Ella Eyre is stepping out of the dance-feature shadow on everything, in time

You’ll know UK singer-songwriter Ella Eyre from her radio-friendly, high-energy collabs Waiting All Night, Gravity, Came Here for Love, Answerphone and Just Got Paid, but as she proves on her long-awaited, second album, everything, in time, she’s so much more than a dance feature vocalist.

Eyre’s career has been a series of stop-starts. Signed at 17, her early years were a whirlwind of chart success and major collaborations, but much of that momentum came at the expense of her own creative vision. While her voice was everywhere, as it turns out, her agency often wasn’t.

A BRIT School alumna who studied musical theatre, Eyre was discovered through a vocal coach in 2011, signing a publishing deal with Warner Chappell in 2012 and a record deal with Virgin EMI soon after. 

Her breakout came in 2013 with Rudimental’s Waiting All Night, a UK number one that won a Brit Award for British Single of the Year. More hits followed – top 20 solo singles, even a MOBO for Best Newcomer, and high-profile collaborations with Sigma, Sigala, Meghan Trainor, and French Montana – cementing her as a chart mainstay.

But behind the scenes, her journey was marked by halted progress and compromises. After jumping to another label, Island Records in 2019, the pandemic brought an even sharper pause: vocal surgery left Eyre unable to speak, forcing her to relearn her instrument entirely. 

Eyre decided to leave Island; she took ownership of her masters and scrapped all unreleased music. Now at 31, she’s finally reshaping her career on her own terms.

“It definitely hasn’t been easy to get here,” she acknowledges, speaking to Headliner from her home in North London. “It still feels pretty surreal, honestly,” she says of her new album finally being out there in the world. “It’s been a dream of mine to make a second album ever since I released my first one, which was over 10 years ago now, almost to the year. I’ve been signed three times over my career, so it’s been a real journey.

“Now I’m independent, which comes with its own challenges. It’s exciting and creatively freeing to make a record as an independent artist, but it also feels like learning on the job all over again. 

"The landscape is completely different from when I released my first album. Back then, it was more like: turn up, do a radio interview, hope for a chart spot. Now it’s all social media, algorithms, streaming, TikTok, trends, building community – there’s so much more to think about.”

The industry moves fast, and 10 years between albums is a long time out of the public eye. Although Eyre is quick to point out that she’s been steadily working throughout this period on features, writing for others, and releasing an EP, rather than on a significant body of work.

“It’s not been plain sailing,” she admits. “It hasn’t been easy to build momentum, because I’ve often been battling against my team and the wider infrastructure, with different visions from the one I had for myself. I got into the industry when I was 16, and I definitely hadn’t fully developed my creative likes, dislikes, or my sense of artistry back then. I’ve basically been figuring that out ever since I released my first album.”

Ironically, Eyre eventually realised that 2015’s Feline reflected the truest version of herself. She set about trying to recapture that essence in her new record, but in a more modern and fully fleshed-out way.

“With this second album, for anyone who’s been an ‘Eyrehead’ – as they like to call themselves – since the beginning, they’re saying they can hear a lot of similarities between the first album and what they’re hearing now. That makes sense, because that really is who I am at my core. It’s just a more mature, more experienced version now, and I’ve had a lot of fun with it.”

Similarly to RAYE, she's now out of the major label system, where she was constrained to what other people wanted her to be. Once independent, she took a hard look at an earlier iteration of the album and decided that it wasn’t right, scrapping it entirely and starting again. Eyre is refreshingly candid about why.

“I was with the wrong label,” she shares. “At that point, I’d done a lot of dance collaborations, and when I signed to Island Records, they signed me off the back of those records and my reputation in that part of the industry. I signed, knowing their heritage and history, and wanting to lean into something more soulful and more personal. I just had a different vision for myself.

“When I started making that record, I was trying to make it in a way that the label would like, so they’d keep letting me do it and actually put the money in by the time it was finished. I was trying to people-please. I knew what it was like to be signed to a label and feel stagnant, and that’s a really frustrating place to be. 

"You’re trying to make music for yourself, but also music the label will push and fully commit to,” she elaborates, adding that she’s not shading her former label – they just both envisioned different things for the project.

“Because of that, I knew the record was never really going to work. I wasn’t truly committed to it, and they weren’t either, because it wasn’t what they wanted. They were, understandably, thinking about success, money, and commercial outcomes, while I was thinking about fulfilment. 

"I wanted to make music that genuinely resonated with me, music I’d actually listen to, especially thinking back to growing up, first heartbreaks, and turning to my favourite artists to help heal those moments. I didn’t feel like I was able to do that as an artist myself.”

The decision to scrap it all came after her vocal surgery. “I couldn’t speak for a month and then had six months of rehab afterwards,” she explains. “I couldn’t operate as an artist for a long time, and that period made me realise that if I was ever going to share my voice with people again, it had to be on my own terms. Regardless of what kind of commercial success that brought, I just knew I needed to feel fulfilled in what I was doing.

“​​That period taught me so much,” she reflects. “There were a lot of lessons packed into that time. It’s definitely not for the weak – you literally can’t speak, you can’t laugh, and crying is actually damaging for your vocal cords when you’re that vulnerable after surgery. 

"Suddenly, the natural ways you express yourself are completely off-limits. Being all in your head like that can be dangerous, especially when you’re questioning your future and whether you’ll even be able to do the one thing you’re good at. I had to really learn patience and how to trust the process, something that, as an Aries, does not come easily. I guess that’s exactly what my album, everything, in time is about,” she considers, ever the professional, bringing it back around to the album. 

