ELLE WINTER

PHOTOS BY GINA SCARPINO AND WORDS BY LAUREN KLONOWSKI

This day in age, getting discovered by the music industry mostly happens online. Whether it’s YouTube, Instagram or another site, many of today’s stars get their big break thanks to these sites. For Elle Winter, her journey into music started a bit differently. Growing up in New York, she watched the pop stars of her time shine and knew that she wanted the same path for herself. She says, “I honestly was always singing and I would watch and study videos of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and all those females that were so popular at the time when I was growing up and living in New York. I had so many opportunities to kind of express myself, so I signed up for vocal lessons when I was four years old and then I took an acting course in New York at the age of seven. The acting course really drove me to work hard in pursuing singing and acting because we would have showcases at the end of the semester at school and agents and managers would come, which really motivated me.”

On top of these pop powerhouses, Winter also looks to artists like Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran and Beyonce. “I love Bruno Mars. He’s one of the best performers. I love his music. I love that he stays true to himself. Just by what’s going on in the industry, he always just puts out what’s true to him. I also adore Ed Sheeran as a songwriter, he just takes me to a special place. I love Beyonce too. I just watch her videos all day. I love studying artists like that cause I find that their drive and discipline are so inspiring, you know?”

She took all these personal inspirations and started crafting her own sound when she was just nine years old. “I have videos where I would just sing into the PhotoBooth camera on my computer when I was really really young. I used to diary, and just write a lot in different forms. I really love writing stories. But I used to take fictional stories about love and all that and turn them into songs. I would kind of take songs that already existed and write my own lyrics to them. I really fell in love with writing. I started going to piano lessons, but instead of learning piano, my teacher and I used to just write songs together. He took me to my first studio in New York at nine and that’s when I really started putting out music that told my stories. I think my first song was called ‘Awkward’ and it was about a boy I had a crush on in fourth grade.”

Her sound has grown up a bit since her childhood days, and now she says her music is “pop with a little bit of a rhythmic aspect to it. I do love to add in some EDM influences, so my songs have a bit of that feel to it. So it’s a really nice blend of those and all of the influences I grew up listening to.”

When it comes to writing these pop-meets-EDM songs, she says the process is different every time. “It really depends on the session. Sometimes, I’ll go into the session and I’ll be with producers and writers and they’ll be like, ‘What do you guys want to talk about today?’ And I’ll talk them through a note on my phone from a few weeks before that detailed a concept I had for a song. I just go through everything I’ve written in my phone because I’m always writing. I find myself really inspired on flights, for some reason, I love writing a ton of different songs on planes. But once I get to the session, I’ll bring those to the session, or the producer will start writing or making a beat and that’ll totally change the direction [of the song].”

In addition to her musical inspirations, travel is a big source of songwriting inspiration. Winter says, “I actually was just in Sweden for two weeks to work on music in January. I found it so inspiring just to get out of my routine and meet new people and try new foods. Even little things like that-- anything that makes you feel anything I just find so inspiring.”

Winter just dropped her debut EP “Yeah, No” earlier this year. She talks about what that song means to her. The main theme is about telling people who you are instead of letting them make their own assumptions. “This is me, telling everyone who I am and setting the narrative straight. It’s like, you think you know me? Like yeah, but no, like this is, this is who I am,” she says. She goes on to talk about the rest of the EP, saying, “[The] songs really each tell a different story of an experience of mine and they all really do have different influences from my [life] growing up and blend all those sounds together.”

Since she mentioned that the writing and recording process is usually different for every song she creates, she gave some insight into what the specific process was like for recording the track “Yeah, No”. Winter says, “I wrote it in Nashville and it was one of my favorite sessions ever. I just had so much fun. It went so quickly and the song really stood out to us. We wrote it on guitar and that was basically the only track and it just had a little bit of a beat but it was very raw. Eventually, we reproduced it and realized that the song still carried the same power that it did before. But from day one, we all knew it was special when we were creating it, so I just knew it was the perfect song and title for the EP.”

“Yeah, No” turned into a hit and received over 60 thousand views on YouTube in its first week. Winter talks about how exciting the filming process was. “I’m really proud of this video. I worked on it in LA with this amazing director Bobby Hannah. I told him what the song meant to me, and how the song is about the end of a relationship and how people will keep calling to check-in and make sure I was okay.”

She continues, “The song talks about how I’m fine on my own. It’s like, I don’t need you to support me through a breakup. I wanted the song to reflect the strength that I felt. Where I’m like, Hey, this is who I am. I don’t need you, I don’t need anyone. I told the director the vision and he captured it with this really cool warehouse. We shot with these really beautiful badass female dancers and we just all stood our ground and created the vibe to the song and it’s super empowering.”

Besides recording and filming successful videos, Winter loves performing her infectious tracks and seeing her fans. “Writing songs about my experiences and seeing fans connect to them and sing along with me is truly crazy, I can’t even describe it; it’s so special. Social media and streaming are so great, you can reach people and have an effect, but to actually physically see them and look them in the eye and see how people connect to your songs is just out of this world.”

So, what’s next on Winter’s 2020 agenda? “I’ll hopefully be touring and then releasing an album in the fall. Yeah, that’s serious. We’re working on the whole new project and I just moved to LA now too. Since I moved, I have to learn how to drive too. Those are the main things on my radar right now!” That’s quite a booked year if you ask us. We look forward to seeing Winter accomplish and excel at each of these projects. 2020 is set to be her year.