Diving Into ella jane’s New World of Marginalia
Photo by Paris Mupower
[UNPUBLISHED:] I am so excited to get to chat with you! For any readers who may be new to your music, can you give a quick introduction of yourself and tell us how you got started in your music career?
[ELLA JANE:] Hi!! I’m a 20-year-old indie-pop musician from New York. I’ve been writing songs since I was about 12, but finally started putting them out in February 2020 when I was a senior in high school. Since then I’ve signed to the Fader Label, moved to LA, and am currently on my first headline tour!
[UNPUBLISHED:] I also want to give you a major congratulations on your Marginalia EP! How are you feeling now that the project is officially out?
[ELLA JANE:] Thank you!! I am genuinely so excited about it - I’ve been putting this project together for over a year, so it’s really cool to see it finally come to fruition.
[UNPUBLISHED:] The song “How Do I Lose You” follows your struggle through a situation-ship that you can’t seem to let go of, all while riding the energy of vibrant 80’s synths. What was the process like for you creating this song?
[ELLA JANE:] “How Do I Lose You” started in a writing session with Sadie Jean that was actually supposed to be for her project - I just ended up accidentally hijacking it to be about my life. But once we realized we were kind of writing about a very specific situation I was going through, the song came together really quickly. We wrote the first verse and chorus in a few hours to a very high energy, electronic-sounding track that these producers at the time, Zach and Roger, created. Although I ended up going in a different direction production-wise, this first version set the precedent for the tone of the song.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Do you have any personal favorite lyrics from the EP?
[ELLA JANE:] The last verse of “You Shouldn’t Have Said That” I’m really proud of - “it looms with a promise, this cloud that i’m under / if quick is the lightning, then sure is the thunder / the silence between beating slow like a death march / but just for a second it’s light till it gets dark”.
[UNPUBLISHED:] The music video for “Warhol” is super-stylized. Can you tell me a bit more about the inspirations behind the video’s creation?
[ELLA JANE:] The “Warhol” video is a direct reference to these great polaroids of Andy Warhol in drag. My good friend and makeup artist Ali worked really hard to recreate the looks almost identically. It was an idea I’m really proud of and I think the result is something really special.
[UNPUBLISHED:] What can listeners expect from you sonically on this album, and what do you hope they take away from it?
[ELLA JANE:] Marginalia is definitely more cohesive than my last project, but there is still a lot of variation to keep people interested. I think I embraced my synth-pop influences a little more, while still leaning into an organic sonic palette.
[UNPUBLISHED:] You’re also in the midst of a headlining tour this fall following the release of Marginalia. How are you feeling as you prepare for the tour?
[ELLA JANE:] As I write this, I’m a few days into tour - so far it really has been incredible. It’s been a while since I played a proper headline show, so I kind of forgot how cool it is to be surrounded by people who know and love your music. Last night I got to play at my dream venue Bowery Ballroom, which I grew up going to, and it was honestly everything I had hoped for. It made me shed a lot of my nerves, too, so now I’m feeling a lot more comfortable as I head into the rest of the tour.
[UNPUBLISHED:] When you’re not making music, what else do you like to do in your free time?
[ELLA JANE:] I watch a depressing amount of television. Right now it’s Grey’s Anatomy. I also have been knitting a lot. Haha.
[UNPUBLISHED:] What do you have on repeat lately?
[ELLA JANE:] Grey’s Anatomy. And the new 1975 album.
[UNPUBLISHED:] As you’ve grown and changed throughout your music career thus far, is there any advice you wish you had been given when you were first starting out?
[ELLA JANE:] I wish someone had told me that back then that it’s okay to write different types of songs and experiment with different genres, I think I tried to box myself in to whatever I thought it meant to be a Pop Songwriter, and in doing so I confined myself to a certain set of rules. But my list of influences is pretty vast, and I now realize it’s a positive thing to draw from all sides of that. I can have a ballad next to a dance-pop sort of song and still have them make sense together.
[UNPUBLISHED:] Is there anything else you want the reader to know? This can be about your music, your life, or even if you just want to talk about a secret pet chihuahua named David who you’re really passionate about. Anything goes!
[ELLA JANE:] So crazy you ask - I actually do have a secret pet chihuahua named David! Small world.
