Inside Eillah’s Dreams in Debut Album In My Head
In My Head is vulnerable, heavy and comes from an open heart. Eillah invites listeners into her dreams where they can see themselves in her world.
It’s rare that a new indie-pop star arrives sounding fully formed, but Eillah achieved just that with her debut album released in April. Her modern indie-pop sensibility with doses of adventure-seeking thrills, blurs between indie, pop and acoustic folk soundscapes and dreamy melodies summon listeners to a nostalgic, infectious sound. Through the record, the songstress can effortlessly connect each listener to their inner emotions through her words and ethereal sounds.
Eillah’s unique motto she always stuck by is “from my heart to the world.” She started her debut on SoundCloud in 2018. To Eillah, music is her sense of spiritual therapy and “way of life.” With a wide range of influences of growing up from Pink Floyd to Dr. Hook, her soundscapes don’t conform to a single genre and lets her authenticity guide her whether it’s through an electronic rhythm or acoustic guitar.
In My Head is a flourishing work of ballads that embrace Eillah’s full extent of pop prowess and poetry-driven lyricism. She sings about self-doubt and self-confidence, passion and betrayal, finding comfort in a partner and longing for connection.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can you give me a general artist statement of your music background and who you are as an artist?
[EILLAH]: My motto that I've always stuck by is, “from my heart to the world.” Just because music is something that I like and it's kind of my therapy and my way of life, and I'm the type of person that really puts my whole heart and everything I do. Genre-wise, I don't really conform to a genre, because it kind of depends on what I'm feeling and what I like at that time. Just anything that feels authentic to me. And sometimes, the way I need to express that is through an electronic song or other times just a guitar, so it depends. I would say my last album was more in the dream-pop realm, but now I'm doing more folk singer/songwriter stuff, so it's always subject to change.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How did you first break into singing-songwriting? What inspired you to pursue music?
[EILLAH]: Basically, the reason I started initially making music, I started toward the end of my sophomore year of high school, around 16 or 17 years old. I was a dancer and a cheerleader and that was set to be kind of my whole life. I thought I'd be a dancer for the rest of my life. That was the way I expressed myself, but then I got some diagnoses where I could not engage in a lot of physical activity anymore, and kind of had an identity crisis and was like, ‘I need to be able to still express myself somehow.’ I started on the ukulele as typical white girls do, and eventually graduated to guitar. I've always written poetry since eighth grade, so I just eventually combined the two of putting poetry and emotion alongside music.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Is Eillah just a name change or alter ego, etc… What does it stand for for you?
[EILLAH]: So it’s just Hallie spelled backwards.I guess I marketed or established Eillah as like the other part of me that is an artist so that can be shown through my digital art, my poetry, and just any writing, any drawing, just anything I make that is art related.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I know that you listen to various genres. Does it play into how your soundscapes are influenced a lot as well?
[EILLAH]: I don't really ever approach writing a song like I want it to sound like this artist, or to sound like this genre. I probably subconsciously draw from a lot of my inspirations. There are different artists that inspire me in songwriting versus different artists that inspire me in production. But I think my music is more inspired by my life and what's happening at the time rather than artists, but that's not to say that I don't have tons of inspirations because I do, it's probably just a combination of a ton of artists rather than just one.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Who did you listen to growing up?
[EILLAH]: Growing up I was raised on Johnny Cash, Pink Floyd. Dr. Hook, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, and Led Zeppelin. That is all the oldest music I had growing up in every record player in every room. My dad put me onto a ton of vinyl and older artists. That’s the majority of why I listened to growing up.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Who are your inspirations now?
[EILLAH]: Scott James is my favorite artist of all time. He's not very well known, but he will be one day, and just the way that he approaches his music is very freeform. His lyrics are very existential and stream of consciousness, which is kind of what I always try to do when I'm writing. James Blake is a huge inspiration for production and vocal mixing. And as far as songwriting; Angel Olsen, Adrianne Lenker, Florist, and Blood Orange.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you think you've matured as an artist since you released your first single “Someday” and how would you describe that artistic growth?
[EILLAH]: I’ll just give a super quick backstory. My high school friends Lucas and Logan made music. I was sitting in on a session one time and they're like, ‘Hey, we need a female feature on this, do you want to do it?’ I pulled up an old poem and just sang on that song, and that was essentially the birth of Eillah. I showed Logan my song “Someday,” and he's like, ‘Why aren’t we recording that right now? And why aren’t you releasing it?’ That song still means a lot to me and that was the first song I ever wrote. I've just matured in the sense that I've learned a lot as far as production and as I grow older, I gain more experiences. I'm able to put things into words better.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How was the songwriting process for you when creating In My Head? Did you go into a studio and work from there? Did you just sit down and write lyrics as they came to you?
[EILLAH]: So In My Head, I wrote everything in my bedroom. The majority of everything in my bedroom had very, very limited resources … As far as lyrically, there was never a delegated time to sit down and say, I need to write this album. It all just happens as I experience things, it's like my diary out loud. So as things were happening in my life, I would write a song and then be like, ‘does this go on the album or doesn't it’ and the songs told me whether or not they deserved a place on the album.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Was that like a pandemic project?
[EILLAH]: The first song I wrote for that album, besides the previously released singles, was goodnight “GN.” The first song I ever produced and recorded fully myself. That was after like, a really weird relationship thing, and after that, it was like a breakthrough. It had been a long time since I made any music because I was just getting really down on myself and felt really incapable. That song kind of just happened and then I recorded be right back “BRB.” It was a pandemic project, but I didn't have much of a plan for it. It was made natural.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How does In My Head differ from previous bodies of work you released?
