Eli, Pop Music’s Next Breakout Star, Knows Her Worth

A new era of pop divadom is upon us, and Eli is ushering it in full force—bedazzled fedora and all.

Prior to the release of Stage Girl, the singer’s celebrated debut album that dropped last October, the Massachusetts native made TikTok her stage, posting rainbow-hued self-made music videos (like many of us did on iMovie as tweens) and viral snippets of her then-unreleased songs. From “Feel Your Rain” to “Glitter,” Eli’s sonic landscape is vividly technicolor, underscored by melancholy and introspection, as themes of her trans experience and coming of age sparkle within each track. Fans of Mariah Carey and Katy Perry can see the pop stars’ inspirations in her songwriting and world-building.

Although Eli adores pop music, she also knows it has room to improve, especially when it comes to how artists are treated. The singer recently made headlines for her open letter to Taylor Swift, urging the pop star to sit down with heads of the major labels and streaming services and use her influence to help restructure “the exploitative royalty splits that keep us [smaller artists] dormant in the industry.” Eli’s call to action only further underscores her deep commitment to an industry she’s not only an active participant in but also a devoted patron of.

Perched on a couch alongside the pop singer for a wide-ranging conversation earlier this spring, it quickly became clear I was sitting across from a deeply informed student of the genre, one who regards Prince, Little Richard, and Ariana Grande all with the same reverence.

ELLE caught up with the singer ahead of the release of the deluxe edition of Stage Girl, out now, to discuss the everlasting life of her debut album, translating her trans coming of age in these new songs, and, of course, her undying love for Ariana Grande.

Congratulations on your New York City show! How did it compare to Eli: The One-Woman Show, your pop musical?

The one-woman show was just the tracks I made and the beats I made. It’s such a different vibe—both interesting and cool. There’s so much going on in an amazing way. Walking out and having people put their hands up—it looks like I’m watching a fucking Billie Eilish documentary or something crazy. I’ve never experienced such a loving environment. And it doesn’t feel like, “We love you. We’re crazy.” It feels like open arms taking you in. I feel really grateful that the people who are coming to my shows right now are people that I would see at a bar and want to be friends with.

Tell me a little bit about how we got from young Eli, pop fanatic, to the pop star in front of me today.

I didn’t enjoy going to concerts [as a kid] because I truly had this devastatingly egoic feeling of, I want to be on the stage. The journey was always being obsessed with singers, honestly, and realizing that you can make loving singing part of your artistry and songwriting. I started to look at the singers that I loved, like Mariah [Carey], and be like, “Oh, this is songwriting.” Yes, she is boxed into this vocalist identity because her vocals are so incredible, but that also overshadows how incredible a songwriter she is. And the way she sings is part of her songwriting voice in such a distinct way. That has inspired me as I got older to think, I can’t be Mariah, but I can learn from her and take the little fragments that I see myself in.

The deluxe version of Stage Girl is coming out! What surprised you about the initial reaction to the album?

What surprised me at first is how much an album’s life just starts a month after it’s out. I saw it with Chappell [Roan], I saw it with Ethel [Cain], and I saw it with a few artists who were really resonating with me in the sonic spaces that I love. I love seeing how records can be rediscovered. There are artists like Kate Bush who [have had] this massive resurgence. I’ve been surprised just in the last two months finding new people who I would pray in October were camped out on iTunes or Spotify to listen to it, and now it’s ending up on their timelines.

I’m not always obsessed with artists who do deluxe [albums]. It feels like you’re trying to rewrite history. But for me, it feels like a really exciting opportunity to fully close this phase in my artistry.

The album art for Eli’s debut album, Stage Girl.

You said on The Zane Lowe Show a few months ago that you wanted Stage Girl to be a “beautiful pop album” with deep nuance. How has the album’s universe expanded in the deluxe?

I would say there’s an element of transness that I felt reluctant to include in my Stage Girl story [at first]. I really have this deep yearning to give myself the best shot to get in front of people who don’t believe in me or don’t value me or my community. I feel this invigorating feeling that there is a strength in singing and music that can break down some of those barriers that exist. I want to change the world. I want to be in people’s ears, and I think there is a dance in that. There is a reality of not shrinking myself in any way, but understanding how to navigate my safety and also navigate my worth.

I know the worth in the stories I’m telling, and the importance of being in Barnes & Noble at 8 years old and seeing Katy Perry with her super-campy look. [It gave me a] deep, desperate, and focused hope to have the shot to be on the Jingle Ball stage, be on the radio, and be in the spaces where I can reach the kid in the swing state or the Bible Belt. I want my music to be playing in these places. That’s what I look at when I think about an artist like Prince or Little Richard. It’s so beautiful.

