Eillah is the independent solo project of singer/songwriter Hallie Newnam. The artist has always been told that she is caught daydreaming and “stuck in her head.” Taking the saying literally, Eillah released her debut album on Spotify entitled In My Head featuring ten poetry-driven songs from her personal encounters with relationships, health struggles and defining artist experiences.

In My Head is vulnerable, heavy and comes from an open heart. Eillah invites listeners into her dreams where they can see themselves in her world. 

It’s rare that a new indie-pop star arrives sounding fully formed, but Eillah achieved just that with her debut album released in April. Her modern indie-pop sensibility with doses of adventure-seeking thrills, blurs between indie, pop and acoustic folk soundscapes and dreamy melodies summon listeners to a nostalgic sound. 

Through the record, the songstress can effortlessly connect each listener to their inner emotions through her words and ethereal sounds.

Eillah’s unique motto she always stuck by is “from my heart to the world.” 

To the artist, music is her sense of spiritual therapy. “Music is kind of my therapy and my way of life, and I'm the type of person that really puts my whole heart into everything I do. My music doesn’t conform to a genre because it’s anything that feels authentic to me, and sometimes the way I need to express myself is through an electronic song or just a guitar,” Eillah says.

Eillah (Hallie spelled backwards) is the independent solo project of Hallie Newnam. Growing up listening to Johnny Cash, Pink Floyd, Frank Sinatra, Dr. Hook and Led Zeppelin, Eillah was surrounded by record players in every room and classic rock playing throughout the house.

The end of her sophomore year of high school marked the start of Eillah’s music journey after experiencing a health crisis. The songstress picked up practicing ukulele and graduated to guitar. With her poetry background, she interlaced the arts and learned to write poetry with her instrumentals. “I've always written poetry since eighth grade, so I  just eventually combined the two by putting poetry and emotion alongside music,” Eillah said. 

After writing her first songs, she started her debut on SoundCloud in 2018 and Eillah was born. “I established Eillah as the other part of me that’s an artist that can be shown through my digital art, poetry and any writing, drawing and anything that is arts related,” Eillah said.

She “subconsciously” draws from various artists to serve as inspiration. “There’s different artists that inspire me in my songwriting versus production,” Eillah said. “I think my music is more inspired by my life and what’s happening at the time rather than artists, but that’s not to say that I don’t have tons of inspiration.”

Scott James is Eillah’s personal favorite artist of all time because his music is “very freeform.” His lyrics are existential and “stream of consciousness” which is what Eillah focuses on during writing. James Blake is an inspiration for production and vocal mixing. As for songwriting, Eillah named Angel Olsen, Adrianne Lenker, Florist and Blood Orange.

Since releasing her first single “Someday” on Spotify, Eillah’s artistic growth has matured in the sense of learning from production and growing older and gaining more experiences. Having full creative control of the album, she hopes fans can see this growth within In My Head.

In My Head is a flourishing work of ballads that embrace Eillah’s full extent of pop prowess and poetry-driven lyricism. She reveals that all her music comes from the deepest parts of her soul.

Anyone who knows the artist personally says she’s in her head too much. “It’s just constantly overthinking, constant fluctuation of self perception, preparing for the worst and dealing with a lot of anxiety being in your head,” Eillah said. “The inspiration behind the name is from my notes app in 2017 that just said ‘name your first album In My Head.’”

She believes that when music is personal fans can connect with her stories, and it proves to be more successful than passionless work.

Self-produced, Eillah creates songs that are colorfully embellished and multi-dimensional as she sits alone in her bedroom. The lyrics come organically as if she’s writing in a diary. She reflects upon fantasies, nightmares, hospital rooms and her journey as an artist; her graceful, mournful melodies are sung over intricate guitar accompaniment that echoes. 

“In My Head, I wrote everything in my bedroom. The majority of everything in my bedroom had very, very limited resources,” Eillah said. “As far as lyrically, there was never a delegated time to sit down and say, ‘I need to write this album.’ It all just happens as I experience things, it's like my diary out loud. So as things were happening in my life, I would write a song and the songs told me whether or not they deserved a place on the album.” 

The first song Eillah wrote for the record was “gn” (goodnight). It was also the first song she ever produced and recorded solo. This caused a breakthrough after the songstress had been down on herself and felt incapable of producing music during the pandemic. 

Laying on thick the engrossing allure that comes with her smoky vocals, heartfelt ballad “gn” is a dreamy bedroom pop song that follows an emotional romantic loss.

