Live at Electric Brixton in London: Eloise

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.

Eloise worked on My Man & Me with her longtime friend and collaborator Slim Gabriel, who

helped provide the lush textures and grooves that make this record such a transportative listen.

“I found myself writing a lot about how there’s no right or wrong way to love someone,” Eloise

says. “There’s nuance to it, because nothing in love is ever black and white.” The sultry

R&B-influenced single “For You” finds her reflecting on a situation that stifled her (“I was so

obsessed/ You chipped away at me until there was nothing left”), while acknowledging how she

became hooked on her pursuit of someone she knew wasn’t treating her properly. “It’s about a

dynamic you know isn’t healthy, but you’re almost addicted to the feeling of it,” Eloise says. “I

wrote it knowing how I’d feel if the relationship ended, almost preemptively, like I was writing my

way out of it.”

“Why Can’t You Love Me,” she laughs, is her audition for the James Bond theme. It certainly fits

the bill for a dramatic curtain-raiser, with its gorgeous piano notes and sighs of strings melding

with Eloise’s husky croon. “I’d come home in a bad mood, drunk and soaked from the rain, and I

plonked myself down on the piano and started hammering on it, like an army marching to war,”

she remembers. “I’d left a situation that made me feel really insecure, so I was full of this fury

over being my best self and the other person just not understanding, not giving me what I

needed.” Such is the cinematic grandeur of the song that it brings to mind Barbra Streisand’s

extraordinary performance of “Cry Me a River” live in Central Park, in 1967. “It’s so intense, full

of heartbreak but also furious, with the horns backing her,” Eloise says. “I wanted the horns, I

wanted to make people stop in their tracks.”

The same goes for songs such as “Love Don’t Grow”, which she refers to an amalgamation of

all of her past relationships: “There’s always this feeling of how you still love each other, you’re

used to each other, but the love isn’t blossoming anymore – we’re not falling in love,” she

explains. “It’s a bleak moment when you both realise you can’t grow together anymore. So that’s

what this song is, a bit like the waving of a white flag, admitting it’s not enough.”

How things can turn around, though, as we hear on the stunning track “How Lucky”, as romantic

and joyous as those first bright blooms of spring. Meeting her long-term partner was a pivotal

moment for Eloise, having just gone through a particularly rough breakup, to find the one she

was looking for: “He was everything I’d needed, someone who wanted to go out dancing, have

deep conversations,” she says, “and I got back one day after seeing him and filmed a video of

myself, as though I was going to send it to someone, just talking about how much I loved him.”

My Man & Me is a beautiful journey, told by one of our most thrilling and original new

storytellers.