Elles Bailey has already been to Oxford this year, playing the Truck Store in August, to showcase her newly released album, Beneath the Neon Glow. If you missed it, she’ll be back in September at the O2 so she jumped on Zoom to tell us more about her love of music, her time in Nashville and comparisons with both Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.
Your music is described as Americana, folk, roots, and blues but I would call it country, am I wrong?
I feel like I can be a little bit of everything. So, if you feel like it's country, then I will be country. I've never, I've worked a lot in Nashville, and I'm heavily inspired by old country music. There are country flavours, and more so in my latest album, I think, than any of my others; there are some sort of country sensibilities to it,
I feel like the country is having a moment.
Oh my gosh. The boots and the fashion, and then Beyoncé happened. It's just like, thank you Beyoncé, for what she's done for country music. I happened to release, Enjoy the Ride the week that Beyonce released her record and never in my wildest dreams did I expect to get likened to her, but someone wrote, ‘If you're finding country music and you're enjoying Beyoncé, check out Elles Bailey.’
How did you come to work in this genre?
So I'm speaking to you from my parents' living room, and I'm looking at the CDs, like the Eagles, the Band, The Beatles, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Rolling Stones – old school, my dad's music collection. He was in a rock and roll band. They played a lot around Bristol, played Glastonbury in 1976, and so yeah, I just grew up with his music.
Throughout my teens, I was really into pop and then indie. I was in an indie band for a long time, and then I went to university and started to study psychology with the aim of being a counsellor. It took a long time for me to find out what I wanted to say as a songwriter but when I heard Etta James, Something's Got a Hold on Me, that song changed my life and changed the music I was making. It allowed me to explore parts of my voice that I hadn't really used in an indie band. It took me on a spiral right down to root music.
So, if someone is new to your music, where would you suggest they start?
For me as an artist, I like to think that my newest work is my best, so I'd always say start with the new record because that's what I'm doing right now. However, when I go abroad (I do lots of touring in Germany, the Netherlands and Norway), often people who are real music fanatics want to start with the first album. I love it, and then they work their way through.
I’ve heard you refer to Taylor Swift as someone who always moves the goalposts. Taylor’s roots are in country or Americana, and now she’s moved into the stratosphere of pop. Do you think you'd ever go that way?
I think we live in a world where it's actually okay to not just be one thing. If you think about where Taylor Swift started, her music was always essentially very poppy – very pop-produced, whereas my music production is more rootsy. I'll always stick with that more rootsy lane, I guess. To be honest, so much of a song is how you produce it which places it in a genre.
I think for me, what makes Taylor so incredible is her lyrics and the way that her vocal is presented. I didn't quite realise this until I went to watch the Eras tour, but I know every single word to the songs (it's probably the reason why my memory is so messed up because it's just filled with Taylor Swift lyrics). It's because she's right up front; it's about her, it's about her story, and it's about her lyrics. It's a journey, and it's a story, and you fall into that story.
What first lead you to Nashville?
I got invited to make an album out there and to be honest, I've been burnt so many times in the music industry that part of me was like, I'm not getting my hopes up. In this industry, there are a lot of people who will take and not give anything back. So it was quite funny, because I turned down making an album there, and then I was like, ‘What are you doing? This is once in a lifetime opportunity.'
Going over to Nashville opened doors for me over here that might never have been opened had I not. In fact, I can loop it all the way back to Taylor Swift, as the reason I got to go is because someone in Nashville fell in love with my cover of Shake it Off. So I have that to thank for opening doors in Nashville.
In my first week there, I was writing with Bobby Wood and Roger Cook, and then Bobby introduced me to Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys. I was like, hang on a second, I'm just some random girl from Bristol who still hasn't figured out her sound yet.
It must have been incredible. I understand you wrote some tracks from your latest album, Beneath the Neon Glow in Nashville?
Yes, I first went to Nashville in 2016, so it was my tenth or eleventh trip in 2023. I can go to Nashville and walk away with like, 10 songs
You’re currently in Bristol. Is there an emerging scene in the UK?
I think there is. I mean, there are definitely really active Americana scenes, blues scenes, country scenes – we are all spread out but there are a lot of artists who are working together and collaborating.
Obviously there are quite a lot in London, but there are amazing artists coming from Bristol as well. Yola, who now lives in Nashville, but Lady Nade as well, and Holly Carter, the Americana Instrumentalist of the Year – two times running! – lives about 800 meters from where I'm sitting right now.
I think people are really understanding the benefits of collaboration, not just in songwriting, but as artists. I think it is important, not just for the career, but also for the camaraderie.
There’s a real sense of nostalgia in Americana which is obvious on your track, 1972. Was there a specific reason you picked that year?
Despite what it says on the tin, it is a song written for 2024, inspired by living in the moment, putting down our phones and actually just experiencing life without the technology we hold in our hands all of the time. That was written in Nashville, and it was with Jess Grommet and Willie Morrison. We wanted to go back to the 70s because we were all heavily inspired by that era, and then it was just a case of, what was a cool year? We went back and looked at what albums were released, and all the music released in ‘72 was awesome.
So, finally, what's the future looking like?
The new album will be out, which is very exciting. It’s the first time I've released an album in summer, which has been quite interesting; dropping singles into festival sets in front of audiences that might not necessarily know you. It worked out really well. The headline tour starts at the end of September and rides all the way to the end of December. So that's 2024 basically tied up.
Elles Bailey’s latest album, Beneath the Neon Glow, is out now. Her UK tour starts in the autumn, and she’ll be at the O2 in Oxford on 28 September. For more information and to book tickets, visit