Everyone from Demi Lovato to Zara Larsson has shown you so much love both on stage and off. What does that reception mean to you, and what advice, if any, have they instilled in you?

I’ve felt really taken care of and supported by the women in music that I’ve looked up to and continue to look up to. I was at the GLAAD Media Awards last week, and I was so anxious. I couldn’t focus on the job that I was supposed to do. I was like, “I need a fucking beta blocker.” I put [it] on my Close Friends. I added literally everybody in L.A. that I knew. And you know who I put on it? I put Demi Lovato on it, because you never know. Like, maybe Demi’s on her phone.

And Demi responded. She was like, “You’re doing so amazing. If you need to talk to me, let me know. I’m cheering you on. You’re gonna be so good.” That feeling I got from that message is the same feeling I got when I heard “Nightingale” or saw her on The Neon Lights Tour. How rare and weird and crazy it is that I’ve now experienced that.

In general, all those women who have been supporting me and engaging with me—it meant truly so much that they were willing to take time out of their crazy, busy schedules and come to a puppet theater and understand the story I’m trying to tell about fandemonium and about the art of singing on a stage and the love of being an artist and being a trans woman. When Zara came out, that was part of the story. She was my fairy godmother. She was furthering the metaness and the conceptual story of the one-woman show. How insane that it was fully realized.

Additional imagery for Stage Girl.

On the topic of pop divas, would you like another platform to express your love for Ariana Grande?

I would always love another platform. Can I?

Oh, please.

She was the artist that was with me from the jump. I went to an all-boys Catholic school when I was in seventh grade, and it was very traumatizing for me.

Yours Truly was this safe haven. I [hadn’t listened to] Mariah yet—I knew the Christmas album—and so Ariana was representing all of that. She is the top level of artistry and pop, theatrical musicality, vocalist mastery that I have regarded and loved and appreciated and felt inspired by in so many different phases of my life.

What a great thing to experience, for better or worse, this undying love for bodies of work because of an artist. Every album—there were no skips. That’s a really special relationship to have with an artist. I think maybe, selfishly, I want to sing with her, I want to open for her, or know that she’s heard Stage Girl because so much of her is in it.

So many songwriters and singers have catapulted to fame via TikTok and have had varying responses to that experience—both positive and negative. What do you make of it yourself, and what are your thoughts about this new landscape of music discovery?

It’s part of my artist duty to talk about it, both on a small scale and on a marketing scale. There is a really important part of getting really specific and deliberate…when it comes to being on apps and posting online [which is] a relationship I didn’t find until, like, 10 years after being an internet kid and singing on the internet and doing all those things.

I realized, I’m not trying to go viral. I’m not trying to do whatever the other things are that fall under that category that can sometimes be limiting, frustrating, or unhealthy for any person. I’m trying to find people who would like to listen to a song that I made: the little trans kid, or just someone who needs it.

I used to be so obnoxiously like, “Oh, I want people to like this. I want people to see it. I want it to reach people.” And then I just kind of gave up on that. I tried my best not to care about that and really tried to practice what I preach and focus on being so grateful for the fact that one person or two people commented on this song I just wrote.

There were a few different moving parts, but I had this undying love of music, and I still do, and a desire to make a living out of this. I was kind of working at it instead of working with it. And then when I started working with it—which, to me, meant being grateful for five people seeing the video and not thinking I needed numbers—I started to feel more present.

There are ways to find artistic shades in your music that work in the medium of TikTok, Instagram, and social media that strengthen your artistic voice. There’s a back-and-forth I found in going live on TikTok and writing songs while people were there watching me do it. That was such a freeing creative process. Such an integral part of Stage Girl was this idea that I was in my bedroom and secluded, but I was with these strangers who suddenly started to understand me, or who I felt validated by. And the kid who had no friends in high school and was like the epitome of—have you seen Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade?

Yes!

I felt like Kayla. That movie just makes me bawl my eyes out because it’s so cathartic and so real for me. And that feeling carried with me into my twenties. It continued when I was on Live and talking to strangers and feeling seen. I was presenting as myself for the first time, and I was feeling so grateful that I could put on some eye shadow or a crazy wig or a colorful shirt that I never thought I would wear to high school, and do all these things that I repressed and get to find 10 people and then 100 people…“Feel Your Rain” exists because of the back-and-forth of “Marianne” and “All at Once.” It’s so nice!

I saw on social media that your wish for the last night of your one-woman show was for somebody to confess they had a crush on you.

Yeah.

Has anybody?

It’s definitely unfolding…

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.