Ella Eyre has said she had to “unlearn” much of what she was taught early on in her career, suggesting that she suffered as a young woman growing up in the male-dominated music industry.
The British pop singer, 31, first shot to fame aged 16 when she featured on Rudimental’s No 1 single “Waiting All Night”, which won the Brit Award for British Single of the Year.
“My life changed overnight,” Eyre said of that period. “But the bar was set insanely high from a really young age, and so I’ve had to undo and unlearn what I was shown at a very early stage in my career and just find happiness in what I’m doing.”
Asked how she views those early stages of her career now, Eyre admitted that she feels “quite sad” as there are things she would have done differently.
“I feel strong in myself now because I’ve done the work and I’ve had to do a lot of things to make that happen, but both my managers for the first eight years of my career were men,” she told the Good Vibrations podcast.
“As a 16-year-old girl, not having female opinions or a female touch around me really hindered my self-confidence.”
She clarified that she had a positive relationship with both the managers in question, “but something was missing in terms of the support I needed as a young woman growing up in a very male-heavy industry”.
Last week Eyre released her first studio album in a decade, Everything, in Time, which The Independent praised as a “confident comeback” offering “empowering pop tracks full of warmth and integrity”.
In the same interview, Eyre spoke of the difficult period where she had surgery to remove scar tissue from a vocal cord in 2020, which required “invasive” surgery that left her unable to speak for a month.
“It was something that needed to happen – lockdown in a way was quite a blessing because it meant I could recover while everyone else was at home,” she explained.
“It was very tough, because ultimately when you’re not speaking for a month, you’re very much in your head, and also I’m not allowed to cry, I’m not allowed to laugh, because those things [were] very detrimental to my recovery.”
Eyre said she had to come to terms with her situation and accept her recovery would come “in its own time”.
“I think it’s allowed me to be more vocal in the sense of writing a journal, writing songs… I’ve definitely learnt to channel that in other places,” she said.
Eyre’s new album Everything, in Time is out now.
The full episode of Roisin O’Connor’s Good Vibrations with Ella Eyre will be available on all streaming platforms from Friday 28 November.
