Ellie Nanni perfectly captures honest self-reflection on new EP ‘You weren’t supposed to stop listening’.
Ellie Nanni has released her debut EP ‘You weren’t supposed to stop listening’, a hauntingly beautiful ode to the life lessons she has learnt and the ones that are still left to be faced.
Singer, songwriter and producer Ellie has utilised her background in classical music to self-produce her debut EP, (all whilst studying for a Masters in Musicology at Oxford nonetheless). She explains what discovering her music journey looked like for her:
‘’I was always a musician, but I thought I'd be a musician in a different capacity. I knew that I wanted to take it into my future, but didn't really decide until around two years ago during third year of my Undergrad. Before that I hadn't thought about it like that, I thought it was a hobby. It was what I did every day, I would get home and that's what I'd be doing. It was definitely more than a hobby.’’
‘You weren’t supposed to stop listening’ is a beautifully poignant 6-track self project, dedicated to a myriad of life lessons, mistakes and experiences that the singer is trying to grasp but hasn't quite got there yet. Featuring ‘Houseplants’ which went viral on Tiktok back the autumn of 2023, and ‘Everything is Grey’, a soft and harmonically brilliant song with glimmers of Billie Eilish’s debut laced throughout, which touches on things not being binary.
‘’The EP is both me saying to myself 'please keep listening, please keep trying to learn these life lessons', and it's also an instruction to the listener. If you put the EP on a loop the whole thing is a cycle - the outro flows into the intro. The whole thing is supposed to be its own acoustic world that's very expansive with all these vocal layers. It's all encapsulated in this one body of work, which is the way I like to listen to music.”
Ellie’s delicate voice somehow carries the painful weight of some of the issues she has faced, married with lyrics that reflect on unrequited love, blurred lines and body dysmorphia. ‘Running Song’ dives into the singer's confusing long-term relationship with her body, and was met with a chorus of critical praise from fans. The way she plays sensitively to the topic, Ellie has been able to hold up a mirror to the hidden struggles of self-image, as she highlights the thin lines between reflection and reality.
“As a young woman, I've had struggles with body dysmorphia and general body image issues. I did rowing quite seriously up until last year and as a Cox there's a weight expectation, so to get to where I wanted to get, I needed to lose weight. I'm an adult, it was 100% my decision and I knew it was going to be hard. Having to get there and then having to stay there was so draining and difficult. It gave me insight into what life I would be having to lead if I wanted to be that size under general societal pressures.
Once I finished the rowing season and I started gaining weight, all of a sudden I had a personality again and I was happy all the time. I realised it's actually really not worth it. That's why the line at the end where I say: 'No-one ever warned me that skinness is cold, so I don't think I'll take skinny past these 22 years old', that was me saying, 'I've done it now and I've realized it's not worth it'. Physically and also mentally it was affecting my relationships, it was affecting my degree, and it was literally cold.”
‘Dancing In The Rain’ is Running Song’s gentle sister track, depicting the different experiences lived but not shared between two people, or perhaps we are uncovering two different sides to the singer. The soft production gives the lyrics an easy capacity to steal the show. ‘Every year you live more life but I’m just getting old’.