The Catharsis of Singer Ella Vos

by Natasha Wolff | November 13, 2017 11:00 am

This new mother, fierce feminist and mesmerizing vocalist is soft-spoken and carefully selective with her words. Her breakout single “White Noise” tackles the difficult and personal topic of struggling with postpartum depression. After Ella Vos[1] gave birth to her son, she wrote “White Noise[2]” and unknowingly opened up the figurative Pandora’s box to her emotions. “Through the process of writing that first song, I learned how important it was so speak about my experiences for myself and for other people,” Vos admits. “It inspired the whole album and allowed me to say things I never wanted to say out loud,” she adds.

Throughout the 22 months of writing and creating music for her highly anticipated album Words I Never Said[3] Vos journeyed through her past and faced some of the emotional challenges that she’d pushed under the rug. “It was like my therapy,” she says of the writing process. “After I wrote ‘White Noise,’ it had been such a freeing experience for me, it propelled me to write more songs in that same style.”

One of the darker songs she wrote is “Down in Flames[4],” a song written about the downfall of her and her partner’s relationship. Vos reveals that they had been struggling and felt like everything was going downhill. With a strong beat and Vos’ airy vocals almost speaking the lyrics ‘if we’re going down, we’re going down in flames,’ the song is catchy despite its cloud of sadness. “When I wrote ‘Down in Flames,’ I hadn’t told him how I felt at all,” Vos says of her partner’s response to the song. “Everything I was feeling had been very internalized. When he heard the song, he knew it was about us and it prompted us to have all of these conversations about our relationship and figure things out.”

In true Ella Vos fashion, she gave her partner a response in the form of a song called “In Your Corner[5]” to express how she felt about their relationship. “My partner plays the guitar on all of the songs and co-produces. He heard “In Your Corner” and knew it was about us,” Vos says. “It was very emotional. The song is me saying that I’m not going anywhere and I want this to work.”

Ella Vos (Photo credit: Joanna Rentz)

In addition to her romantic muses, Vos’ debut album will include the song “You Don’t Know About Me[6],” a female-empowered track that tackles the issue of pro-life versus pro-choice. “I think writing a song like that is my way around having to be confrontational,” Vos says of her writing style. Although the album has been an emotional rollercoaster and admittedly very freeing, Vos says that she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to write the way she does on Words I Never Said again.

For Vos, she wants listeners to take away a sense of freedom and encouragement from Words I Never Said. “Some of the feelings I have are difficult to talk about whether its depression or anxiety. I want people to know that Ella Vos freed herself and you can too.”

Main image credit: Joanna Rentz

Source URL: https://dujour.com/culture/ella-vos-interview-words-i-never-said/