The Carillon’s Emma McGill in conversation with a Canadian pop musician
BC-born artist Elena Erin recently released her newest single “Only Kink I Haven’t Tried,” from her album which is set to come out in March. Erin sat down with the Carillon for a chat about her musical career and discussed her background, roots, and musical inspirations.
What is your musical background?
I grew up playing classical piano. My mom had me and my siblings doing intensive music stuff. She loved, loved music. So, everything was very classical and then I started songwriting at a young age, just songs for myself. That’s kind of how I got into music and I can’t remember my life before music. I started writing both on piano and I would also just think of lyrics and melodies in my head and write that way. I kind of had two different approaches to songwriting.
Where do you usually start when writing?
It really depends on what phase I’m in. If I have a piano around, I’ll tend to start writing on the piano. Sometimes I’ll stick to guitar more and do a few months of just writing on guitar. I’ve had it where sometimes it’s all lyrics, like I’m just writing notes on my phone or anywhere I see paper. I’m always writing down my ideas and then I’ll put music to it later. More recently, I’ve been kind of writing over instrumentals or finding tracks for things that I like, but the melodies and the lyrics always tend to stick together.
How did you start out writing your new single, “Only Kink I Haven’t Tried”?
This one started out as a lyric idea, actually. I had the title line of the song and chorus lines stuck in my head and I tried writing it to a few different tracks, I think. So I had it like a note in my phone and I was like, “this is so good.” I wrote it into one song that was quite upbeat and happy and I was like, “this isn’t quite getting the point across of what I’m trying to say.”
You’re from a small town in BC. What do your roots mean to you?
I think it instilled in me the sense of community. Even though I’m living in some of the biggest cities, I grew up with such a strong community where everybody knows everybody and everybody kind of looks out for each other.
It is so special to just go back and it kind of feels like a time capsule. Even though they might not listen to your music or know about your music, they just know who you are as a person. I think it’s special to have a foundation like that.
Right now I’m based in London, and I used to be in New York. I still am kind of in between all of these different places. I’m going to be back in Canada next spring and summer doing tours there and seeing family.
How does your new single fit into your upcoming project?
It’s a concept album and it’s called “Roaring 20s.” Imagine yourself at a Gatsby-ish party in the 1920s and you go up there and start chatting with one of the women at the party and she starts telling you her whole story.
I take some of my own experiences of coming from this small town and making it to this huge city. She’s living as a singer and living this huge cool life. She’s at one of these big parties that seem like the most iconic glamorous thing, but it’s still like, “I’m not really happy here,” and, “why am I getting all these things that I was pursuing and they’re leaving me more and more empty?”
The whole album is set in that environment and is kind of this personal undoing and dissecting; it feels the most experimental to me. I think this song is the love dissection of this person being like, “what am I actually looking for?”
Who are your musical inspirations?
When I listened to the radio growing up it was a lot of country music: Miranda Lambert’s early albums, George Strait, and even old country music Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn. The songwriting in country music can tell such a powerful story. Now, I would say I listen to artists whose music I like but also their approach to the music industry, like RAYE, Chappell Roan, and Sevdaliza.
Your new album is inspired by The Great Gatsby. What is your relationship to the work?
He couldn’t have access to the love of his life because they were from different classes, and his whole life he actually wants love from this person, but he has to build up an enormous life to win this person over.
There were so many different parts of the story that were so interesting to me: talking about fitting into these different class systems and all of these people who are trying to impress everyone and everything around them, but they’re actually unhappy inside. I mentioned Gatsby a few times on the album.
How do different environments affect the way you work on your music?
It’s a huge differentiator. Being in a studio or a writing space, or being at home or travelling, I think all of that affects how I’m writing. I get so creative on flights and a lot of times I’ll be working on songs and have a bunch of demos made, and I’lll go on an airplane and be listening back and suddenly it seems so obvious what I need to do.
Where do you want your music to take you?
What’s cool with music is that it builds communities and it bonds a similar kind of people together. It’s not just like, here’s my product and there’s the listener. I had this experience and I put it to words and now there are other people who have had those similar experiences and are connecting with that. The more people I meet, whether they’re collaborators or listeners or any of that, all of it contributes to how I’m able to tell these stories and express myself.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
