Something special just for guys! The new album 'Stage Girl' from Eli is here!
Monday 3rd November 2025
Release date: Out now Label: RCA
Eli isn’t pretentious about music. The New Jersey-born singer, who has been quietly amassing a following through songs that give off the vibes of bedazzled T-Mobile Sidekicks and J-14 magazines, loves pop and does so unabashedly. For her, dismissing the reigning pop girls and legendary divas of the past is “just devoid of understanding of what it means to be a creator and a musician”. “Why would you not be writing for all the people that created the [culture], that have a hand in shaping the voice that you have?” she says incredulously.
That’s why the 24-year-old leans as far into the “joy of pop” as much as humanly possible. It’s what drives her sublime debut album ‘Stage Girl’, out October 31 – a record partly made up of ’90s pop-R&B in the vein of TLC and Mariah Carey, and partly the bubblegum teen pop of early-noughties Disney Channel stars. “[Making it] was just like, ‘What do I need right now?’” she explains to NME over video call from Los Angeles. Eventually, she arrived at a conclusion: “I need something that feels like all of these things that were there for me when I was eight years old.”
‘Stage Girl’ was made for that younger version of Eli who was captivated by the things she discovered in the CD aisle of Barnes & Noble. As she takes NME back in time and between the store’s racks, she recalls one such experience. “I see the ‘One of the Boys’ Katy Perry album, and I’m seeing her in this crazy big hat and the polka dots, and I’m seeing all these colours and flamingos and it’s grabbing me. I’m locked in. I need to hear every song. It’s colourful and it’s fun, but there’s so much depth under all of that.
Craig & Scott
Posted by Craig Jones