Ella Jane on the making of ‘Marginalia’

By: Sydney Hise

After gaining momentum and a massive following on TikTok following her debut release, THIS IS NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE! (2021), Ella Jane has since embarked on her first headlining tour—with support from Cece Coakly and Alix Page—and dropped her sophomore record, Marginalia. Lucky for us, our Editor-in-Chief Sydney Hise got to catch up with the singer-songwriter in Madison, where she shares details about her latest album, the creative direction behind it, and more.

777 Collective: Is this your first time in Wisconsin?

Ella Jane: It is!

Are you enjoying your time here? 

EJ: I am. I mean, I've only been in, I've been at a gas station and I've been in here. And that's been it, but I'm liking the experience!

You've picked, like, the coldest, snowiest, iciest day.

EJ: Yeah, it seems like it! I know, I know how to pick 'em.

You're from the East Coast, right? 

EJ: Yeah.

So you get a lot of snow.

EJ: Yeah, so it's not that bad, I mean, it is pretty, pretty cold. But I didn't realize it's snowing right now. So we, right when we got inside and started snowing immediately after.

Tell us a little bit about your latest release and why you chose the title of it. I don't know how to say it, otherwise I would. I listened to the like enunciation on Google and I don't know—

Photo: Sydney Hise

EJ: Oh, all good, Marginalia! When I chose it, I was like, I need to make sure I know how to pronounce it. But basically, it's just a collection of songs that I sort of wrote over the course of like, a year and a half, barring, like, one song on it. It was the first time I really went into like, writing a project from scratch, as opposed to like, collecting a bunch of songs that I already had, and just putting them on a project. The title for this one was, it was just like, sort of a word I had lying around in my notes sections for a while that I think I learned about in some English class or something, but it just means, like annotations and like writings in the margins. It sort of made me realize that the way I view songwriting in my own life, it's like, it's sort of the way I annotate and like markup, and process the events that I— you know, the events of my life. So that's sort of where it came from, but it just felt like it made sense. 

Can you tell us a little bit about the cover art and all the aesthetics that you've done?

EJ: Yeah, I feel like I'm someone with a pretty, pretty intentional, and, like a strong aesthetic vision. I cared a lot about, you know, like colors and artwork and the presentation of everything. I used to be an art kid in high school, so it just is like, really fun for me. But I knew that I sort of wanted something that still felt like me, and felt more mature but still somewhat fun. But it was fun getting to play around with things. The cover that we ended up going with that I really really fought for was not from the shoot that was intended to be the cover shoot. I always think that's sort of risky to go into and be like, "Okay, we're gonna get a cover out of this one shoot." The pictures that we used for tour promotion, where I'm like sitting in the flowers and stuff that was supposed to be for the album cover, but we did this shoot like a month earlier with this photographer named Maddy Rotman and, and I just fell in love with the pictures. I think it's because it pretty much exactly matched a lot of the inspiration, or matched the vibe of a lot of the inspiration photos that I had chosen. I really liked the idea of being outside, or like sunset or when it gets darker and just have the foreground be really well lit. There's just something about it where I was like, immediately like, "That is the cover.”

Can you tell us a little bit about the process of recording and writing for that project? 

EJ: I think I started off very daunted by everything, just because I had never really written the body of work from scratch. And I think I had this idea going into it that like, "Oh shit, am I supposed to say, am I supposed to have something to say or like a statement to make?", or is there supposed to be like a through line through all the songs? And then I just sort of, sort of realized that, the through line was just that I was writing these songs and the same period of time, and they were a time capsule for this period of my life. It was a lot of like, you know, exploring my sexuality, and I just moved to Brooklyn and left college and started sort of a new phase in my life, and so a lot of the songs that I wrote were just about experiences from that time. It was really fun. A lot of it was like, holed up in this little studio in Brooklyn with my producer Mike Irish and then once once in a while, we would bring in this amazing writer Steph Jones, who I've worked with before. It was just bringing in a lot of old ideas. I am someone who— it takes me a while to write, or a song like I will often have an idea and then come back to it months later. It was sort of a collage of just a bunch of ideas that I've had. 

You have songs on this release about your sexuality and coming to terms with it, there's one song in particular, right?

EJ: Sort of, yeah, I'd say it was more so that, “Party Trick” was the first song that I had ever like, put the word she in. So even if like other songs had been about girls, this was the first time I had publicly done it. And it's something that's like such a small detail, but for so long, it felt like a really big deal. I think by just writing about a girl and making it public, that was just enough for me to feel like I was being more open. Confronting that so publicly was a very, I think, helpful way for me to confront it privately. A bunch of the songs are on there, just about a girl. I think growing up, a lot of the representation I would have looked for especially in pop music— it's pretty recent that you see more, you hear more queer pop music.