[EILLAH]: I would say it's just more me because I made it a point to really painstakingly learn production … Prior to this album, I had done a lot of collaborations which is an amazing thing. Collaboration has been key to my music career, but this I would say is fully authentic to myself since I had full creative control.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What's your favorite song off In My Head and why?
[EILLAH]: They're all my favorites. They all have their own personalities and stories. I would probably say “IMH,” the title track in my head. It just holds a really strong meaning to me. That was one of those a-ha moments as an artist of being reminded this is really why I do it. When you feel so much inside and then you're able to fully express that without a large disconnect is kind of how I felt with that song. And it was a story I really wanted to get across. And then also just the reception of hearing people say stuff like, ‘I thought I was the only one that felt that way’ or ‘I've been through similar experiences is the entire sole reason I do it.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Which song was the hardest to write lyrically or emotionally and why?
[EILLAH]: The ninth track, “MIA” , was the hardest, just because it came about really weirdly. I was in just a super strange headspace … So I just made a really strange ambient experimental soundscape track. I had no intention to add lyrics to it. I really had no intention to even put it on the album. My whole schedule was four weeks behind on everything, and I had this weird health problem and ended up in the emergency room … But I was in the hospital all day, really stressed out. I remember hearing these doors creaking next to me and I was under a lot of medication, just super dazed and out of it, but I clearly remember hearing this would be a good sample to use for this song. So I record a voice memo of it and if you listen closely, you can hear the audio of doors creaking and machines beeping and I decided to kind of reframe that song is how I was feeling and the lyrics are about a double meaning of my experience being in the hospital and dealing with a lot of health issues as well as dealing with a lot of mental issues. So it touches on depression and stuff like that. But looking back, I'm really glad it's there. That is kind of a weird, more unconventional song, but I would say that was the hardest to write and put it into words and not sound overly concerning and still make it authentic.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What is the inspiration behind In My Head? Is it like an accumulation of life experiences or artistic experiences?
[EILLAH]: Anyone who knows me knows that I say ‘Oh, I was just in my head’ or ‘I'm in my head too much all the time.’It's just constantly overthinking, constant fluctuation of self-perception, preparing for the worst and dealing with a lot of anxiety being in your head. The inspiration behind the name I actually had in my notes app from 2017 that just said, name your first album In My Head.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How come all the songs off the album are abbreviated? Was that just an aesthetic choice?
[EILLAH]: So my first release from the album was “OMW,” on my way. The next one was “WBU,” what about you? Then from there, I just thought to myself, let's just stick with that and just keep up with the acronym thing. None of it was way too forced to fit into a certain acronym.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I saw that you have over 1k followers on Spotify and over 200k streams on one of your singles. Were you ever expecting such a huge response from your listeners so early on in your career?
[EILLAH]: No, still to this day I'm not like a huge artist by any means. But even just looking at stats and seeing I have a lot of listeners in Russia or in Japan and getting messages is beautiful. I got a message one time from this girl from Amsterdam who just sent a long message about how much my stuff touched her … But I'm getting messages from complete strangers even an hour after the release. That love was really what kept me alive because I was going through a really interesting time when it was released. I would have never imagined it to touch me. I didn't think people would even listen to it because it takes a lot of time to listen to an album. Whether it's one person that's severely impacted or a million people, that's all that matters.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What can we expect from you in the near future?
[EILLAH]: I'm working on my next album, it's still in the brainstorm stage right now. I have a few demos. But I do know that it's about 15 songs. It's going to be a lot. I have a lot to say. Mostly as it's the opposite of this past album and it's very stripped down. Basically just guitars and vocals; very lyric oriented and not so much the whole soundscapes and reverb and creating an atmosphere but more of a confined space of just rawness and a lot of honesty. Not a lot of cutting corners, just kind of displaying how I feel. It's a pretty ambitious project. I'm excited to make more progress when I have the time on it. I'm probably the most confident I've ever felt about my vocals and artistry and I'm excited.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What's the biggest lesson you've learned when creating In My Head as an artist?
[EILLAH]: The biggest lesson I learned while creating the album is probably don't rush it. It was gonna be like a four to five-song EP and I was supposed to release it like six months before I actually did, but it just didn't feel ready. I felt a sense of urgency to get it out there but I realized that urgency was only coming from myself and people are willing to be patient and wait. So never force a deadline upon yourself if you're given the freedom to take more time if you're not totally ready to get it out yet … I would say take your time because it's your project and ultimately it needs to be yours at the end of the day, whether it's gonna even be released or not it should be for you.
[UNPUBLISHED]: My last question for you is what would be your wildest dream come true as an artist, like if you could have a dream collaboration or play a certain venue?
[EILLAH]: I never want to get super famous. Every artist would like more reception and to broaden their demographics. I guess just being a medium-sized indie artist. My biggest dream is to be heard and find more people that are able to hear my lyrics and see themselves in them. A dream collaboration would be Scott James, I love him, he's a genius.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Is there anything that I didn't ask that you want to add?
[EILLAH]: I guess just like a word of advice. I've had a lot of people come to me and say, ‘Where do you even start? I want to make music but I don't think I can.’ And if I can, I swear ANYONE can. I had no musical background? I couldn’t even get myself to watch a tutorial. Because I have no attention span … There’s a large number of people that are willing to support independent artists. Anyone really anyone can do it. I would have never imagined being an artist right now, but I don't think I could picture my life any other way.
From my heart to the world as long as my heart beats and the world spins ― Eillah.
