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ChartBlog: Hi Ellie, whereabouts in the world are you?
Ellie: Hi! I'm just in Kensington in the UK. Hang on a sec... [muffled voice] ...er, yeah I've just been in the office, and now I've got to go and find my cab. I've no idea where it is, but I'll try to find it.

ChartBlog: So you're on a cab hunt while we discuss important things to do with your career...
Ellie: Oh basically yeah, but it's because I'm rushing to another place.

ChartBlog: Anywhere exciting?
Ellie: I'm going home. But I ran here, basically, and I'm in my gym clothes, and I have to go out to dinner, so I need to get changed into some proper clothes. I can't go out like this.

ChartBlog: No of course not. I think most people would imagine a pop star's life to be exactly this glamorous.
Ellie: [laughing] It's not for me, unfortunately.

ChartBlog: Can I talk to you about art and literature, as a kind of spin-off from the lyrics to your current single?
Ellie: [hesitant, but game] Ah...yeah. Yeah, OK..

ChartBlog: Were you massively into art at school?
Ellie: [enunciating every word carefully and slowly] I...was...but...I...wasn't...very...good...at...it. I did like to draw and things. I remember the things I liked to draw were, like Incubus album covers, because I really liked their artwork. And I even used to draw on my bedroom wall, but I was never that good, really. I was good at writing, and being really imaginative. My stories were always quite dark and twisted...[to herself] is this my cab? Someone's asleep in the back seat...hello? Are you for Ellie? No? [to ChartBlog] I'm really sorry about this...

[There then follows an interruption from Ellie's record company, while they help her to find a cab. This takes a while. Eventually the phone call is re-established. Then lost again. Then re-established.]

ChartBlog: This is the most ill-fated interview in the whole world...
Ellie: I'm really sorry. I'm usually fine with this, it's just I get flustered if I can't find my vehicle, which happens a lot.

ChartBlog: Looking for something and trying to do an interview must be like patting your head and rubbing your tummy.
Ellie: Exactly.

ChartBlog: So we were talking about stories you wrote as a child.
Ellie: Yeah, well I've written stuff like that from when I was really young. I always used to think the world was going to end. I dunno why. I always thought that bad thing were going to happen. I didn't like night-time because I always thought someone was going to burgle our house. I still sleep with the light on, actually, cos I don't like night-time.

ChartBlog: It's tempting to read something into that about your music. Like there's a sense of wonder and fear, or heightened imaginary realms - particularly in something like 'Starry-Eyed'.
Ellie: Er...yeah. I don't know. I think you can read into everything. I don't really know what the question was though. You just sort of made a statement.

ChartBlog: Well I wondered if that tallied with how you felt about it, but clearly it doesn't.
Ellie: How I feel about my music?

ChartBlog: Yeah, whether you can see that sort of landscape in it, when you hear it back, or whether that is what you are trying to capture.
Ellie: Well I think my whole album has an underlying darkness, but you can't really tell because the music is quite uplifting. Which is kind of my eternal contradiction of wanting to have happiness but also, sort of relishing in darkness. That sounds really intense.

ChartBlog: It was a pretentious question. It's the perfect answer.
Ellie: A pretentious answer for a pretentious question. But if we are going to go deep, my album does embellish all of that really. As much as I want to be hopeful, I also think...everything's rubbish! [laughs]
So yeah, my album is a contradiction, but it's one that a lot of people can relate to, and it's quite universal. Unrequited love, which everyone gets sad about.

ChartBlog: And also if you don't have an idea of the bad things that could happen, hope doesn't really have much of an impact. So if you've got something which is optimistic and light and heartfelt but you've got that undercurrent beneath of "BY THE WAY, I'M BEING OPTIMISTIC BECAUSE LOOK DOWN THERE! HORRIBLE THINGS!", then...
Ellie: [confused] Look down where?

ChartBlog: Metaphorically speaking. It's like a tightrope walker...
Ellie: Right, right...OK.

ChartBlog: Sorry, I've confused you again...
Ellie: Yeah, it's cos you keep making statements, not asking questions. Which is lovely, I'm really enjoying it, but I don't really know how to answer.

ChartBlog: OK, let me ask you a question then.
Ellie: Please do!

