There will be four more new tracks on the deluxe album, all of which see Eli lean ever more into her skills as a vocalist: “There’s this song ‘Nobody’s Girl’ that is the fucking thesis of Stage Girl,” she says. “It’s a ballad that’s aspiring to be Whitney Houston under a spotlight, but it’s a trans girl with a low-ass voice who’s trying to force her voice up higher than it should go.” She wasn’t always comfortable embracing the unique timbre of her voice, she explains, even if she now understands it’s part of what gives her music its magic. “At some point, I just felt, Okay, you know what? I’m owning the tones in my voice that used to make me dysphoric and used to make me feel icky about myself.”
Indeed, Eli talks freely about how embracing her identity as a trans woman coincided with her artistic breakthrough, around when she started sharing music online in 2023. “It really was aligned with my opening the floodgates for my ability to express myself after 20 years of pushing it all down and living in a state of dissociation and repression,” she says. “I feel very fortunate that, as terrifying as it was, I said, I’m going to just go full-throttle in trusting my truth and showing up in the world, even when it’s in a time where I’m scared.”
Thankfully, it’s exactly that—the diaristic candor of her lyrics, as well as the occasional moments of humor—that has helped steer her music away from pure pastiche and toward something more subversive and exciting. “I truly believe in the power of pop music, I really do,” she continues. “Me and the girls are always like, ‘We’re spreading the journal of a doll.’ And to me, that is the biggest, most important part—the idea of being able to give myself and my community the chance to be even more at the forefront of the commercial music world.” Eli also has no qualms about shooting for the mainstream, poking fun at herself for auditioning for one of the competition shows that inspired her visuals four times as a teenager. “I’m a commercial-ass bitch,” she laughs. “I grew up living for anything that was being shoved down my throat—Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, all those things.”
That’s the other element that has earned her such a loyal, passionate fandom so quickly: her killer instinct for world-building. Even before she signed to RCA, she’d spend hours on Picsart putting together her single covers and mocking up collages for her Instagram posts: a delightfully chaotic mash-up of early internet clip art and glittery fonts—like fan-made versions of the cover art for a Disney Channel star’s first pop album—with outfits straight out of a Y2K Delia’s catalog. (Baby tees, frosted eyeshadow, skinny scarves, rhinestone belts, and a fedora—often sequined, and worn deliberately askew—are all in play.)
Photo: Charlotte Rutherford
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