Biography

“I think maybe I’m the 21-year-old people don’t want to talk about,” Elle Watson explains, two days before she reaches the big birthday. The singer-songwriter from Kent assesses herself, and her generation, with a delicate scrutiny: gun control, black lives matter, transphobia, sexism and slut-shaming are all issues she can opine on, but Watson is particularly vocal about mental health and social media, and channels her experiences of both into her new EP, Clinchers. “I feel our age feel the pressure a lot more,” she says, “Pressure to succeed, to be someone, to make it in the world. Social media plays into the illusion that you’re doing perfectly fine; when truthfully I probably posted a good photo while I was in pieces, just to give me a quick - and incredibly temporary - boost. It’s something I struggle with in my inner dialogue.” If Clinchers is a dark, complex collection of songs, it’s because it’s been honed through Watson’s adolescence; a time of learning to fit in and feel at ease in spite of school bullies, academic pressure and the loneliness that comes from veering off the well-trodden path. Her childhood was spent shuffling between New York, San Francisco and Texas (“We quickly left”) before the family moved to Kent. Regardless of where she was, though, Watson was surrounded by music: “My parents have always been huge music-lovers,” she says, “I’d go through their CDs and find Prince and fall in love with Bjork and The Cure.”