“Was it my fault for trying / I knew you wouldn’t say goodnight / Though the silence hurts / The words you used were worse / I’m glad I learned my lesson now,” Eillah sings. Writing in the plain language of someone desperate to be just as loved in a relationship, she sounds vulnerable and triumphant. 

Eillah spreads her wings in this record. Her favorite song off the record is the title track “imh” (in my head), an enchanting, shoegaze-esque song soaked in a blissed-out blend of electric soundscapes. “Imh” leans on what Eillah has always done best; documenting the terrifying, numbing messiness of mixed emotions. 

“6am still haven’t been to sleep / 7 hours trapped inside this dream / Roll my window down and feel the breeze / Then I feel a light fall over me (could it be?) / Finally, I am free,” she sings delicately on the bridge.

“‘Imh’ holds a really strong meaning to me, it’s one of those a-ha moments as an artist of being reminded this is really who I do it,” Eillah said. “When you feel so much inside and you’re able to fully express that without a large disconnect is how I felt with that song, and it was a story I really wanted to get across.”

Most heartbreaking is the alienating disconnection that defines so much of In My Head: Eillah sings about the complexities of a person, peeling back the layers of someone reveals their being. “Mia” (missing in action) was the most emotionally and lyrically difficult song for the artist to write as it touches on mental health issues.

“Do not cause me harm / I’m weaker than you think / IV in my arm / I cannot speak over the sound of machines.” Eillah describes this lyric to be a core memory where she felt an overwhelming sense of stress. 

Eillah goes on to describe her fainting following a health problem and landing in a hospital room with IVs hooked into her arms. The memory of this specific day became something she thought about a lot and so she felt passionate to write it into music; this happens to be how most of her songs come about. 

“I was in just a super strange headspace … So I just made a really strange ambient experimental soundscape track … I had this weird health problem and ended up in the emergency room, but I was in the hospital all day, really stressed out. I remember hearing doors creaking next to me and I was under a lot of medication, just super dazed and out of it, but I clearly remember hearing this would be a good sample to use for this song,” Eillah said. “I recorded a voice memo of it and if you listen closely, you can hear the audio of doors creaking and machines beeping and I decided to kind of reframe that song is how I was feeling and the lyrics are about a double meaning of my experience being in the hospital and dealing with a lot of health issues as well as dealing with a lot of mental issues.”

Artists can find inspiration for their music in a plethora of different ways. This is especially true for Eillah, who finds inspiration while going about her daily life.

 She is already working on her next album, as she shares being in the “brainstorm stage” right now. She says it’s the opposite of In My Head and is stripped down to guitars and vocals. “It’s very lyric oriented and not so much the whole soundscapes and reverb and creating an atmosphere, but more of a confined space of just rawness and honesty,” Eillah said.

When asked to give advice to aspiring young artists who are looking to break through the music industry, Eillah smiles and says that the biggest lesson she learned creating the album is not rushing the creative process.

“I felt a sense of urgency to get it out there but I realized that urgency was only coming from myself and people are willing to be patient and wait. So never force a deadline upon yourself if you're given the freedom to take more time if you're not totally ready to get it out yet,” Eillah said. “Take your time because it's your project and ultimately it needs to be yours at the end of the day, whether it's gonna be released or not it should be for you.”

As an artist, Eillah has demonstrated her ability to cover various genres, yet the throughline that connects them is her trademark echoing vocals and vintage melodies. Shapeshifting between sounds has been a conscious decision for her, as she’s said previously that she doesn’t like putting a genre on her music.

Eillah’s lifelong immersion in classic rock n’ roll seeps through her music with a stylized mix of earthy Americana and bedroom pop ballads. The music is timeless with odes to folk and ethereal pop that echoes Mazzy Star and Kacey Musgraves, backed by strokes of personal deaths and rebirths and love and loss.

“From my heart to the world as long as my heart beats and the world spins,” Eillah.

To keep up with latest music news and releases from Eillah, follow her Instagram and Spotify. Check out her website and store.

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Kimberly Kapela is a Chicago-based magazine journalist that has covered freelance topics in music, beauty, fashion, spirituality, activism and personal essays. She is currently living in her home city, working towards a bachelors of arts degree in magazine concentrated journalism and social media strategies at Columbia College Chicago. She is a libra sun and pisces moon and loves learning about crystals for self-love and mindful meditations. She over romanticizes everything in her life to see the beauty in everything. Find her on Instagram @uhm.kimberly or writing on her blog: https://kimberlykapela.wordpress.com/