When an email dropped into my blog in box a few days ago with the details of an ‘indie folk newcomer’ and I had a look at her social media accounts I expected to see the usual few hundred fans that any regular new artist would have as they try to establish an audience. Yet Ella Grace is different. With over 200,000 on Instagram and 33,000 followers on Twittter clearly there are other forces at work here.
That’s because Ella Grace is more widely known as Ella Grace Denton, a former You Tuber and blogger (she wrote the now deleted We Need to Live More, a blog targeted mostly at young women, that encouraged mental wellness, for them to be happy, healthy, connect to the real world and ditch self-doubt for self-love) who has been sharing her journey, both highs and lows, with people from the age of 16.
Normally social media stars crossovers to other creative pursuits are pretty fruitless except for gaining the author a bag of cash; take for example Zoella’s attempt at literature, which was hardly going to win her the Man Booker prize, but with Ella Grace things are different.
Having already shared a small amount of music online (a demo of a song called Walk With Me on Soundcloud, three songs Wild Roads, Away From Here and She on You Tube and another, a hippyish ditty about love, the destruction of the planet and the fast pace of life uploaded on Flo Morrissey’s You Tube Channel) her latest tune is called Here We Are Again and it’s rather gorgeous.
With the sound of birdsong in the background Here We Are Again immerses itself in the natural and organic. Over acoustic folky instrumentation not dissimilar to something Laura Marling might produce Ella sings in a calm and soothing voice of journeys, sorrows and endings and then adds a question of hope: “Can butterflies now live where darkness crept in?” A beautifully quiet moment of reflection that shows that Ella Grace has a lot more to offer than just social media skills.
Ella Grace - Here We Are Again
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