Singer-songwriter ella jane mixes media consumption and personal stories into heartfelt anthems

Ella Jane Roth, whose stage name is ella jane, spoke to The Panther to discuss her newly released EP titled "Marginalia" and her headlining cross-country tour. Photos by Maddy Rotman

Although it started as a high school English assignment, one of the first singles by singer Ella Jane Roth — who goes by the stage name ella jane — amassed over 26 million streams on Spotify since its release in 2020. 

The song, titled "nothing else i could do,” is based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" and pulls one of Jay Gatsby's lines: "I wrecked my house a hundred times just to see you walk into a room." A memorable theme throughout the 1925 novel is the imagery of the green light, and fans of ella jane took note of that. 

Thus, when ella jane performed in Chicago at the beginning of this month, audience members passed around strips of green construction paper to be glistened through their cell phone flashlight during the performance of this song.

"I just saw hundreds of little green lights appear — I really almost cried," ella jane said. "It was just really cool and it was cute and nerdy and Gatsby-themed. Audiences now really want to show the artist that they mean something to them. They're not afraid to break that barrier. So that was really special."

With her music career beginning in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, ella jane has accumulated over 44,700 followers on Instagram and 193,500 followers on TikTok. Now with her second album "Marginalia" under her belt, ella jane is in the midst of her first headline tour, The Marginalia Tour, which contains over 30 stops across the country — including The Constellation Room in Santa Ana on Nov. 18. 

Many fans compare ella jane's music to Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo due to her indie-pop genre focus and ability to mix media references and her own life experiences in her lyrics. The 21-year-old singer received praise from artists like Elton John, who after listening to her song "Calling Card," said on his radio show that, "If there's any justice in the world, it will be a big hit for ella jane… I really love it." 

ella jane told The Panther that her rise in streams could be related to Generation Z yearning for music that exudes storytelling.

"People really care about songwriting more than they might have in the past," ella jane said. "On TikTok, I feel like the music that blows up is lyrically focused and people really want to connect with the artists themselves and what they are writing about."

Rewind back to her childhood in the suburbs of New York, ella jane never thought her dream of songwriting would become a reality. Her main source of musical inspiration was her family — with her mom curating the best taste in songs, her dad playing jazz piano on the side and her twin brother taking piano lessons with her. 

But it wasn't until she spent a year at Tufts University that she was able to hone in on her craft and learn to promote herself as an artist. 

"I think in some way, (the pandemic) was productive for me musically, because my little dorm room and my closet became a little recording studio and a makeshift booth," ella jane said. "Socially, it was a little difficult, but somehow I'm very grateful for the way it worked out. I think if I had been at college and my freshman year was like full swing college, I probably would not have had any of the time to be working so hard on self promotion and on recording and writing."

ella jane will be performing at The Constellation Room in Santa Ana on Nov. 18, The Troubadour in Los Angeles on Nov. 19 and at Voodoo in San Diego on Nov. 20. 

"Marginalia," which was released on Oct. 28, features nine songs all relating to ella jane's coming of age, all told through catchy pop melodies. She embraces her queer identity in "Party Trick," the indescribable feeling of being in love in "I Wanna" and her meaning of home in "7."

"I grew up reading with a pen in hand and a lot of my lyrics really come from lines in books and also in movies or conversations," ella jane said. "It's kind of a way for me to sum up how I've taken inspiration from my life and from the media I consume. I kind of consider the songs like my own way of annotating and marking up my own life."

The release day focus track, meaning the song that is promoted upon the release of the album, for the EP is "Warhol," which connects both how things in modern media lose their value if they are continuously reproduced along with ella jane's own identity.

"We all have different identities and different versions of ourselves that we put forth," ella jane said. "Something that I've been grappling with is this idea of how do I know the difference between this more confident, polished version of myself that I'm trying to put forward and who I actually am."

While this is her first headline tour, ella jane previously opened for artist Peter McPoland last spring. This time around it feels different to ella jane, since she no longer serves as the opening act or background music to farmers markets or coffee shops. Despite most of ella jane's success shown through follower counts and streams, interacting with her fans in person by taking their BeReal's on stage or reading their signs encapsulates her milestones. 

"Right now is a really difficult time to tour, even huge artists are having difficulty selling tickets," ella jane said. "It's just the way the touring economy is right now. Even in rooms where it's half sold out, and there's not as many people as I would like to see, just to see even that small group of people clearly caring about my music, singing along and seeing it means something to them, has been so cool and really special in ways."

Fans of ella jane can also get a glimpse of her personal life through her TikTok, where she uploads concert footage, reciting "Karma" by Taylor Swift as a spoken word poem and explaining her "chug theory" — which is an emphasis on every 16th note in a measure of a song that encompasses almost every single pop song, including ella jane's "I Wanna."

As for the future, ella jane aspires to perform in bigger venues and even tour throughout Europe. Songwriting has always been an outlet for ella jane, but she still hopes people can relate to her songs and find themselves in her music, performances, TikTok videos and any content she produces. 

"The artists that I grew up loving were people that I felt I could find myself in and see myself in their music and in their personality," ella jane said. "To have the opportunity with other people is a really cool thing." 

ella jane will be performing at The Constellation Room in Santa Ana on Nov. 18, The Troubadour in Los Angeles on Nov. 19 and at Voodoo in San Diego on Nov. 20. Tickets can be purchased through her website.