Since she can remember, Eloise has loved falling in love. The multi-faceted jazz and pop singer jokes that she is either “in love or heartbroken” at any one time: “I’m such a lover girl… I love being in love, and so when it comes to my music…” It stands to reason, then, that her songwriting traverses all of love’s highs and lows: the heartache, the yearning, the giddy bliss of it. Now she's turned falling in love into a literal artform for her superb second album, My Man & Me.
Eloise's latest work arrives amid a palpable shift in our collective thinking when it comes to relationships. There are important discussions about independence and self-worth, but also a yearning for a return to real connection, rather than endless cold, impersonal “matches” over apps. My Man & Me burns bright with true experience, her smoky voice and gorgeous jazz instrumentation – on songs such as “You Will Remain” and “Resisting Your Love” – pairs with those themes to give it a timeless quality.
Raised in an artistic family who lived between bustling London and the tranquility of rural Normandy, Eloise has steadily been honing her craft, so that today she emerges as one of the UK’s most thrilling and unique talents. Born to TV’s Larry Lamb and renowned theatre actor Clare Burt, she initially followed her parents footsteps into acting, landing a starring role opposite Cillian Murphy and Tim Roth in the 2012 coming-of-age drama Broken, when she was 11 years old. “It’s funny, because I thought acting was what I wanted to do, my mum was always my female role model – but she never wanted me to act,” Eloise recalls. Knowing her daughter was keen to try, though, she encouraged her to audition for the role, and Eloise got the role.
The film itself was a magical experience for Eloise, but arguably more important was the fact that it opened the door to her music career. “I was messing around on a piano in the rehearsal studio, playing one of the songs I’d written, and Rufus [Norris, the director] said it’d be nice to get my voice involved in the soundtrack. So I got in a taxi and went over to the studio, where Damon Albarn was in charge of the music – so we ended up writing a few songs together, including the title track. I got to try so much, and Damon would encourage me to follow through with every idea I had and to trust my instincts… That was when I realised I could express myself through song, I didn’t have to be an actor.” Hailed for her performance in the film, Eloise also sang with Albarn at the Cannes Film Festival. She knew which path she wanted to take.
She got into BRIT School, whose starry alumni include Amy Winehouse, Olivia Dean and Lola Young, level alumni who inspired her to be proactive, knowing it would be up to her to put in the work and build a foundation for life after BRIT School.
To try and keep these feelings in check, she started posting cover songs to social media, including one of Bruno Major’s track “Second Time”. Major himself saw Eloise’s version and invited her to sing it live with her that week: “I already had tickets to the gig, but I was trying to play it cool so I was like, ‘OK yeah, I’ll clear my schedule,’” she laughs. She met his manager – now hers, too – and dropped out of BRIT School two months later to tour with Major and his band in support of Sam Smith. “Suddenly I was performing in arenas, and that went on for the next three years.”
Fans might wonder if there was a downside to Eloise experiencing such a whirlwind while still a teenager: “I think that’s the beauty of something like that happening when you’re so young,” she says. “You’re fearless anyway… I had nothing to compare any of it to, I just knew my favourite artist wanted me to go on tour with him in America, and that I’d get to go to New York. I had no reason to be nervous.” She began releasing her own music, including her acclaimed 2019 debut EP This Thing Called Living, which to date has been streamed over 125 million times. It was followed by a second EP, Somewhere In-Between, in 2021, and then her 2023 debut album Drunk on a Flight, which received critical praise from NME and The Line of Best Fit.