Photo: Sydney Hise

And not a lot of it is mainstream yet!

EJ: Yeah, so just for me, I sort of was just trying to go about it in a casual way. We don't need like a 'Born This Way', you know what I mean? It could just be, "Oh, this is a song about a girl."

It's very, like, the way Miley Cyrus did “Midnight Sky”! You've had quite a few songs go viral on Tik Tok, including “You Shouldn't Have Said That” and “Crash Cart.”  Is there a song of yours that you wish got more attention online? 

EJ: Um, I would say, it's funny that you say that about “Crash Cart,” I do wish that more happened with “Crash Cart.” But I still think there's time, like I'm still pushing these songs and whatever. I think the thing I have to keep reminding myself is that it's all the algorithm and just because a song doesn't do well, doesn't mean there's not value in it. But I think “Crash Cart” or I think like “Party Trick”? I don't know, I feel like it's interesting to see— there's no way of predicting what will do well on Tik Tok. There's a couple songs on the album that I was like, "Oh, yeah, this will hit," and it doesn't and vice versa. So who knows!

“Crash Cart” is written from Cassie from Euphoria's perspective, and “Nothing Else I Could Do” is based off of The Great Gatsby. Do you find it easier to take inspiration from other people's stories and tell those stories versus telling your own?

EJ: I think, in a way, but it's more so that it's easier to start an idea while taking inspiration from someone else. The only way for me to really be able to write songs about someone else is for me to connect to them in some way. And I think with The Great Gatsby and then with Euphoria, these were storylines that, even though I hadn't gone through the actual experiences, I related to the feeling behind it. I think sometimes when I have writer's block, or I feel like there's not enough going on in my own life to write a song about, that's where I sort of turn to fiction to remind me of feelings that I've had. 

You wrote “Nothing Else I Could Do” for a school project. Do you find it's easier to give yourself criteria to make a song around or do you think it's easier for you just to freeform? 

EJ: Once in a while, it's nice for me to sort of give myself an assignment. “Crash Cart” was the first thing I wrote that was inspired by fiction since I did “Nothing Else I Could Do.” And it reminded me that it's sort of nice to give myself an assignment because I think sometimes where I struggle with songwriting is I approach really broad topics and realize it's hard to narrow down what I want to say, or feel like I know what it is I really want to capture. If you already know a narrative, if you already know a story and the way it starts and ends, then it's a lot easier to fill in the blanks. The way that I write typically, sometimes it's just easier to like, get all my ideas out by just writing, but yeah, it depends. I change it up!

Do you have a favorite emotion to write about?

EJ: I've been enjoying trying to actually write about happiness and being in love because I feel like for so many years, all I wrote about was unrequited love. I'm very sick of writing about it. I'm in my first sort of real relationship right now and as we started dating, I remember being nervous about like, "Fuck, am I going to be like, too happy to have things to write about"? It's interesting to be able to explore sort of the different sides of happiness. I find myself writing a lot about being afraid of fucking things up. It's been fun to have all new material to write about, for sure.

I saw a TikTok that you deleted that was about putting girls into like “sad girl music” boxes, is that something that you feel like is a problem in the music industry, boxing artists off and only allowing them to be niche and into only one emotion? 

EJ: Yeah, I think in a small way, it's a bit of a problem. It's more of a broader thing of like, the way we talk about the sort of TikTok-ification of music, especially with female artists, and grouping people into like, “sad girl indie” even when, to be frank, I mostly make upbeat pop music. I still sort of get grouped in with that, because maybe I'm not writing about the happiest things. That sort of language diminishes a lot of what people do and write about. I don't have a problem with it. I think something that was interesting was, you know, I know that everyone was joking, but I was posting about being in a relationship, and everyone was like, "Oh man, you can't be happy.”  The issue with it is like, I think that bigger corporations now— all these huge companies now have some intern tweeting for them, and they all say “slay” and whatever? I feel like even Spotify feeds into that where, like, you know, during your Spotify wrapped, they're like, "Who's your sad-girl-indie-cottage-core?" you know what I mean? It's more just a general problem we have in the way we discuss music and artists, but I get it. I like my sad girl indie, no matter what.  

Final question: if you were written by any Taylor Swift era as a person, which Taylor Swift era would have written you?

EJ: Probably 1989. Just a little gut feeling. Or Folklore. 

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