FRESH EYRE

ELLA'S BACK WITH A NEW LABEL AND A NEW DIRECTION. BY CASEY COOPER-FISKE

- CASEY COOPER-FISKE

ELLA Eyre’s voice was at the heart of some of the biggest dance records of the 2010s, but during the Covid pandemic in 2020 she feared that voice might be lost for good.

Instead, the 31-year-old singer emerged from surgery to remove scar tissue from her vocal chords reborn and determined to create the album she has always dreamed of making.

The London-born star says she is thankful for the success she enjoyed on dance tracks such as Rudimental’s UK number one Waiting All Night in 2013, and Sigala’s 2017 smash Came Here For Love, but felt as if the genre had been chosen for her.

She released her debut solo album Feline in 2015, which did display soul influences, but says she felt pressure from her label at the time to include more dance music on the record, meaning her second LP feels to her like her first totally solo album.

“When I started out I was 16, I was put on a drum and bass record, and it sort of defined my sound for the next 10 years,” Ella explains. “Don’t get me wrong, I'm really proud of those songs and my relationships that I've built, but I do feel like I was sort of pigeonholed into a genre that I didn’t get to choose.