We sat down with Elliot to talk about the making of All This to Say I Love You, crazy videos, and what busking has taught him in both life and music. 

Hey Elliot, let’s get straight into it. So your debut EP is out now – All This To Say I Love You. Congratulations. How does it feel now that it’s finally out for the world to hear?

It’s super exciting. It was a long time in the making. The project itself was done in January. I think we were planning on going single by single, and I just got a bit antsy, and I just really wanted to put a little body of work out, so I thought, well, these songs are what I think the different types of love would be like. They’re all to do with love. And I feel like All This To Say I Love You was just the perfect way to encapsulate the six songs that are on it. I was super excited when it came out because this material I’ve been sitting on, I’m running around going like, these songs are great. So when it finally got to come out and had people listen to it and share that opinion was a really, really good feeling. 

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Oh, I bet! But oh my god, I feel like if I were to release my debut EP, I wouldn’t be able to get any sleep the night before the release date. Did that happen to you as well? 

Definitely. I was running around like I was a chicken, making sure everything was right, and then getting it all together for the release date, and then to tour literally two weeks later was a lot to handle, but I feel like it was all worth it. In the end, everything has come out very well. I’m very happy with everything, and I was super excited the night before. I was rolling around.

Congratulations. You said that it was a long time in the making. When did you first start the project and what was the overall creative process for it?  

When I first started the song “I Think They Call This Love,” that was the first time me and SOAP ever worked together. And we collaborated on “Boy In Love” a week after that was produced. That was probably when it really started, when we were writing from that point. And that was July last year. And by December of last year, we had these songs and we knew that these songs were going to be the next set of songs that we would either put out as a body or we would put out as single after single. So from January onwards, we were just in the studio, finished all of them in one go, and then we had them. And then we were like, let’s go. So an EP was a very, very good way of getting them out there because I feel like the world just needed to hear them. 

It seems like it all worked out so seamlessly! So obviously, your sound is rooted in the 50s and 60s.  Where did your love for that sort of era come about initially? 

I mean, it’s always kind of been there. My parents always showed me Elvis and Roy Orbison and people like that. But I think for me, it mostly kicked off when I started busking the streets, and I started doing just pop covers when I was a kid. But as I got a bit older, I started to sing Elvis and Tom Jones, and people like that. And the people in the area that I used to busk for loved it because it was like an older population. And as my voice changed, it really lent itself to it really well. And I really enjoyed singing the music. So then I started exploring and really delving deeper into people. And from Elvis, I found Roy Orbison’s other music that my mum hadn’t shown me. Billy Fury dropped up and Sam Cooke and all these other artists that I now listen to every single day, and I’m absolutely obsessed with.  

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It is a great era for sure. So if you could perform one of your songs from the EP with, let’s say, Elvis, which song would you choose? 

Oh, that’s a good one. I’d love to hear… the thing is, I’d love to hear somebody sing “Daydreaming.” Whether it was Elvis or Roy Orbison or anyone, I think that would be absolutely amazing. That would be great. 

I wish time travelling was a thing so you could actually make it happen. I can see it. So, like you said, you started out busking in Bury. So what are the main things that this has taught you for your music career moving forward?  

The main thing is to make the music an experience. The one thing that I really took from everyone that would compliment me singing, especially the older generation, is that they tell me a story with the music. Be it like when they went to see Elvis in 1974 and they flew all that way to Vegas and sat there, and it was like a full-on trip for them just to go and see their idol who never came to the UK. And I think the fact that every story that was told to me about anyone back in the day felt like an experience has made me realise that music shouldn’t just be like, ‘Oh, I went to an Elliott concert last week.’ It should be something that they tell 50 years from now, and they’re like, ‘This was the first time I saw this act. And this is how no one else got to see it but me. And that’s what the experience was.’ So I think that’s an important part for me, making sure that every gig I do is not different from the last one, but is still as special to the person that came as the last one.

I totally agree, storytelling when you perform is just so important because that’s what people enjoy as well instead of doing like a half job. What’s been like a concert where you’ve been to as a guest that really blew you away and that inspired you?

I actually went to see Tom Jones two years ago. I won’t stop talking about that concert. Obviously, he’s an idol of mine, but at the same time, he’s still got it at his age. He’s incredible, and I urge everyone to go and see him, and if they can, because it’s definitely still worth it.

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Wow, let me look out for a tour date then. Obviously, you’ve built a huge global fan base in quite a short time. Can you recall the moment when you kind of realised that, oh my God, I can actually do this as a career? 

Yeah, it was very difficult because of social media, especially as a musician – if you’re going to do it just without original music, there isn’t any money in it. It’s all just a hobby at that point. Unless you have a lot of people in the industry who can get you the rights to things, it’s difficult to actually make any money. The main thing for me was when I put out “I Think They Call It Love,” especially the teaser videos. I went playing snooker, which is what I love to do when I’m not making music, and I just remember putting my phone away after posting the first video for “I Think They Call This Love.” I was so nervous because I’d never thought that I’d ever put out original music. And then I looked at it after the game, and it was going insane. That to me was probably a pivotal moment that I thought, ‘Oh, this could work.’ People actually might enjoy what I’m putting out there. 

