Neo-soul Birmingham singer-songwriter Ella More is a rising star in the realm of UK’s music scene. With a velvet voice that brings flickers of vibrato with jazzy curls, she seamlessly blends confidence, effortless ease, and vulnerability. Capturing the essence of her experiences through heartfelt lyrics and captivating Jorja Smith-like melodies she has most recently released “At What Cost” a single that distinguishes itself from her previous sounds, stirring things up. She discusses with us the evolution of her sound and the confidence she found through her latest work.
Miriam Boulos: Let’s dive right into your latest release that I absolutely fancy, “At What Cost”. This one sounds different from your previous singles. Can I say that it sounds so crystal clear with a type of calmness. Can you tell us more about how this one came together?
Ella More: This one, I agree with you, is different from any of the other ones. I feel like when I listen to it, it feels more confident to me. With the previous ones, I've been playing around a bit more trying to pinpoint what my sound is and the exact vibe. Whereas this one I feel has aspects of all of them together. When I listen back now to older ones, they feel uncertain. Whereas this one feels intrinsically like me, and has this confidence about it. It was a weird one as well because I'm never intentional when I go into the studio with my writer and maybe I should be. But we went in, with this producer I worked with a lot called Logan Aspin. We were just like, “Let's make something new!”. He started playing these chords and the writing just started flowing. In that moment, we felt like we had hit upon something special and I'm glad you like it.
MB: It flew naturally when Logan started playing some chords, so the songwriting trickled in after melody?
EM: It’s funny with my songs, as I said I'm not super intentional with the writing, so I don't go in with “I’m feeling this way”. It's more like in the moment I'm figuring out how I'm feeling. Or I write the whole song and then retrospectively and reflectively and be like “Oh this is about that, clearly I'm feeling a type of way about something.” You know what I mean?
MB: I saw on Instagram you shared behind the scenes snippets, and one was a voice memo where we could hear the shower running in the background, was that really the shower running? Shower inspirations are a thing for you, Ella?
EM: *Laughter* yeah. Yeah, it was. We wrote the song over two sessions. The first day, the verses came really easy, the pre-chorus came as well. I had written a different chorus and some of it just didn’t sit right with me about it. So, I was like I'm going to go and sit with it and see what happens. I remember I was in the shower. I don’t know what it is about the shower, but I find it very inspirational *Laughter*. I think it must just be the calm and the quiet. So, I literally started hearing this melody and quickly grabbed my phone and started recording. I've got a series of recordings of me in the shower, I kept going back and changing some of it slightly. So, to answer your question, yes it was me in the shower! *Laughter*
MB: Were there any particular inspirations for this one, were you on a loop during this particular time while producing this single?
EM: More generally my influences are like James Blake, Amy Winehouse, Charlotte Day Wilson, Georgia Smith. But for this one, in particular, I remember at the time, I had been listening in a loop to, Nayana Izz and the song is called “Breaking Point”. If you listen to it, you will hear some kind of sonic similarities between the sound of the piano chords on that and this one. I feel like that must be what I was listening to at the time. We also drew inspiration from vocal Bon Iver with the producer who loves Bon Iver, yeah just a mash. But I'm pretty sure that the track I had on repeat at the time was Nayana Izz’, “Breaking Point”. It's a really good track you should have a listen!
MB: I am very curious now to give it a listen and will do it right after our chat. But your Spotify description is literally “Less Is More”. I think it describes your sound so well. Is this one of your core beliefs? And why do you think less is more?
EM: I’d love to say that there was a lot of thought behind that one. But it was literally the night before “At What Cost” came out and we were going through all of the DSPs and updating them really quickly. And I had a long bio that I didn’t feel was reflective of the new single and it just popped into my head “less is more” and I felt it had a nice ring to it. But maybe if I dug a little deeper, it’s one of these things where I look back reflectively and think “oh that’s what it was” But “At What Cost” came together in such a quick time that me and the producer felt like we had to work it a bit more. So we were kinda throwing other sounds to it where it got to a point where we were listening to it and it lost the essence of what it started out as. So we then had to go back and draw back stuff out and almost reverted it back to what it was in the demo phase. I think there is such a nice thing about demos. They’re just so honest, it's exactly what you felt in that moment when you were writing it. I think sometimes it's very easy to think you need to add a load of production to it, but sometimes it takes away the essence.
MB: Your music often explores introspective themes. How do you navigate the balance between personal storytelling and creating a relatable experience for your listeners? Or do you not even think about that while you’re at it?
EM: I feel like it’s not something that I'm actively consciously thinking about. I’ve been writing music for such a long time. I’ve only started releasing since February, but I've been writing for years. My most important thing is writing what is true to myself and honest to my experience because I do write from my firsthand experiences, so that would be the most important thing to me. But it makes it all more beautiful when people relate to that because it is so honest about how I've been feeling so if people relate it feels really nice kind of yeah. But luckily a lot of my writing has been relatable? I don't know.
MB: What’s next Ella? I’ve seen you’ve been doing some live shows.
EM: I'm gonna keep trying to push out singles next year. I’m working towards a project that will hopefully come out summer next year. We’ve got Cross The Tracks, which is a London based festival coming up next summer. And I'm going to try as many performances as possible and hopefully do my first headline show!
###
