About
Is pop’s next big thing a Massachusetts-to-LA transplant making music that sounds like it’s 2003? Addison Rae and Troye Sivan seem to think so. If your TikTok algorithm is working properly, you’ve already heard of Eli. Posting under the username @journalofadoll, the rising artist’s new album Stage Girl has quietly exploded online, especially in LA. She’s been hustling for a while. Eli spent a few years as a Vine kid, and dropped early tracks released under a different name (she signed to Zelig Records, home of King Princess, in 2023). At 24, she’s finally having her moment, even if some influences she’s pulling from were barely on her radar growing up. Like the aesthetics of Stacie Orrico (she doesn’t know who she is), or the sounds of Imogen Heap’s 2005 record Speak For Yourself. What is real, though, are her lyrics: inspired by her life in America’s coastal cities, run-ins with nepo babies who brag about screwing The Dare, embracing a DIY attitude, and a series of dumb men she’s since left behind. Eli writes and produces almost everything herself — albeit guided by the musical friends she lives with in East LA. She describes herself as “a Victorian woman trapped in 2013.”
