.
Thanks very much, gosh.
Yeah, it's been a long time coming,
so it's fairly surreal that it's finally here,
but it feels right.
It feels instinctively like,
like there couldn't be any other time,
not earlier and not later.
So as much as the world is in a very changing time,
a very changing place right now, more than ever,
it still feels right.
- Absolutely.
When did you start conceptualizing this project?
I mean, it's been five years since, since the last album.
How, how far back do the roots go?
- I guess when I finished touring with "Delirium,"
so I guess that was 2015, then few,
a few more years of touring around that.
And a couple of other songs meant that,
sort of kept me occupied for a long time on the road.
And then, yeah, and then I came home and had the,
for the very first time, had days off and weeks off.
And it was so alien to me to have that time
that I had to kind of start reflecting on everything
and unraveling, you know my life for the past,
however many years, whether I wanted to or not,
I knew it was time to confront everything I've been through.
And then I was like, wow, I'm like a woman now.
I'm like, you know, I'm in my thirties.
And I'm, I'm seeing things in a different way.
I'm like trying to, I'm trying to figure out, you know,
how I, why I see things now compared to then,
and so, yeah I've had a lot of unraveling
and a lot of analyzing in a good way,
trying to understand that how I've become this person
and where my rationality comes from,
where my artistry comes from now, where my lyrics,
my, you know, my music and I'm having to just like,
yeah, I've navigated kind of, I guess,
the past few years and this album,
when I listen to it, makes me realize
that it's not like defining my life album.
It's the album that I had to write to kind
of process everything that happened
and to acknowledge who I was now
and that, you know, that meant going out of my comfort zone
and I explored a lot.
I explored different chord progressions,
different you know sonic sounds and different
just yeah, a lot, lots of different things,
but I also used the same songwriters and producers
that I worked with back in the day.
So I, you know, I still believe in like simplicity
and not having a crazy amount of people around,
and I have this like innate, you know,
like trust of them because they've known me
since the very beginning.
So they've kind of been through all of that stuff.
And so that's how, yeah this album came about (giggling).
- That's, I mean, it's great.
Obviously, it's natural to have that,
that sort of growing up process reflected on this album.
It certainly is, just as a listener.
I'm curious because also you've been through a lot
personally, over the last five years.
You got married last year.
How much did you draw upon those experiences
in, when writing these songs?
- To be honest, I, not much
because I've always, I've always felt like I...
It's weird, even, even though my,
my songs center so much around my relationships
and around my personal life,
I still feel like I've managed to separate the two,
which is strange because it's almost like I,
I do kind of, I do develop this kind of this,
this side of me that writes very, very, you know,
in a, in a very kind of personal and intimate way,
but at the same time, for example,
like something like my marriage is to me,
is like an untouchable thing.
It's like, when you, when you marry someone, you know,
it's for life and it's not something you play with,
and it's not like, in my twenties,
when I had relationships and I wrote songs about them.
It felt like I was still in a very naive place,
you know, still really trying to understand who I was,
and so respectfully, I felt like,
I felt like in the past that things were easily kind of,
I don't know what's the word,
like, I want to say, like, played with,
but like easily, like taken and used
as like songwriting fodder or whatever.
But something like marriage is just like,
I feel like it's something I, well certainly not right now
I'd wanna touch on because it seems like a sacred thing
and it either isn't like, isn't providing me with writing
right now because it's not something that I feel
like I want to, like, I don't know.
I like went to say like trivialize,
in the sense that I still write,
you know I still write pop records in a sense,
but this album is definitely more,
it's definitely more personal, but it's all about myself.
It's like, it's not about anyone else.
It's about finding love for myself,
and taking a long time to get there,
and, you know, and talking about the journey it took
for me to reach that point, I think.
But also, I did write the record like way before I met him.
So yeah, it has nothing of him on it, really.
- Maybe the next, maybe the next one.
It's totally fine.
- Maybe, but I don't know.
I don't know, we'll see.
- So I also want to mention, "Hate Me," with Juice WRLD
and that will also appear on this album.
I was just curious as to what your memories
of working on that song were obviously,
it's been roughly six months since Juice WRLD
tragic passing and I'm just, I was glad to see it,
make the track list. I'm curious what your memories were
of making that song now.
- Well, yeah.
I mean, what do I say it's, it was,
it was one of those things where I,
I heard the song and I recorded my vocal on it,
and everyone was like to put like a, like, I guess,
like a more positive spin on it.
Initially, everyone was like, you know,
"Oh, you sound dope on this."
And I was like, I was like, "Oh, cool, dope," you know?
I was like, "Great, I sound good on this."
And, and, and then everyone was like,
"Oh, you should, you should have it as a single,
"and you know what, you know,
"who would be perfect for this?"
And everyone was like, "Juice WRLD,"
And I was like, "Oh, he will not do it,
"he will not be on a track with me.
"There's no way.
"There's no way he'll do this."
I know there's like a running theme with me,
but I'd heard him when I heard like, "Lucid Dreams,"
the first time, I was like, "Who is this?"
And I don't have that moment very often with artists
and I wanted to immediately know everything about him.
So I called up the Max Martin camp
because I knew that they'd been working with him.
And I was like, I got to know, I got to know about him.
Like, what's he like, what's his,
you know, and like, "Oh, you know, he's, he's super sweet.
"He's like kind of shy, like, blah, blah, blah."
And, and then I was like,
"Well, maybe he'll do a record with me."
And so somehow he said, "Yes, I love the record,"
and I think maybe he just, like,
it was one of those things with him
where he just had something to say,
and that song was perfect for it.
And when I met him on the video,
he brought his family with him, his mom
and his brother, and he had like the whole team there.
And they were really gracious and really sweet to us.
And we were just this like bumbling English team
of like idiots, just kind of like, "Hi,"
you know, trying to be cool,
and they were just so lovely and he was great.
And I, you know, I wish I had gotten
to spend more time with him, I really do.
I wish we'd gotten to live that song together.
And I think I, you know, I still think,
I still think it's a really great song
and I'm so happy that we got to do something together.
I'm just, I'm just sad for him, you know?
'Cause he was on the beginning of something,
an incredibly special journey, I think.
And everyone was really excited for him.
We were real excited for him.
And then yeah, it, it's just painfully sad.
He had so much farther to go and I'm just, yeah,
I just feel very sad for him and his family,
for his family, and that we never got to like,
you know, just live that.
I mean, same with his other songs.
Like he's, he was exceptionally talented,
so I just, yeah, it was incredibly sad.
- Yeah, it's even months later,
it's still, it's still so sad,
but you know, like I said, I'm glad that this,
that this song was a hit and it gets to live on,
in, on the...
- I, I just feel sad, I, you know
I still like you said, I still,
I still think about it and I still,
I think that you can never, you can never stop thinking
about someone that you've, you have a song with,
like you have a piece of music with.
It's just, you're connected forever and it's,
yeah, I mean, I hope I hope it lives on and you know,
maybe, maybe he'll, I, you know, I hope it's,
I hope his music is, is always a appreciated
because yeah, he had a lot to give.
- Yeah.
Ellie, thank you again,
as always sincerely congrats on everything.