In an interview with AStepFWD Writer Miriam Culy, Canadian singer, songwriter, artist and producer Elenee Young, reflects on her journey into music, what she has learned along the way and the influence this had on her recent single ‘i don’t want it’
My journey into music:
Music honestly felt like such a natural direction for me in life. My mom introduced my sister and I to tons of incredible music. From the time we were so little, we were listening to ABBA, and the Bee Gees; Neil Diamond and Queen. We didn’t grow up listening to kids music, but just had this really rich variety in the songs we grew up with. And that was paired with my grandparents on my dad’s side who were in a band that played at jamborees. So they were constantly playing music, they were constantly singing – my grandpa used to yodel, there was accordions and so on. They lived in our basement for most of my childhood. So I was surrounded by both my mom’s crazy cool taste in music, and my grandparents constantly singing.
I started the piano at three, and I was pretty good at piano. Although I enjoyed playing it, I found that it was more of like a therapeutic kind of thing for me. I was a neurodivergent child. So I was like, really hyper. I was wild and just excited about life. And my dad was an abusive alcoholic. So I was also angry. And so all of these things and emotions were being bottled up; I needed a place to just let it all go.
My piano was where a lot of that happened. When I was eight, my mom and grandparents bought me a big Yamaha keyboard. You know, we had this upright piano in our living room, which is where I would like take out all my frustrations. But they got me this keyboard that had a volume control button and headphone jack. I would just like be in my room, and when I was angry, I would totally lash out on the keys, which was great.
My grandparents on my mom’s side owned a restaurant with my mom, so my sister and I would spend a lot of time at the restaurant. We would watch TV, and play video games – we’d bring our little Nintendo 64 and plug it into the TV in the back – and did a bunch of stuff. But a lot of times I’d find myself in the office on the computer. And I would be writing short stories, typing them out on Microsoft Word 98. It was such a beautiful way for me to take the things that were going on in my brain and just put them onto paper. It was kind of like journaling, in a sense, but it was more fantasy. It was like the fiction side of my brain was kind of just making all this stuff up and living vicariously through these stories. I would include friends from school, I’d make storylines and plots, and there’d be like a climax where, you know, the friend does something heroic or whatever. And it was really fun.
It felt like the natural next step for me at some point to just take like the poems that I was writing and put them to music, which I was recording in my room. So my big piano had a recording button. And so I would basically play my little piece and record it. Then, I would take my poem and I would sing it to the piece. I was probably like 12 or something when I started doing that. And I did it a lot.
I started to think “this is so fun, I just want to do this forever”. I didn’t even realize I was producing music. But I’d layer things and I would do all this stuff. And then I would just sing my little poem.
So yeah, it was really just in me. It’s always been who I am.
Advice I would give to my younger self:
Looking back now, I would encourage my younger self to not be afraid of being independent.
I think for the first few years, I was really chasing a label and the idea of being signed because I thought ‘they would pay for everything. And they would take care of the stuff that I hated, which is like admin and all that stuff’. And I wanted that so badly.
I made a lot of mistakes in that season: things that cost me royalties and money and so much time, having to have lots of like hard conversations with people. I feel like I work the best and I benefit the most out of being independent because then I have creative freedom over my work and I get to make decisions.
During this first little while, as I was chasing the idea of a label, the music I was making – or at least releasing – was hindered because I wanted so badly to meet a certain criteria or fit in a box so that a label would accept.
I would say just to enjoy the independence and trust my own creative mind.
As creatives we are our own worst critic, so for us to say ‘I’m going to trust this song is good. I’m going to trust that where I’m at right now is impacting what I’m doing, and it’s beautiful being okay with that’. And when you’re trying to impress a label, or you’re under the thumb of a label, you really aren’t writing for that reason, or you’re not writing out of that place. Most people are writing because they’re trying to write songs that are going to chart. And so you lose that essence of who you are as a creative – and nobody likes that.
This journey of realisation regarding the joy of letting go of expectations and flourishing as an independent artist influenced the creation of her recent single ‘i don’t want it’:
In the world of music, not all opportunities are good. At face value, they might look enticing and what we’ve dreamed of, but when we actually get into the nitty gritty, you start to see that it isn’t a good deal after all, or that these people aren’t in my corner. So you look at all that stuff and just think, like, is this what I’m supposed to be doing with my life as a creative? In that season, my prayer was: God, if you’re not in it, then I don’t want it.
In Psalm 119:105, it says that thy word is a lamp unto mine feet and a light to my path“. The very first line of this song “I’m looking for the light now, that lamp for my feet” is this same message of ‘I’m not going to stray from what you have for me and my path’.
Listen to Elenee’s ‘i don’t want it’ here:
