'I DIDN'T KNOW IF I WOULD EVER BE ABLE TO SING AGAIN'

Ella Eyre lost her voice completely after an operation. Now, a decade on from her debut album, she’s back. She talks to Craig McLean about grief, childhood trauma and why she’s had enough of being polite.

- KAJ JEFFERIES

While Sara Cox was covering 135 miles in five days, one of the special musical guests on Children in Need was completing her own marathon.

Performing fiery pop banger Hell Yeah, Ella Eyre was unveiling a track from her first album in 10 years.

It’s the pointedly titled Everything, in Time, a record the Londoner, 31, thought she'd never make, not least when she had to undergo major vocal surgery during the pandemic. She crafted the album in the teeth of major label calamities, finally struggling free of what she characterises as decade-long “[music] industry creative straightjackets”.

It’s a 15-strong set of songs that’s a triumphant two-fingers to the executives who told the double Mobo-winner who scooped a Brit award when she was just 19 that she “couldn't write songs’.

When we meet in a Finsbury Park café, Eyre says she felt the stakes were higher now that, after two major label deals, she’s signed with indie Play It Again Sam (PIAS). “The pressure is on as an independent artist, on an independent budget. When you don’t have a major label footing all the bills that you weren’t aware of, everything becomes very real. Not only do I want it to go well, but I need it to go well, because we're having to work 10 times harder to get to that point.”

Looking back, being with Virgin EMI, which released her 2015 debut album Feline, or Island, with whom she parted ways in 2021 after they agreed to disagree on the strength of her new songs, had its benefits. “Honestly, the luxury of having your cars booked for you!” exclaims this animated artist swaddled in a woolly balaclava and drinking a black Americano. “I’ve been driving myself to my music videos at four in the morning. But the grind makes it more real. I feel more in tune and engaged with what I’m doing than ever. I am making it happen. It’s not everybody else around me telling me what to do”