Remaining Constant: An Interview with Elliot Lee
Elliot Lee moved around for most of her childhood, but she
always had one friend that was constant in her life – music.
One of her earliest memories involves a red wagon, a warm
blanket and the sounds of Buffalo Gals on a skipping CD player. She relied on
the comfort in lyrics when she found herself facing difficult situations, but while
these lyrics paralleled her pain, her comfort was temporary.
“When it became too hard for me to keep bottling everything
up but simultaneously too daunting to move past my hang-ups, I found that I
could beat inertia and take the first step toward healing by admitting what was
on my mind in the stomach-able form of catchy melodies,” she said. “Everything
else stopped mattering when I decided to use my life to help others who haven’t
found their way to beat that inertia yet.”
Her method of songwriting comes in the form of plain paper
and colorful pens; no limitations or end goals other than to get everything
from her mind onto that piece of paper. She said that her unfiltered thoughts
give her the opportunity to be completely candid and that the finished product
is nothing but raw emotion.
Her music focuses on the concept of overthinking – a concept
that she’s all too familiar with.
“We are capable of dragging ourselves to the lowest points
in our lives by ruminating—sometimes it feels like memory and forethought are
curses,” she said. “It can seem like a simple solution to just reach out
when you’re in pain, but for many of us the fear of worrying our loved ones or
becoming a burden is immense and omnipresent. In order to survive we have to
find ways to cope with this dichotomy, and not everyone is lucky enough to find
a safe way to do so.”
She touches on this in her latest single, “Upside Down”. The
track is full of positive examples of what a child might consider “opposite day”
complete with the ignorance of a negative impact. Having that mindset
ultimately leads to failure, and the lyrics showcase what Lee calls “the
potential downfalls of an upside down world.”
She hopes listeners take away that it’s a guarantee that
someone in the world has felt the same pain and misery as someone else. It’s
about the feeling of loneliness and overthinking but knowing that living in an
upside down world can’t solve the problem.
Elliot Lee has always had one constant friend in her life; a
friendship that involves unpredictable sounds, dark melodies and edgy vocals.
Her music and creation process gives her that sense of comfort that she’s
always felt in music and that motivation to give that comfort to others.
“Music has always been this inexplicably loyal entity that
has permeated every moment of my life for as long as I can remember,” she said.
“…It always remained constant, universal.”
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