ChartBlog: What was your favorite book as a child?
Ellie: Well, as it says on the inner sleeve, "My favourite book by Elena, aged 5..." is Grimm's Fairy Tales. Which, incidentally, are fairy tales with a very dark twist to them. So instead of Rapunzel there was Rapunzelstitskin...there's lots of stories basically about...there's two brothers, one's a thief and he does bad things and the other is poorer but kind-hearted and gives to the poor. And then the bad brother ends up murdering the good brother, to claim his reward for something...it's basically twisted fairy tales. And I loved that book so much, and I still have it in the drawer next to my bed.

ChartBlog: Are you a big reader?
Ellie: I'm always reading a book, yeah. At the moment I'm reading Tales of Ovid, it's Ted Hughes and it's just lots of poetry, about the gods and stuff [laughs] And it's again lots of dark stories. But it's nice, it's nice reading. It's one of those books that starts off and you think it's gonna be quite complex but actually it's shows you that even though the world has changed a lot, emotions are pretty much the same.

ChartBlog: Do you mainly read fantasy and fiction books?
Ellie: I read a lot of books about health and stuff, and well being. I had to read a lot of books about anxiety, so I could conquer...er...getting a funny heart and stuff like that. So I read up quite a lot on that. And I'm really into running, so I try to read running stuff. Someone's just given me a book, actually, called The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. I'm training for the Great North Run, so I've stepped up my running a bit.

ChartBlog: You should watch the film. It's very good. Tom Courtenay's in it.
Ellie: Ah! OK! Otherwise, I really like Murakami, cos his stories are always...when I go to read something else, it seems a bit boring after I've read one of his books.

ChartBlog: That's always goo...
Ellie: [interrupting] What I was going to say earlier is, the cab driver I had, I call him The Whistling Man. I have him quite a lot and he just whistles constantly. And I don't want to tell him to be quiet, but he doesn't whistle any particular tune, he just whistles, and it's really slow, and it's not very nice. He was doing it while I was on the phone.

ChartBlog: Surely there's inspiration there for a future song...?
Ellie: What, the cab driver whistling?

ChartBlog: Yeah, sample him, get him in there!
Ellie: It might just make me want to kill myself though.

ChartBlog: Oh, no. That would be dark. That would be TOO dark. You need that hope that we talked about earlier.
Ellie: That's going a bit far, isn't it?

ChartBlog: A little bit, yeah. What are you like for remembering inspirational quotes? Y'know how sometimes you can go to a friend with a problem and they'll say "ah, but remember what Nietzsche said..." and then reel off some quote that'll just turn your head upside down.
Ellie: No. On my computer I had the other day a list of quotes. Hang on, I'll just get my laptop now...I...I...[banging noise] Oh God!

ChartBlog: Are you alright?
Ellie: That sounded worse than it was. Er...yeah, I put...I put... [sighs] oh my flat... I had this list of quotes because I read this review of something. It was a bad album review and it made me feel really depressed, which I'm inclined to do, I can get quite down about things, and...maybe I put them on my iPad? Such a nightmare...erm...yeah I've got a really terrible memory. Like one of the worst memories in the world, and I...wait a second. I sound really flustered and stuff.

ChartBlog: You do sound a bit flustered, yes. But I did...
Ellie: It's because I had to walk up loads of stairs, and you've asked me loads of bloody intense questions, and now I'm feeling like...I dunno, you've made my head fire up.

ChartBlog: I'm sorry about that.
Ellie: That's OK. I found this quote, by the way.

ChartBlog: Oh good!
Ellie: And it is...I don't know who it was...but I thought it was really good: "Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It performs the same function as pain in the human body, in that it draws attention to an unhealthy state of things."

ChartBlog: That is VERY good. Do you read your own reviews?
Ellie: I enjoy reading reviews, always have done, because it told me a lot about myself. So it's really good to read a good bad review, y'know? You can get bad bad reviews where they're just completely off-point, and obviously haven't got you at all, and if they met you they'd realise that they're so far off it's unbelievable. But you have to accept that it is always there and you have to find things around it. And the way of not getting criticism is by not saying or standing for anything.

ChartBlog: The thing I've always said is that you musicians make the thing, we just relay back our experience of it. So you're already way above and beyond what we do...
Ellie: Well yeah. I've been in a bloody battle, and the people who review - much as I like to read reviews - are the people who shoot the wounded afterwards, and haven't fought in the battle. I've fought to get my album done, and I feel like I've been victorious, which is good.

ChartBlog: Well congratulations.
Ellie: Thank you!

THE END

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