From pop princess to genre blending artist

Bold, vivacious and ambitious — singer-songwriter Ella Collier, who hails from Atlanta, started out as “just a girl with an acoustic guitar and an open mic.” 

Now, with 148 Spotify playlists — each carefully curated and prescribed to the production and mood she aspires to achieve in her own music — the singer owns her unique style and bold voice. Take one look at the diverse array of genres and artists in these playlists and Collier’s dedication to genre-blending becomes immediately apparent.

“I’m very big on genre blending. I don’t like to just be this one sound,” Collier said. 

Collier started singing when she was just 7 years old. After witnessing her seemingly endless capacity to sing and dance at every moment, her mother encouraged musical theatre as a creative outlet. Musical theatre then sparked a passion for songwriting, and Collier soon had dreams of being the next Taylor Swift. 

“I saw her on the ‘Ellen’ show when I was 11 years old and she made a song up on the fly,” Collier said. “I decided to write a song right after that.”  

The song she wrote that day was called “For You” and marked the start of Collier’s songwriting career. 

From performing in her basement, pretending that she was at Madison Square Garden, Collier began performing at different venues ranging from the Clive Davis Institute in New York and Bluebird Cafe to the Listening Room in Nashville and Converse’s Rubber Track Studios. By 13, she was working with Jan Smith — the vocal coach behind Drake, Justin Bieber and the Band Perry. 

But it wasn’t until she arrived at the USC Thornton School of Music, as a popular music performance major and music industry minor, that she became interested in diversifying her music output.  

Popular music performance students are expected to learn and perform songs from various genres and eras, from rock and pop to Latin and country music. 

“There’s just a sound that I’ve been wanting to do forever and I feel that when I was younger I didn’t really know [it],” Collier said. “And when I got [to USC] I realized that there was a whole other world and there’s just this person that I always was.” 

Students in the popular music program are also actively encouraged to collaborate with music production students, which is how Collier met John May Clark, her main producer. 

Clark, who is majoring in music production and classical piano, pointed to his close relationship with Collier as one of the major reasons behind their rapport throughout the production process. 

“As a producer, I consider my job to find the best possible way to tell the artist’s truth,” Clark said. “It helps that I’m really close friends with Ella because I also know her life.” 

Their creative process oscillates between spontaneity and routine; Collier will sometimes call Clark in the middle of the night and ask him to produce a beat after she starts the lyrics for a new song, but the pair also have a set routine of two to three studio sessions every week. 

“I’ll just bombard him with music and then we’ll have a session,” Collier said. “We already know the vibes we’re going for.” 

Collier often provides Clark with a few reference tracks — which is where her 148 Spotify playlists come in handy — and from there, they begin to craft the track. 

“We’ll just create a sound together and you just know that it’s our song,” Collier said. “He just knows what I want. Sometimes when we’re doing sessions I’m literally like, ‘How did you just know that this song was going to go in this direction?’” 

Collier performs with a band of fellow junior Thornton students, all popular music performance majors besides Clark. Jack Severino plays bass, Jack Maitra drums, Liza Kaye and Clark play keys and Eli Bramnick plays the guitar. 

Severino, who also assists Collier with instrumentation and writing lyrics, was in Collier’s first pop band. 

“We had a really good working relationship in that band. It was just super cohesive and everything came together easily,” Severino said. “We’re also really good friends, so I feel like that helped a lot.” 

Severino also helps Collier with instrumentation, writing the lyrics and song arrangement. 

“I’ve been writing songs since I was a little kid. I think I wrote my first song when I was probably 5 years old,” Severino said. “But I love doing it with other people too because it’s almost like you’re spending one-on-one time with someone, you’re really getting to know them through the song. Their lyrics … speak for their soul.” 

Produced by Clark and written with Severino, Collier’s most recent single “Talk” was released last November and revolves around her experiences in Atlanta. 

“‘Talk’ is about my hometown,” Collier said. “I love Atlanta and I loved my high school but I had a really hard time. Girls would call me and say, ‘This is an intervention, you need to stop posting about your music’ or ‘You need to stop wearing this.’” 

The pop single thus functions as both a diss and self affirmation track; Collier sings lines like, “No I’m on display while every girl with Gucci belt is / deciding that they hate me,” and “I wanna wear, I wanna do my makeup / And I wanna curl my hair / No it’s not for you or him.“

“Talk,” Collier explained, signifies a bridge between the music she created before Thornton — exclusively pop, Taylor Swift-inspired tracks — and the genre bending she’s incorporating into her singles for her upcoming EP. 

“We basically have the idea of my singles [representing] the different moods I have,” Collier said. “Every song is a way that I act in a certain light.” 

Collier’s upcoming single for the EP is titled “cinderella” and set to be released Oct. 30. 

“‘Cinderella’ is about my persona,” Collier said. “‘Cinderella’ is the first perception of me when you see me out at a club or you see me walk into a room.” 

The track’s production and instrumentation aims to capture the peak energy of a nightclub, with Collier twisting the fairy-tale narrative of Cinderella to end in a less-than-likely love story. While the person she’s dancing with might be drawn to her confidence, Collier explained, “He doesn’t really know who I am, he’s only met the outside.” 

Collier’s “cinderella” features pop melodies over a Latin-inspired trap beat and was mainly inspired by artists like UPSAHL, Azealia Banks, Ashnikko and Gwen Stefani. 

“I want the song to be something you can dance to in the mirror in sweats at night by yourself,” Collier said. “But I definitely feel like it’s one of those songs that you can [also] play at a party.” 

While Collier infuses her pop melodies with a variety of genres, pop is the genre that her music is rooted in. 

“I love pop music,” Collier said. “There’s a lot of intricacies that go into it …. Yes, there’s the oversaturation in pop music, and that’s a market, but I don’t think all pop music is that way.” 

Clark noted that he also used to believe that pop music was shallow and vapid before he started to produce music. 

“I would say that one of the greatest strengths of pop music that people misrepresent as shallowness is the fact that it’s concise,” Clark said. “It’s hard to take a lot of thoughts or take an atmosphere, environment and sound world into a tiny package.” 

In light of developing an EP that revolves around the various perceptions of herself, Collier pointed to how cathartic crafting such personal songs can be. 

“Sometimes when I’m so pissed and I can’t even think, or I’m so sad, I’ll literally click record on my voice memo and I’ll just go,” Collier said. “Even if it doesn’t become something, at least I got it out there … When you make something beautiful out of something that hurts, even good things, it’s like a little disposable camera. You get a little snapshot of the memory, of the emotions.” 

She also stressed the importance of incorporating personal experiences into her music. 

“One thing that I always stand by is that every song is about me,” Collier said. “I want everyone to feel like they’re in my living room.” 

Collier hopes to impart that same feeling of belonging in her performances as well; while the pandemic has prevented her from performing at any venues — The Study or El Cid, for example — she uploads live music sessions on her YouTube and Instagram to stay connected with her followers.  

“Performing is where I am myself. I see the crowd, but it’s my world, and I leave it all out there on the floor,” Collier said. “Like [they] didn’t have to come out here, I’m not shit yet. So the fact that [they’re] here, I want to make the show worth it for them.” 

Despite Collier’s modest assessment of her fame at the moment, she fully intends on making it big after college. 

“Talk” was recently used in an NBA commercial and Collier is developing a catalogue of songs to open up opportunities to write songs for other artists. 

“We’re going for the … gold,” Collier said. “Five years from now, [Clark and I] will be on tour.”