Ellory Grace writes with the sort of self-awareness that makes small thoughts feel suddenly enormous. In this interview, she talks through Seventeen Years, her new single about treating anxiety like an unwanted guest who has lived in her head for far too long and finally needs to be shown out. Across the conversation, Grace opens up about writing from questions rather than melodies, the constant murmurs of anxious thought patterns, and why the chorus needed to feel like release rather than instant victory. She also reflects on working with Alec Zeilon and Hunter Bennett, the link between Seventeen Years and earlier singles In Between, Threads and Girl I Buried, and the relief of realising we are all a little weird in the same ways.
Welcome to A&R Factory, Ellory Grace. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us about Seventeen Years and the thoughts, questions and emotional patterns that shaped it.
Thanks so much for having me! I’m excited to talk about it.
Seventeen Years treats anxiety almost like a person who has been taking up room in your head for far too long. When did that image of anxiety as an unwanted guest first click for you?
I started thinking about it differently when I realized how easy it is to believe a thought just because you’ve had it for a long time. You stop questioning whether it’s actually true. And once I started paying attention, I realized how many of us do that. I wanted the song to be the moment I finally talked back.
The line “you’ve overstayed your welcome, so let me show you out” feels like such a clean emotional turning point. We can imagine that lyric felt emboldening to write; is music something that helps you banish or at least momentarily pacify anxiety?
Definitely. I don’t think writing makes anxiety disappear. It just changes who’s asking the questions. When something is circling around in your head, it gets to ask all the questions. Writing gives you a chance to question it back.
That line felt especially good because it flips the relationship. For once, anxiety isn’t telling me what to do. I’m telling it what to do.
You’ve said you usually start with a question rather than a melody. What was the question behind Seventeen Years, and did the answer change while you were writing it?
The question was, “Who would I be if anxiety didn’t get a vote in so many of my decisions?” I thought maybe the song would answer that, but it really didn’t. And I actually like that.
I think we put so much pressure on ourselves to have everything figured out, especially when we’re growing up. But maybe you don’t have to have the answer yet. For me, the song became more about realizing that just because I have a thought doesn’t mean I have to believe it or let it make the decision. I’m seventeen. I’m definitely still figuring that out.
Not many people are mindful of the contradiction of wanting anxiety gone, while also recognising how familiar it can become after years of living with it. Is it safe to say you’ve locked away your fair share of emotional intelligence through battling mental health?
I don’t know if I’d give myself the emotional-intelligence title yet! I think I’m just really interested in why our brains do the things they do, probably because I notice mine doing them all the time.
We fill in blanks. We replay conversations. Someone puts a period at the end of a text and suddenly you’ve invented an entire problem. We decide what somebody meant without actually knowing. One tiny moment can become this entire story in your head. I’m really interested in that space between what actually happened and the story our brains tell us about what happened. A lot of my songs start somewhere in that space.
How do you want listeners to feel when the chorus hits?
Like release. I think a lot of us know what it’s like to go back and forth with the same thought until we’ve completely overthought it. The verses stay in that back-and-forth, and then the chorus is the moment you decide you’re done giving it so much power.
The verses are the argument in your head. The chorus is the decision.
You worked with Alec Zeilon and Hunter Bennett on the production. How did they help shape the sound of Seventeen Years around your lyrics without losing the intimacy of what you were saying?
I think the most important thing was not making the song sound bigger than the feeling. Alec and Hunter really understood that. The verses needed to feel like you’re still stuck in the thought, and then when the chorus hits, everything can finally open up.
I love that the production follows the same shift as the lyrics. The verses are almost like being trapped in your own head, and then the chorus is where you finally say it out loud.
Your previous singles, In Between, Threads and Girl I Buried, all seem connected by thoughts and moments you can’t quite leave alone. Do you feel like Seventeen Years pushes that side of your writing somewhere bolder?
I do. I think all of those songs came from something I kept thinking about. In Between is that feeling of not knowing exactly where you belong yet. Threads is what happens when you overthink something until you’re almost tangled up in it. And Girl I Buried came from thinking about the parts of ourselves we try to change because we think that’s who we’re supposed to be.
What I love is when I write about something that feels really specific and then find out so many other people do it too. Seventeen Years feels a little different, though. I’m not just looking at the thought anymore. I’m arguing with it. There’s more fight in this one.
You’ve said you want listeners to hear your music and think, “Wait, I do that too.” When people hear Seventeen Years, what part of their own internal monologue do you hope they feel less alone inside?
That part of your brain that can take one tiny thing and turn it into twenty different possibilities. Replaying something you said. Wondering if someone’s upset with you. Writing a text and rewriting it five times. Imagining everything that could go wrong before anything has even happened.
I love those moments when you finally say one of those things out loud and someone goes, “Wait, you do that too?” Suddenly this thing that felt so specific to you isn’t really just yours.
That’s probably my favourite part of writing. We spend so much time thinking we’re the only ones who do certain things, and then you find out we’re all a little weird in the same ways.
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Interview by Amelia Vandergast
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