Ella Vos Talks “White Noise” and When She Does her Best Writing | MILK

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"I would hope women would feel that this is a voice that’s inside them."

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11.15.2017

ELLA VOS TALKS "WHITE NOISE" AND WHEN SHE DOES HER BEST WRITING

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lla Vos has made a name for herself as the artist and woman who’s going to talk

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about whatever she wants, and we’re here for it. Exploring subjects like new motherhood, postpartum depression, feminism, and love in her signature smooth

sound, Ella Vos is the indie pop artist we’ve all been waiting for. Milk.XYZ sat down with the artist in question to talk her new album Words I Never Said, her inspirations for the album, when she does her best writing, and how she found her voice as an artist and mother. Peep the full interview below, and be sure to give Words I Never Said a listen when it drops November 17.

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feeling?

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I’m feeling good! I’m really excited about it, really nervous about it too. It’s my ﬁrst

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Your new album Words I Never Said is set to drop this month. How are you

album I’ve ever released, and it’s very personal. I feel like every other day I’m like really excited, but then I’m like “I’m so not ready to be this vulnerable in public”. It’s

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emotional. How long have you been working on it?

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I’ve been working on the album for probably six months, but I’ve been writing over the

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course of two years. It really follows the journey that I’ve been on the past 24 months. You’ve spoken in the past about how “White Noise”, the ﬁrst single oﬀ of your album, deals with being a new mother and being a woman in general. Do those

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ideas carry into other songs on the album? Yeah, it does. The overall theme is really about me saying things that are really difficult for me to say. I normally want to keep to myself and want to overcome on my own, but writing “White Noise” was really the beginning of breaking out of that and saying something that I didn’t want to say out loud. I didn’t want to say that I didn’t like being a mom and that I was feeling postpartum depression, and that’s something I thought people didn’t really want to hear about. After writing that song, and the freedom I felt from doing it, and hearing that from other people who were listening, hearing how it comforted them and they really related to it, either because they were also a mom, a lot of people feeling anxiety, my dad, really wherever they were in life, just feeling like this would normally be a happy situation, and it sucks that I’m not enjoying it. It’s hard to say, and it’s a little taboo, but fair enough. It definitely carries on throughout the rest of the album. The album follows this path, I think, where it starts out with “White Noise”, and I feel really confused and weighed down. I’m finding my footing. By the end, I see the light through the clouds and I’ve experienced all these things along the way. It’s right in the middle of the song “Mother” where I’ve realized how different I’ve become than my friends, not even that we’re different, just that my life has changed. The person that I normally would be around them is changing, and I was learning how to deal with it. So you think the album follows a certain storyline? Yeah, I think with every song I become more comfortable with myself. I accept myself for who I am. There are moments, waves in a song where I feel like I’m comfortable with myself, but then it’s like, this really sucks, I don’t like where I’m at this place in my life with my relationships. I become more accepting—this is who I am, where I’m at. What was your headspace like when you were writing? Do you write better when you’re calm or when you’re frustrated? I was just thinking about this yesterday. I have a really hard time writing when I’m upset and angry. I can journal and get a lot of feelings and emotions out, but I think most of the time when I’m in that space, I don’t even realize what I’m experiencing yet. It’s very much after-the-fact, reflecting on where I just came from a lot of the time that I’m in a calmer space that I can understand what I’m feeling, and what I need to say. You kind of touched on becoming a mother, and the anxieties of that and other struggles—what was your biggest inspiration for this album in terms of who you

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wrote it for and what you want to achieve with it? I would hope to achieve that someone would listen to this and feel like connected to it and share the experience not just my own journey through it, but for other people to relate to it as well. Because there’s so many themes throughout the album about just being a woman, and how hard that is, the expectations people put on themselves, I would hope women would feel that this is a voice that’s inside them. For everyone else, it’s to open their eyes and peer through the eyes of a woman and see our struggle. Do you have a favorite song on the album? There’s a couple I’m really excited about, but I think the song I released called “Rearrange”. I was really excited to release that one because I feel like it’s the most important song I’ve written for myself. It was really about accepting yourself for who you are, and not trying to change yourself for other people. It really ties in and encompasses the whole theme of the album. I didn’t want to accept myself being a mom or accepting myself for my feminine qualities, and just feeling like I was constantly hitting walls in my relationships where people wouldn’t see me or hear me, and rejected me because of those things. For me to write that song and say I’ve tried to change, and that’s not gonna work. I don’t need to do that anymore. That was really powerful to me. It’s something I’ve been looking forward to putting that out there in the world. Totally. A lot of artists talk about themes of love, but very few talk about the perspective of unconditional love, like being a mother, but it’s not perfect. It comes with its own struggles. It’s awesome you’re touching on that, because so many people deal with that. Yeah, exactly. What’s next after the album comes out? I love releasing music—one of my goals is to just continuously release music. I’m gonna get back in the studio. I’ve already started working on the next set of songs. So I’m working on that in between doing a headline tour end of February next year and hopefully some more music premieres. Image courtesy of Joanna Rentz Stay tuned to Milk for more chats with emerging artists.

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