Spindle Home Session: Ella Isaacson Performs Her Brand New Track ‘Expectations’
Ella Isaacson is an emerging artist that takes her hardships and imperfections and beautifully creates authentic music that listeners can relate to. Born and raised in New York, Ella found herself gravitating to the music sphere. In her teens, the songstress started to create her own material. With limited resources, a young Ella sought out creative help at a number of studios and events and in the process started her self-reflective journey. Her ambitions continued to grow throughout her studies at New York University, which led the pop artist to take a leap of faith and move to Los Angeles.
After some time in the city of Angels, Isaacson made another move, but this time she headed to Europe in which she met the producer duo Stargate, which positively changed her career trajectory. Back in LA with a new outlook, the songstress dived into her work, honing her craft, and working with new mentors. Since then, Ella has released an array of singles, including her brand new collaboration with Gallant. With her unique sound and unapologetic lyrical content, Ella Isaacson is a rising star that’s showing no signs of slowing down.
Ella Isaacson was able to record a fantastic Spindle Home Session in which she performed her brand new single ‘Expectations’. Tune in below and on our IGTV…
We were also able to chat with Ella about everything from her new single, working with Gallant and more. Check out our interview below…
When did you first start to immerse yourself in music?
I started really young, and just fell into voice lessons, performing, choir and piano. Basically, anything I could throw myself into that was music. I just loved it all, and I was really inspired by Avril Lavigne and other punk-pop artists like Green Day and My Chemical Romance. I was really drawn to these artists as a young person who was introverted, and I felt like I had trouble relating to people, so maybe they were saying on the outside how I was feeling on the inside somehow. I guess I coped with that inner struggle by writing poetry mostly. My cousin was a producer and songwriter, so I remembered just thinking one day in my teens, ‘why don’t I take my words and put them to melody?’ I actually reached out and asked if he would record me, and that’s how I got my first demo. We showed it to whoever we knew in music, and I started to get asked to come into the studio and work with different producers and writers. I was still in braces and a total kid, but I loved it and spent as much time in the studio writing and recording as I could.
You were born and raised in New York. How did the city influence the type of music you listened to?
I think what’s really cool about New York is there is a lot of greatness occurring around you in different worlds. I think that has been a part of why I have such eclectic taste when it comes to music but also everything I guess.
We hear you started to create music when you were in your teens? Did you find it challenging to develop material with such limited resources?
Can I just say that I love this question and no one has ever asked me this. Music and writing were the things that made me feel more normal and good about myself growing up, sad but true. So for me, I don’t even know if it was much of choice – I just had to do it. I think you might be surprised with what you can do with hardly anything to go on. Sometimes I feel spoiled now by all the options, and I have to remember that I was a kid writing poetry in my room with no co-writers, no producers, no mom-ager nor manager and somehow found my way in front of a microphone with songwriters who had songs I was listening to on the radio, on my drive with my parents back home after we would write a song.
I think people also forget that one of the most valuable resources is your voice and perspective. And if you have one, then you already have more than most and people even with multiple hits under their belt want to see that in young people and get excited about it when they do – even if it’s still rough around the edges. You just simply gotta have no fear and figure out, ‘how do I get my stuff sounding amazing?’ I mean I wish back then that I knew how to record myself and use the programs I use now. It’s becoming way more normal now to just have a home setup and be able to make a great song to release right from your bedroom and damn that’s awesome!
Your journey so far has been filled with self-discovery and growth. What are five valuable lessons that you’ve learned over the years?
1.) If you feel stuck in your surroundings, change them. I went to London and Sweden about a year and a half ago when I felt really lost in my journey as a musician. I’d never even been to Sweden and went to work with all new people who I’d never met with before, and that was the moment that creatively brought me back to life. The night I got back to London after that trip, I randomly met Stargate when they walked into their hotel after working with Sam Smith in the studio, and I was having a drink at the hotel bar with a girlfriend I was staying with, who randomly used to work at their publishing company in the UK. Sometimes you have to leap into something new and just let the universe work it out for you.
2.) Don’t listen to people who haven’t succeeded before on their own. I can’t tell you how many managers and people in the industry who never broke a single act, that tried to make me doubt myself.
3.) When in doubt, put it out. I do this as do so many other artists I know. We overthink every single song we release, and then you hear about songs like “Supalonely” being put out and the artist even kind of saw the song as something fun they wrote super quickly, catching crazy fire. You wanna make sure your songs are great but don’t let perfection be your greatest enemy. The first song I ever released, I did it because I wanted to see how people would react to my music – real listeners and not just A&R’s, and the response was so amazing. It led to so many opportunities that I wouldn’t have had if I was waiting on everybody’s approval. So you really gotta ride that line between overthinking and just putting out something that feels good.
4.) As you grow as a person, your writing grows. When I started to really deal with my problems and face them, that’s when my writing totally changed. Something had always blocked me from telling my own stories, and it took a lot of personal development to be able to tap in like that.
5.) As an artist, it’s up to you to decide what your world looks like. I think people overcomplicate artistry and confuse really talented people into thinking they are not unique and creative enough. Picture your world, whatever it is. Maybe it’s something grand like pink skies with unicorns and rainbows everywhere. Maybe it’s a house where the walls are lined with pages and pages of words and clothing racks hanging endless couture, or maybe it’s a lonely girl in pink sweats at her piano singing sad songs. Don’t let someone write you out of a narrative you’ve chosen because they want it to be more complex or more containable.
Ok, let’s get into your music! Absolutely in love with your new single ‘Expectations’. Can you give us more insight into the track’s meaning? What was the driving inspiration for the record?
Thank you! The track actually started with me just thinking about the idea of the word “Expectations”. I spent the entire day, whether it was in the car, in my apartment, even in the shower, just writing lines and lines of poetry about what “Expectations” meant to me. The ones I had of myself, of those around me, the life I’d chosen, the choices I’d made, my career, identity, etc. I brought my lyrics into one of my close collaborators and said, “this really hit me, we need to write about this”. I wanted to flip the idea of expectations on it’s head and discuss what happens when you start on a path and think it’s for you and you discover it just isn’t. The shoe just doesn’t fit, no matter what you do. What happens then? How do you share that with the people you love and what does that conversation look like? When we sent the song to Gallant, he wrote this beautiful new verse that sheds light on this in romantic relationships. He really captures the other side of the conversation and shows how sometimes we go in with the best of intentions, but we let expectations get the best of us, and both parties feel that disappointment when it’s over.
How did the link up with Gallant on the single come to be?
I showed the song to my producer Stargate to see what they thought, and they asked if they could try a production on it. I fell in love with the new production, but we felt that it just needed something, but we couldn’t figure out what. Maybe it would be really special as a duet we thought. To have another voice bring something unique to it. I brought up Gallant and said how special his vocal is and how he just adds this magic to records. Stargate basically said why don’t we just send it to him then and see what he thinks. I was really blown away that he liked the record so much and asked if he could lay something down on it. It’s been really awesome to collaborate on this with him. He’s such a talented, nice guy!
The lyric video for the record is beautiful! Will we be getting a self- isolation official video soon?
Thank you so much! You know, we got really lucky. We shot that literally a few days before LA started social distancing and self-quarantining. It was actually just meant to be some footage from the cover shoot but our director Yarden Lior had this great eye and vision. He literally shot almost everything while the photoshoot was happening and really captured some amazing moments that we just had to use as a video somehow. We are discussing a self-isolation video too! We’ll see 🙂
What can music listeners expect from Ella Isaacson in the coming months?
More music for sure! I am ready to give listeners so much more.
