There’s a reason Elles Bailey currently stands as the most‑played artist on BBC Radio 2: her new album, Can’t Take My Story Away, is the kind of work that stops you in your tracks and the song Growing Roots, currently in heavy rotation, is absolutely representative of the sheer class presented by the whole album. Her songwriting has never felt more exquisite or more fearless, with each track peeling back another layer of her lived experience. Lyrically, she leans into vulnerability with remarkable courage, sharing intensely personal stories that resonate in the most profound way. What elevates the record even further is its breathtaking production — warm, intimate, and so meticulously crafted that you feel as though you’re sitting just a few feet from her as she sings. It’s the rare kind of album that doesn’t just showcase an artist’s talent, but their truth. With Cant Take My Story Away, Elles hasn’t merely released a collection of songs; she has created something genuinely special, a body of work that invites listeners into her world and leaves them changed for having stepped inside. We catch up with Elles at her home just a couple of days after her incredible live session appearance on Radio 2’s Cerys Matthews’ Blues Show. Understandably, Elles is absolutely brimming with excitement and we are given the warmest of welcomes. We make ourselves comfortable and our conversation begins...

Well, let's start by talking about some amazing things that been happening for you this week. This week you are the most played artist on Radio 2 and you also appeared live on the Cerys Matthews’ Blues Show. That means there are potentially 12 million people listening to your new music and a million who specifically tuned into Cerys’ show. When you hear the enormity of these figures, how does it make you feel?

It’s absolutely wild! It’s been a crazy couple of weeks and when I found out I was going to be playlist on Radio 2 I initially found out I was going on the B list, and that felt absolutely huge! You hope and dream you might get a C list as an independent artist and then I just went on to B, and then they turned around and we’re like ‘Yeah, it’s going to be on A, oh and by the way, you’re B list on all the local BBC stations as well…’. It’s like ‘What?! This is wild!’. And it’s continuing! I’ve just found out I’m staying on the a list for another week! I’ve been doing this a long time and I don’t ever really have any expectations when it comes to the industry. I’ve always felt like I do this in spite of the industry. I called my record label Outlaw Music because I don’t want to play the games, but when the industry does come on board you’re like ‘Oh wow! This feels amazing!’.

Brilliant! Well let’s talk about the new music because of course, the new album, Can’t Take My Story Away, is being released Friday 16th of January, and I want to say up front what an incredible album this really is. Most importantly, I would like to dive into the music, and the first track I would like to talk about is the title track. Can’t Take My Story away appears to be about not letting setbacks define you, and if others can’t yet see how brilliant you are, it doesn’t mean that you’re not brilliant. That just seems like a wonderful message to put out into the universe. To what extent is that the essence of the song?

You’ve just nailed it! Basically, that’s what it is. It’s celebrating every dream where every time you didn’t make what you expected. You could say it’s the follow-on from Enjoy The Ride, like it’s living in the moment, being okay with where you are and understanding that everything that’s happened before you has made you who you are. But it’s also about setting yourself free from people or relationships that might try to define you, or they might try to put a story on you. It’s about separating yourself from that and saying ‘Hang on – this is my story, you can’t rewrite it, I’m the one telling the story’.

Absolutely! We’ll, the song that everyone's talking about right now is of course Growing Roots, which is all about creating personal attachments. But reflecting on your success and all you’ve done to support other artists, I wondered if this is also a mission statement about what you’re trying to achieve as an artist for the genre itself?

I mean, it could be now! (Laughs!) It wasn’t originally written with that in mind but I can definitely see those reflections. To me though, it’s a song about that isn’t about falling in love, which is what it sounds like. To me, love isn’t the honeymoon period, that’s lust. Choosing every day to love someone through the good, the bad, the ugly and the hard times - that’s kind of where this song came from. From a personal note, it’s about choosing to come home and having reasons to come home because I do have a wild heart. I do love being on the road but it’s knowing that I have this amazing thing to come home to. But it is about living in the moment and I think that’s what so much of the last two records have been about. It’s so important to live in the moment and I’ve really tried to do that as an artist, not think about what’s happening in the future and be focussed on ‘this is now’, especially over the last three weeks, like ‘Did Scott Mills just DM me? What is going on?!’. I want to live in this moment because this is what I’ve dreamed of my whole life, isn’t it? In terms of radio, it doesn’t get much better than this so I want to live in this moment!

