Eloise

Eloise

Friday, 27 November 2026, 18:30

Category
Music
Communion ONE Presents 
Eloise 
Since she can remember, Eloise has loved falling in love. The multi-faceted jazz and pop singer
jokes that she is either “in love or heartbroken” at any one time: “I’m such a lover girl... I love
being in love, and so when it comes to my music...” It stands to reason, then, that her
songwriting traverses all of love’s highs and lows: the heartache, the yearning, the giddy bliss of
it. Now she's turned falling in love into a literal artform for her superb second album, My Man &
Me.
Eloise's latest work arrives amid a palpable shift in our collective thinking when it comes to
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.

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