That’s amazing. So many people on TikTok used the music as a snippet, way over 100k. Do you ever go through TikTok and check out what people create to your song snippets? 

Occasionally, I’ll look through and I’ll try and interact with people and look at what they’re posting. Sometimes they’re posting real wholesome content. Sometimes there’s content out there that I’m like, that’s questionable.

I was gonna ask you – what’s the weirdest video you’ve seen of your songs? 

I’ve seen one, and to be fair, this was a cover I had done. It came up on my For You page, and it was a picture of a skeleton, it was like a drawing. Actually, I don’t know if it was a drawing or not, but it was a skeleton and somebody had put their face into the skeleton, into the pelvis area and called it Elvis the Pelvis. And there was my cover, and it was in the background, and they were miming the words to my cover, and I’m like, That sounds like me!’ So that’s probably the weirdest thing that I’ve seen. And that video got 300,000 likes, which was just nuts. 

Wow. People on the internet are wild. Back to your EP, so some parts in your EP, like the song “Who Knew Dancing Was a Sin” is like a love letter to your hometown in Manchester, Bury. What does growing up there mean to you musically?

It’s massively shaped me. I don’t feel like I would be who I am today if I hadn’t been out on the streets singing to people. People were teaching me things, people were showing me artists. I had a friend who used to come up to me, and he gave me his records, and they were all like old Roy Orbison records. He was a massive Roy Orbison fan, and his thing was he wanted to show me more of Roy Orbison’s music. He should always take the credit for that because I would never have really listened to it without him showing it to me. Every inch of me and every story that’s told, I’ve listened to and I’ve learned from, and it’s shaped me as a person to try and be a character that people will do this for however many years from now.  And that’s always been the dream – to just perform, make people forget about things in life that are worrying them, and then have a story to tell for the rest of their life.

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The dream is coming true! Let’s talk about your tour. How did it go? What excited you the most?

It was a lot of fun. For what it was and for how we did it and the time frame we did it all in, we absolutely crushed it. And I think I couldn’t have done that tour any differently. We took it back from a full band to just me, a guitarist, and a double bass player, and didn’t do backing tracks; we just played all the songs. We just practiced for like three days, four days, and we just sat with each other. And that show then came together really well, and I was super happy with it. Everything looked great, the people enjoyed it, and I got to meet a lot of people as well, which was really fun.  

Do you hang around after?

I do, yeah. At the London show, I went straight through the crowd and handed out flowers, and then went to the merch stand and sold the merch, which is what I usually do. I usually stand at the merch stand and sell it all, and people love it. 

That sounds super special, and exactly how it’s supposed to be! So do you have any rituals or habits that you do before going on stage to calm your nerves? 

Yeah, it’s a weird one because I don’t personally notice any rituals or habits that have. I might do a bit further down the line. I’m quite chill on the day. I keep everything calm. I try to keep everything as quiet as it can be so that when I get on the stage, I’ve got all my energy from that day to put into the performance. Most of the days that we were doing these gigs, I was sitting in Nando’s, eating my tea. And then an hour later, I was on stage in front of 500 people, and it’s crazy. It was those kinds of days. But yeah, there were definitely moments in each show. In Manchester, I brought a vintage car; I bought it two days before the tour started. And I fixed it up to have it drivable to put outside of the venue in Manchester. So the whole time, you can imagine I’m just sitting there on the stage, and in the back of my mind, every two seconds, I go, ‘I hope the car is alright.’

I would be exactly like that because classic cars are so precious. 

It was interesting because we parked in a little garage around the back of the venue in a little underground car park that goes under a bridge. So it’s not very well watched.  My dad just parked it up there. And I’d heard that a car next door to mine had been literally broken into and had all of its things taken and stolen. From that point on, we were not leaving it in there anymore. And it was even worse because I found out it was a fan who then had to go home and deal with that and miss the whole show. So I gave her some tickets for Birmingham and said, ‘Come, please come.’

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How awful, but so nice of you to get her tickets so she won’t have to miss out another time! So is there anything for the rest of the year that you’re cooking up or anything you can share already? 

So I’ve got a couple of things going on in Asia. I’ve got some festivals I’m performing at and heading to some countries that I’ve never been to. South Korea is a big one. I’m super excited. We’re working towards the album as well. We are locked in on that from now on. And in the meantime, we’re just working on the next single. That’s the next pressing thing that we need. I have a bunch of things coming up that I would love to share, but we’re still just ticking all the boxes before I say anything. Hopefully, another tour, maybe going around Europe and America, that would be fun.

 Well, it sounds like you’re not slowing down anytime soon; it all sounds very exciting. Thanks for your time!

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