I mentioned a moment ago the support that you have given to other artists and I just want to build on that because you’ve recently said that the industry feels really broken for new artists and that it's simply getting harder. Do you feel a sense of responsibility to champion new artists and emerging talent?

I wouldn’t even call it a responsibility, it’s just something that I have always wanted to do. I do feel for the state of the industry because it is only getting harder and I think those artists that are 3, 4 or 5 years behind where I was, the opportunities don’t seem to be there anymore in the same way. The industry is forever changing and I’m aware of that but it does feel like the last few years, post Covid, post Brexit and with the cost of living crisis, these have impacted so much and it’s especially impacted the arts. It’s getting so much harder to sell tickets. Its very busy out there touring. I never see other artists as competition, I think there is space for everyone, but my heart does go out to these emerging artists where there seems to be much less opportunities and I don’t know the answer. But whatever I can do to help, I always will. People are often messaging me asking for advice and I’m always happy to share it because it’s a hard industry out there.

I think a really beautiful and actually very important quality about your songwriting is that some subject matter can be intensely personal. Some specific tracks throughout your career I’d like to highlight as examples are Ballad of a Broken Dream from the Beneath The Neon Glow record and also Walk Away from the Sunshine City EP. On your latest album you've included the track Starling which is about how you lost a friend to suicide when she was in her twenties, and it’s a song that connected with me and hit me in the most profound way. How difficult was it for you to commit to writing and recording this song?

Starling is a song that even predates Wildfire coming out, so that’s how long ago that it was written. That was a long time after she took her own life. It took a long time for me to come to terms with that and there is a bit of me where you can hear my understanding in this song. I was at a gig and going to gigs is not something I get to do a lot of because I’m always out so it’s really inspirational when I get to do it. This was a gig that Yola did at the Lantern in 2017 which is in the now the Bristol Beacon, and she talked so openly about her personal relationships. I just ‘went there’ and it opened up something that had been locked away inside me for such a long time. I basically went home and started writing the song after that gig and then sent it to Ash (Tucker) and said ‘Do you want to finish this song with me?’. When I wrote it I thought this was the song that was going to close the Road I Call Home and then Light In The Distance was written, and this was written as the person was passing away, so it was so current that I knew that would be the song I would close the album. So Starling sat there and just didn’t really find a place on Shining In The Half Light. And it didn’t find a place on Beneath The Neon Glow because we’d already recorded it with Luke (Potaschnick). Luke was clear that he wanted that song and I’m so glad that he connected with it. It was a song that he produced it for this album and his studio is so near where she lived and I drive past her village as I’m driving to the studio. So it feels right that this song came out this way. Performing it, I’ve probably cried a lot in the studio. We then recorded it again for the bootleg version of the album and I cried whilst performing it. I think it does feel like a heartbreaking song really. Looking at the track listing, it goes Tightrope and then Starling, and I did that because I felt it wouldn’t sound right if we did Dandelion and then Starling because of the two kind of piano ballads being next to each other so I sort of broke it up with Tightrope in the middle of those two. But the lyrics of Tightrope, that first verse, it’s quite sort of shocking, and then you go into song that is specifically written about, I guess, trying to come to terms with suicide, and I hadn’t quite realised that but reflected and thought ‘that’s a lot…’. They are quite lyrically powerful songs tucked away at the end of the album.

You mentioned Tightrope there and I love the fact that you’ve taken the opportunity to talk about mental health in your music with this track. It's a subject that people need to get really comfortable talking about and I know that especially people from a creative arts perspective can experience poor mental health. To what extent were you consciously trying to raise awareness of mental health through this track and why is this so important to you?

