Elizza on the rise
STUDENT ARTIST ON HER FIRST EP “MYSTERY”
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WROTE THE LETTER, dancing all alone, ‘cause he is gone and now I’m the devil I’ve never known,” croons Palo Alto High School junior Elizabeth Wong, backed by moody synth beats and melancholy piano progressions on her new track, “The Letter.” The song’s haunting low-fi arrangement paints a story of a girl writing letter after letter to someone who doesn’t care for her, slowly losing herself in her fixation with him. Her voice grows soft as the song decrescendos towards the final verses. “I should’ve saved her, I could’ve saved her, from writing the letter.” Wong, known as Elizza to her listeners, has amassed thousands of streams and monthly listeners since her first single, “Ghost of Her” made its debut in 2019. Her videos have garnered over 300,000 views on YouTube and her fans applaud the evocative lyrics and melodies. Wong put out her first EP, titled “Mystery,” on Feb. 13. Although she began songwriting in middle school, it wasn’t until freshman year she started recording. “In seventh grade I wasn’t really confident and I didn’t like my
voice,” Wong said. “It took me about two years to be confident because my voice changed a lot too and matured a lot.” Wong writes the majority of her songs with her piano at home and defines her music as mostly slow songs and ballads with woeful themes. “I would describe my sound as a little darker and more mysterious and a little bit unpredictable,” Wong said. “I always have like, weird chord progressions at some points in the song, which I think really makes my sound a little more alluring.” Producing from home When stay-at-home orders were implemented last March, Wong found herself with more time to focus on her music. She spent her summer connecting online with George Fitzgibbon a U.K.-based producer to write a collection of songs that would become her upcoming EP. However, shelter-in-place orders made studio recording impossible, forcing Wong to develop a new process of working around the restrictions. “Given that we’ve never met and never had a proper face-toface discussion about where we could take the music, it took a fair few mixes to get a style down that we both thought was the way to go,” Fitzgibbon said. “This process is also fairly time consuming due to the time difference between us, but I think we nailed it.” Communicating with Fitzgibbon mainly over text, Wong says the recording and producing process was fun but required a lot more independent work. “Mystery” was recorded completely from home but maintains the same level of quality exhibited by her studio work. “I record on my bed, actually,” Wong said. “I don’t have any professional equipment, but it still works.” Her songwriting process typically takes place over the course of several weeks. It begins with writing chords on her home piano and coming up with melodies. She then writes the lyrics and A WAY WITH WORDS — Junior Elizabeth Wong poses for the camera, inviting us into the world she creates through vivid lyrical storytelling. “Having a story in a song that’s three minutes is really cool and that’s why I like songwriting — you can say so much in such a short amount of time, and convey so many emotions,” Wong said. Photo illustration: Audrey Joachim
30 FEBRUARY 2021