“It’s about accepting that things – good things, and things in general – happen in their own time, and there’s nothing you can do to rush them. It’s about finding peace in the process and being okay with that.”

Since Eyre released her debut album, streaming changed the way music is released and consumed forever, and with it and the rise of TikTok and its preference for short clips, pop songs have also, in turn, been getting steadily shorter. Eyre has been watching all of these changes unfold.

“That was exactly why I didn’t rush into making a second album,” she nods. “When I was coming up, I’d released maybe two songs in my entire career before streaming really came into play. Then the landscape changed dramatically, and it changed so fast. Labels were suddenly trying to keep up and trying to work out how to crack a system that was completely new. 

"Attention spans are much shorter now. There are so many more people releasing music every week, and so many different platforms where you can find and discover new artists. It’s really hard to put an album together and get the same level of impact you might have had 10 years ago, because attention is spread so thinly now.”

Despite her early featured vocalist success – which she’s nothing but grateful for, by the way – Eyre is now at a place where she can put out the music she wants to make, where she can distance herself from being typecast as a certain type of artist, without the fear of backlash from a label. We should have known her dance bangers were not a true representation of herself; what self-respecting millennial likes leaving answerphone messages anyway?

“Well, exactly,” she laughs. “When I was 16, we were in a completely different music industry. Social media didn’t really exist in the way it does now. I really admire artists like RAYE, who use platforms like Twitter to speak openly and let people know what is actually going on. When I signed, I definitely didn’t feel like I had a voice or that I could express my frustrations about my label situation. 

"If you spoke badly about your label, they could lock you into a deal indefinitely. That’s happened to other artists: they have a big commercial success at a young age, something goes wrong, and instead of being allowed to leave and flourish elsewhere, they’re kept there so they can’t have that success with someone else.

“There was always this underlying fear and a kind of oppression. Especially as a female artist, it often felt like, ‘You’ve never done this before, you’re coming into our world, we know what we’re doing, and you’ll do what you’re told. ’ 

"I wanted success, but I didn’t really know how to get there. At that age, you’re just following along as best you can. I do think I had a voice, and I tried to stay true to myself, but at 16, how are you even supposed to know what that really is?”

Although she admits that sudden freedom came with its own challenges. Now that she was free to make honest music that reflected what she liked, what did she want to say?

“It was freeing at first, but also a bit scary, because suddenly the possibilities were endless,” she admits. “I could go anywhere I wanted, but I also struggle with making firm decisions and trusting my gut. It took a little while to navigate what I actually wanted. At the same time, learning to be free with that uncertainty – and realising things won’t always go the way I want – was part of the process. Sometimes those moments take you somewhere unexpected.”

With everything, in time, Eyre has unveiled a body of work that is as unfiltered, fearless, and fully-formed as she is. A self-curated collection of 15 songs, everything, in time sees her step into a sound that is rooted in rich soul, bold R&B, retro funk, and emotional truth, and is one that embraces her influences of Lauryn Hill and Amy Winehouse. The title track, for instance, is decidedly Back To Black-esque.

“That was actually the last song I wrote for the album,” she reveals, adding that she also toyed with calling the album Exactly As I Am – a track that in the end didn’t make the album.

“everything, in time felt like the culmination of a journey, both sonically and musically – the place I’d been searching for the whole time. The song just flowed out of me. It’s my favourite on the album, and it’s the one I really want people to hear,” she stresses. 

“Going through the major label system, I’d lost a lot of confidence. I present as quite confident and outgoing, but I’m actually an introvert and can be very self-critical. Getting into the music industry at 16 meant learning about myself on the job, and that wasn’t always easy. 

"Making this album became about rediscovering myself, understanding who I truly am, and finding acceptance in that. By the time I finished, I felt I’d found that, but I still had more to say, more to learn, which is everything, in time, ultimately became the title track.”

The album followed some of its recent releases, including high on the internet (ft. Jay Prince), a searing indictment of digital burnout and online illusion, silky soul-pop banger, domino szn, and the intriguingly titled, self-assured track, kintsugi. Eyre considers her current relationship with social media: friend, foe, or necessary evil?

“It’s kind of like that uncle you like, even if you don’t always agree with him,” she laughs. “When social media first came around – Twitter, in particular – I was all over it. But that beast has really grown into something else. Once algorithms came into play, and Instagram stopped being chronological, the game changed entirely. 

"Posting was no longer just for fun or when it felt right – you had to strategise. If you didn’t post enough, the algorithm punished you. It’s a love-hate relationship with social media: I used to genuinely love it, but the obligation has made it far less fun,” she shrugs.”

Kintsugi is the traditional Japanese art of repairing broken pottery using lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Eyre reveals why the word resonated with her at this time in her life: “What struck me was the beauty of the idea that something broken can be made more beautiful through repair. That’s so true in everyday life – relationships, whether romantic, family, or friendships. Things can break, yes, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be fixed. Sometimes, once they’ve been broken, they can even become stronger.

It’s a hard-won perspective, shaped by years of stop-start progress and lessons learned in the public eye. With her dance feature vocalist days in her rearview mirror, she’s ready to take the lead as the main character in her own story. “There’s been a lot to learn along the way, and it definitely doesn’t feel like the end of the journey,” she adds. “If anything, it feels like the beginning again,” she smiles.

Meet the producer: 

Aston Rudi on producing Ella Eyre’s everything, in time: “She was done playing it safe”

Image credits: Kaj Jefferies