This is an interesting track and question. I wrote this track in 2022, I think, with two artists, Henry Grace and Blaine Harrison. Blaine is in the Mystery Jets and Henry is an amazing Americana artist and songwriter who has had very, very serious mental health challenges over the years. We were at a songwriting camp and I was really drawn to his biog where he was so open about it, and I was like really hoping that we would get in a room together. Lo and behold the next day we were. I was talking about me and we just sort of opened up about it, and I had this chorus with the lyric the ‘The harder you hurt, the brighter you burn, the faster you go up in flames’ and I suggested that we build something around this. I kind of always knew that I’d release it but I was always kind of terrified to release it. For me I’ve never ever publicly or really even privately spoken about my battles with mental health. I kept it very secret. My parents don’t know – well they do now but it’s not what I’ve told him, it’s what I’ve written that I guess they’ve read. So I feel nervous talking about this song and I often go to talk about Henry’s story because he’s so open and honest and I found it inspiring. I think for a very long time I suffered with intrusive thoughts, really badly, and didn’t know what it was because it’s not something that people ever talk about and I think it carries a lot of shame. I felt so much guilt and shame and had no understanding. I literally thought I was just losing my mind. So what I did was just throw myself into my work and my music and my touring and I spent a lot of time away. That was my escape. It was only when I read an article from George Ezra talking about it that I was like ‘What?!’, and I started to find out more and I was like ‘This is what I have, it’s an actual thing!’. I started to do more research and I realised that this was something that a lot of people have. I kind of knew that it would get really bad after having my son, which it did, but because your mental health is so well cared for as a new mum, I got help quickly. I feel like I’m a totally different person to the person that I was when I was inspired to write this song. It’s almost like that was a whole other person because I got the help and because, I guess, I know how to treat myself when these things happen. I guess there is an importance to talk about mental health because had George Ezra not spoken up I might be a completely different person now. So yes it’s really important to speak honestly about mental health because it’s something all of us probably suffer from at times. I’ve done some work with Music Minds Matter before which is a musicians charity for mental health and I’ll definitely be supporting them further.

A wonderful quality you’ve brought to the album is the amazing backing vocals. They aren’t just harmonising or repeating words but are bringing out something quite unique and special. Take A Step Back Is a fantastic example of this. The backing singers are stars themselves, like The Pips from Gladys Knight& The Pips they almost have their own identity within the music. What influenced the backing vocal direction?

Well actually, that was very much Luke. For Growing Roots and Take A Step Back, Luke and I put down our vocals and I think they are still there on the tracks, but first and foremost when we started this, there wasn’t going to be a huge amount of backing vocals on it but as the tracks evolved, and as the later tracks like Growing Roots and Take A Step Back were written, we felt we needed these backing vocals. Luke very much wanted this album to be rooted in English roots as well as like the American roots, where I guess my musical influences have come from. He had worked with Izzie Yardley who is an amazing singer songwriter, she’s incredible. It’s Ethan Johns’ children who are singing on this. I think Georgina was probably 16 when she sang on Can’t Take My Story Away. We had to book her in between her GCSE exams, and she is a star in the making. In all the pictures that Rob Blackham took she just looks like a star. And her sister Delilah sings on those tracks too, and together they’ve worked as a trio before and they’ve got these almost sister-like harmonies. They’re very British and they’re very sweet, and they’re the total antithesis to my voice, and I think it just really works! What I love about this album is that there is a real family connection with it: Ethan Johns played on it, Delilah as well as singing engineered half of the record, the saxophonist Iain Ballamy who plays on Can’t Take My Story Away and Growing Roots, his son who has just finished his A-levels is the trumpet player and they played together. I just feel like there’s been this family affair going on. It was all done at Luke’s where Luke lives with his kids running in and out, and I did the photo shoot with Rob Blackham with his daughter literally on the other side of the camera eating our food and playing with her toys. This album just feels really earthy, homely and family.

This week you start your 12 UK in-store signing an acoustic performances followed in February and March with a European and a UK tour. How much are you? Looking forward to getting out there, meeting the fans and performing the new music?

It’s always a treat to do these incredibly intimate in-store dates and just meet everyone and I said it on Radio 2 the other day, I genuinely have the best fan base that have sort of come with me along the ride with the different sounds each album has taken. So it’s just a real chance to thank people and see people in person. That’s how I built this fan base – by going out and meeting people, and I feel like I’ve got this personal relationship with my fan base, so to come and do these especially intimate shows and get a chance to meet people is amazing. We then move to the bigger shows where I’m unable to really come out and sort of say hello in a way that I might have done a few years ago purely because it’s just got too big. I physically can’t do it because it just wrecks my voice - talking wrecks my voice, but I am excited to go out on the road with brass and show these new songs. My band that I tour with don’t play on this album and I’m really looking forward to hearing how they interpret the songs and I want them to bring their own style and flavour. Matt (Long) is a very different drummer to Jeremy Stacey who played on this record and I want Matt to bring Matt to this album. I want Joe (Wilkins) to bring Joe to this album. I feel like after the Maida Vale session that we just did, and the comments that people made, that this album is going to be in safe hands with this band. It really is, and I’m just looking forward to seeing how we all interpret the songs on stage and hopefully I’ll remember the lyrics because we wrote the songs a million times! So there’s a million possible lyrics that I could bring up – hopefully I’ll pick the right ones! (Laughs!)