Name: Ella Ronen
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, poet, community organizer
Nationality: Israeli
Current release: Ella Ronen's The Girl With No Skin is out via BB*ISLAND.
Recommendations:
Book: All About Love by bell hooks
Record: Bury Me At Makeout Creek by Mitski

If you enjoyed this Ella Ronen interview, realised with the support of Swiss Music Export, and would like to stay up to date with her music, visit her official homepage. She is also on Instagram, and Facebook.
 


Do you think that some of your earliest musical experiences planted a seed for your interest in writing lyrics or poetry? How and when did you start writing?

As a child, I often felt misunderstood. When I sang, though, it felt like I could convey my feelings fully, and unlike in other instances, the grown-ups actually listened.

I think that created the link for me between singing and wanting to tell my story, strive to be understood, to feel less alone and to help others feel less alone as well.

Entering new worlds and escapism through music and literature have always exerted a very strong pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to writing?

To me the writing process is somehow about the opposite of escape. It’s about going inside, deeper and deeper, into the mechanisms underlying our behavior, and into the core of what makes one human.

I believe the most personal is the most universal. Which is to say, under the façade of tightly held opinions and beliefs, under culture and language and all that, we are all incredibly alike. And that’s the place I aspire to get to in my writing.

What were some of the artists and albums which inspired you early on purely on the strength of their lyrics? What moves you in the lyrics of other artists?

I used to have a ritual when I was a teenager: When I would buy a CD. I would not be patient enough to wait until I got home, so I would open the CD case, take out the lyric booklet, and read the lyrics through even before I heard the songs. Then, at home, I would listen to them already having gotten to know the lyrics.

To me this became a standard – if the writing is good enough, the lyrics would not need the music to move me. They would stand on their own.

I love other poet-songwriters like Leonard Cohen, who I give homage to in my song “Undercover”, Joni Mitchell and Nick Cave. In more recent years I love Lucy Dacus, Mitski, and Adrianne Lenker.



I have always considered many forms of music to be a form of poetry as well. Where do you personally see similarities? What can music express which may be out of reach for poetry?

That’s a great question. I feel that as much as we may try to write poetry that resonates with the body, that is not some dry intellectual pursuit but something you feel with all your senses, it is still quite a heady thing.
By this I mean, music has a way into our body and into our hearts that words will never have. It is somehow both below and above language.

I think of it as a carrier, a vehicle. A way to drive a feeling into someone’s heart.

The relationship between words and music has always intrigued me. How do you see it?

I am often interested in the lyrics and music complementing each other rather than going in the same direction. For example in my song “Housebroken”, I tell quite a painful story of domestication of a wild animal. But the music makes the suffering lyrical, soft, and beautiful.

It’s the same with “The Girl with No Skin”. The music gives it a certain naivety, even though the story itself is rather dark.



When working on music, when do the lyrics enter the picture? Where do they come from? Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

Usually for me the lyrics come first. Songs usually start with an image or a sentence that I find intriguing, and then I expand that into a larger text, a story, and then I sit at the piano to find the music for it.

But on rare occasions, in less heady songs, the music and lyrics will come together, like in “Fuck Cute”.



More generally, in how far can music take you to places with your writing you would possibly not have visited without it?

I think music is a tool for empathy. It can make us feel and relate with stories and situations outside of our own. This is a very beautiful and necessary function of music.

When you're writing song lyrics, do you sense or see a connection between your voice and the text? Does it need to feel and sound “good” or “right” to sing certain words? What's your perspective in this regard of singing someone else's songs versus your own?

I’ve learned that it’s important to write in a way that is kind and considerate to my future self, performing it. I don’t want to write songs that will be painful or uncomfortable for me to perform later on.

I don’t want to make myself revisit traumas again and again for an audience without a cathartic endpoint for myself. This is something I had to learn with time and experience.  

In how far are you consciously aware of the meaning of the lyrics you're writing during the creative process? Do you need to have a concrete concept or can the words take the lead?

I am very aware of the words and their meaning.

In a large sense I let them lead, but I am always aware of the story I want to tell.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of poetry is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I am deeply interested in finding the art and the poetry in everything. Nothing is mundane to me. Everything holds magic if you look close enough.

I always come back to Mary Oliver’s “Instructions for Living a Life”:

Pay attention
Be astonished
Tell about it

I think if you are paying enough attention, there is always something to be astonished about.