Ella Jane: A Rising Singer-Songwriter Who Went From Posting One Minute Song Covers on Social Media to Writing and Producing Her Own Music
I went to a small high school in Westchester County, New York and when I say small, I mean less-than-600-kids-in-the-entire-high-school-small. As a junior, I remember hearing of a freshman girl in my gym class who did covers with her ukulele to her large following on Instagram. They called her “Ukellela” then, but now she is known as Ella Jane, a rising singer-songwriter who has come a long way since her one minute Lorde and Lana Del Rey covers on Instagram. Today, Ella has written and produced three songs that have accumulated millions of plays on Spotify. Inspired by artists like Taylor Swift and Lorde, Ella is slowly creating her own sound.
I first came to know Ella through her old Instagram username, @Ukellela. At just 14 years old, I was impressed to find (after stalking her, of course) that her videos were getting hundreds of thousands of plays and she had amassed a following of over 10,000 people. At school, however, Ella was just a regular freshman, dealing with the embarrassment that everyone in her grade knew about her Instagram covers: “I knew that every day for the next five years, I would be called Ukellela.” When Ella made the account, she was only 13 years old, encouraged by her friends to post. She reflects, “They probably shouldn't have done that because I was actually horrible,” but learning to deal with some of the online bullying she faced in the comments of her covers made her more confident in her abilities today. Ella says, “It taught me to deal with hate a little bit, regardless of whether it was deserved or not… I learned how to not care about [the hate]... I'm really grateful for having that space to grow before I was actually making stuff I liked.”
On Instagram, Ella found a community of other young artists who, like her, posted song covers on the platform. With support from other young, aspiring artists and a platform to share her passion for music, Ella learned to be more confident in front of the camera and organically grew her reach on her social media channels.
Ella’s first song, released in February of 2020, is called “The City.” Written by her and originally produced on GarageBand, the song now has over 2 million plays on Spotify. The next single she penned was “Nothing Else I Could Do,” which came out in July of 2020, and has been featured on some of Spotify’s playlists like Lorem and Viral 50. In response to this success, Ella says that she never imagined her songs doing as well as they have: “It was like the coolest thing ever. I remember ‘The City’ hit a million [streams] the day of my high school graduation. I came home and my parents surprised me with this giant balloon!”
Her latest single (my personal favorite), “AUGUST IS A FEVER,” was her first song where she officially received producer credits. Although she was heavily involved in the production of both her other songs, she was more directly involved in the production of “AUGUST IS A FEVER” She says, “I probably could have asked for [producing credit] for the other two, but I think for ‘AUGUST IS A FEVER,’ I ended up almost liking it the most because it's the one I had the most involvement with on all aspects. It feels the most like me.”
“My introduction to a music career has been solely during the pandemic.”
While the pandemic has given her more time to develop her music, she has also missed out on some of the traditional in-person opportunities that come with starting a career in the music business. All of the singles have been released through the pandemic, so she’s gotten less face-to-face interaction with fans and others in the industry. She sums up, “My introduction to a music career has been solely during the pandemic.” To make up for this loss of in-person interaction, Ella has used the time to hone her producing skills, now approaching songwriting with “a more finished product in mind.”
As a young woman in music, Ella is acutely aware of the difficulty that women face entering the field. In her women’s studies class her senior year of high school (shoutout to Ms.Geelan!), Ella did a project on women in music and was disarmed by the information she discovered. Based on one study done by USC that looks at the Grammy nominees and Billboard Charts, Ella found that less than 3% of producers on the Billboard Chart are women and less than 14% of songwriters are women. To Ella, this serves as yet another motivator to keep going and doubles as an issue that she wants to champion throughout her career: “It's just something that's been so important to me in trying to figure out what to be outspoken about. If I'm going to say something about anything, I need to make sure that I'm not just saying the right thing, but that it's something I care about.”
With only a few years in the industry, Ella has already experienced sexism. She was recently accused on TikTok and Instagram of being an “industry plant.” This term, which has lately been associated with young white girls who are placed into the music industry through money and connections, has also been used more generally against young women in music. Ella made a TikTok which went viral about the success of her song “Nothing Else I Could Do,” to which a man commented, “and that’s on money and connections.” Ella remembers feeling attacked. She says, “The video was literally me excited about my song getting on one of my favorite Spotify playlists because that was the first producer credit I got on one of my songs. It just felt like such a cool accomplishment and like full circle, and then that comment infuriated me so much.” In that moment Ella knew that she had to address the comment.
“It's just something that's been so important to me in trying to figure out what to be outspoken about. If I'm going to say something about anything, I need to make sure that I'm not just saying the right thing, but that it's something I care about.”
As a way to call out the sexism that she experienced, Ella decided to make a response video for her over 120,00 TikTok followers. “I knew that if I wanted people to see my reaction to this, I would have to do it in some sort of calculated way, so I made this video where I was just like, ‘Fuck you, that's so sexist to assume that I must've had connections because I couldn't have done this on my own.”She also noticed that the hateful comments hurt more than they had in a while. She says, “I think this is the first time that I started really taking the comments a little bit more to heart just because these people are cruel. I don't actually care if they insult my ability, because at this point it took me a while to believe that I'm good, so when people insult my talent or my songwriting ability, I don't care. That's a matter of taste, whatever, but in this case, it was just what these people were implying.” Ella has learned to not engage with these comments anymore and instead channel her energy more productively into her music.
As Ella steps into the music industry, she is set on making music her way and shattering the glass ceilings that remain prominent in the field. More than anything, she’s excited for when it will be safe to experience the music industry in-person. “I've never had that interaction with people that would make it seem real,” she laughs, “For now, it's just me on my computer making music.”
STORY ANA SANDOVAL
PHOTOS ELLA JANE