Let me tell you a story: A girl from a small town outside Boston begins posting clips of herself singing online, before heading to the bright lights of New York City to study music. Then, bristling at the rigid confines of her program, she drops out, at around which time her songs—early-’00s pop-R&B throwbacks with sharp, emotionally charged lyrics—begin to gain traction online. After signing a record deal with Mark Ronson’s major label imprint, she moves to LA and releases her first album. It receives a rapturous response from pop obsessives, buoyed by her high-concept (if still very much DIY) visuals that pay homage to the singing-competition shows she grew up watching. Finally, she embarks on a sold-out tour, where stars including Olivia Rodrigo, Addison Rae, and Troye Sivan are spotted in the crowds. This girl, you’d imagine, must be feeling on top of the world.
But for Eli, the 25-year-old musician who this story is about, the velocity of these changes also came with some hard lessons. When we connect in late March, as she’s nearing the end of her current leg of tour dates, she acknowledges the expectations that have weighed on her since the release of her debut album, Stage Girl, last October. A few weeks ago, she was considering quitting music altogether.
“Well, not necessarily quitting music,” she says, correcting herself as she Zooms in from her home in Los Angeles. “But I did think, Maybe I’m just going to be a songwriter. I’d forgotten about the things that I was doing it for, like loving writing songs and truly believing in the power of pop music. I felt my grip around all of those things start to loosen, and I felt other people gripping onto it.”
So what changed? She credits the joy of the crowds at her shows. “I was fully reminded that the biggest part of doing this, and why I’ve been dreaming of doing this—and why I wrote an album called Stage Girl—is to be on a stage, in front of people,” she says, twirling a length of her hair, which is streaked with Y2K-core platinum blonde highlights. “It re-instilled my faith in pop and in music and in my songwriting abilities. I just have to keep recentering around the community that I’m beginning to build for myself, and making that the number one priority—always.”
It is surreal, though, that less than two years ago, Eli was an unknown musician sharing bits of her songs on her TikTok, where she posts under the memorable handle @JournalOfADoll. And even stranger, one imagines, to have lived it. “But I feel much better,” she notes. “I don’t want to quit anymore. I love being a songwriter, but I also feel like I’m an entertainer now—and I’m having so much fun.”
Well, that’s a relief—especially as Eli is preparing for her next phase. First up, there’s Stage Girl (Deluxe), which lands on May 22. While Stage Girl had plenty of big feelings—the bittersweet tale of love and longing that is “Marianne,” say, or the anthemic power pop of “Somebody I’m Not,” in which she nods to a sense of queer becoming while belting “I don’t wanna die in the body of somebody I’m not” on the chorus—the deluxe version is dialing things up even further.
You can hear it in the maximalist trappings of the first single, “Glitter,” which came out in December: a shimmering, irresistibly catchy kiss-off to a layabout ex-lover, asserting that true love should “make you feel like glitter,” with an additional dose of innuendo: “You should be his baby, not his babysitter / He should walk you home then run you like a river.” (Eli’s deliciously barbed lyrics are as much a part of her charm as her meticulously produced, ’00s-pop sound.) Then, too, on “Feel Your Rain,” which was released at the end of last month: a power ballad full of twinkling pianos and synth stabs on which she belts out a life-affirming (and possibly a little cheeky) chorus: “Don't let go until you hear me say / I wanna feel your rain.” Despite these nudges and winks, it’s clear that Eli takes the art of writing a great pop song very seriously indeed. Just take “Marianne,” with its cleverly crafted hooks and vivid lyrics—it feels like it could be performed in any decade, in any genre, and still be a hit.
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.)
“None of it was meant to be, like, branding,” she is quick to clarify of the look that she describes as “liminal luxury.” “I just went to the thrift store and I picked exactly what I love. Now being 25 and finally existing truthfully, I feel so joyful in the fact that I can not be embarrassed or think I need to kill myself for getting chunky highlights or wearing sequins.” It’s part of the reason she found herself revisiting the spirit of those ’00s shows; even if there has since been a reckoning around the toxicity and exploitation that took place behind the scenes of those programs, Eli always related to the hopefulness and ambition of the people who tried out. “Seeing somebody do that, to show up for themselves and put their heart on the line and give it their best shot…there was something about that narrative that was so potent or resonant with me,” she says.
Given the rapid growth of her fanbase, she clearly isn’t the only person moved by those ideas—though she notes that, after the release of the deluxe, she’s ready to head in a new direction…or, possibly, multiple directions. “Some of my favorite songs are an R&B girl singing over an acoustic guitar, so that’s a shade that I’m interested in coloring with. I want to make a gospel project. I’m currently making a lot of songs with loads of harmonies. I’m also falling in love. I want to write about that. And what else? Oh, duh. I want to make fucking club music too. I want to make Christian music, and Adele music, to sing to the woman in Walmart who thinks that trans people don’t deserve to be alive. And then I can convince her otherwise with my beautiful vocals. She’ll buy a ticket, and then I’ll bring her backstage, and we’ll have such a ki. And then I’ll go to church with her and the world will heal.” She delivers this last line with a wry smile and a wink—a stage girl through and through.
