From the very beginning, self-professed “Stage Girl” Eli knew she wanted to make an album about a starry-eyed girl journeying through a singing competition. “Growing up, a lot of my dreams and ambitions were intertwined with that era of shows [like American Idol], and it shaped how I saw being a musician,” Eli tells Teen Vogue over Zoom from her chaotic bedroom in Los Angeles, a silver iPod earbuds necklace dangling from around her neck like a talisman, disappearing every so often beneath a thick mane of glossy auburn curls.
A childhood fascination with reality TV talent competitions followed the breakout pop artist into her early career years, when she found herself around other singers who had been on similar shows. The experience eventually culminated with her glitzy debut pop album, Stage Girl, which dropped in October 2025. “I auditioned for one of those shows five times growing up but never got on, so there was this sense of frustration watching all these amazing singers I was inspired by, thinking, ‘Was I not enough to be part of this?’ I carried all the times I heard ‘no’ into the project.”
Photo Credit: Callum Walker Hutchinson
If your TikTok For You Page’s algorithm has veered into the pop music space any time over the past year, chances are you’ve already heard of Eli. Or, rather, heard Eli. The 25-year-old began to blow up on TikTok in late 2024 under the handle @journalofadoll, her palpable star power bursting through scrolling cellphone screens like a deliciously deluded X Factor contestant ready for her close-up. Sharing her raw demos on the app, the musician’s transcendental sound—nostalgic, early 2000s bubblegum mixed with Imogen Heap-esque ethereal vocals, relatable lyrics, and modern pop je ne sais quoi—drew in listeners like moths to the proverbial flame. They frantically begged for more in Eli’s comments, and she faithfully obliged.
Last spring, she dropped her breakout single “Marianne,” a complex sapphic heartbreak track about the breakdown of a real-life relationship. The song propelled Eli’s IYKYK scope of fame to more tangible viral heights. Then came the almost prophetically titled “Girl of Your Dreams.” Released in June 2025 and inspired by the breezy millennial R&B-pop of the likes of JoJo, Stacie Orrico, and Vitamin C, the upbeat track sounded like something you’d hear while shopping at Limited Too or Delia*s with your mom in the early 2000s. The song, a sassy kiss-off to a boy who took her for granted, went wildly viral, racking up 2.4 million streams on Spotify to date, while celebrities including Meghan Trainor, Jazmin Bean, and Lizzy McAlpine used it to soundtrack TikTok videos.
Long before she went viral, however, Eli was just another dreamsick tween growing up in a small town in Massachusetts, where she attended public school and often found herself feeling like an outsider, disconnected from the typical suburban trajectory of her peers and neighbors. She wasn’t exactly a theater kid, but she certainly was theatrical, drawn to the dazzling siren song of the stage. The outside world was a sort of creative prison for her back then, all typical social expectations and bourgeois monotony, but in the whimsical sanctuary of her bedroom, she escaped into the glittery haze of pop music, losing herself in the CDs of Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, Mariah Carey, and Britney Spears, as well as shows like Hannah Montana and American Idol. She longed to express herself as freely as the pop divas who made her feel a fleeting sense of belonging, and so she put on impromptu performances for her family members every chance she got.
In her early teenage years, the singer, songwriter, and producer found viral fame under a different name singing covers of her favorite songs on the now-defunct video app Vine. She eventually started writing her own songs and pitching them to other artists, and briefly studied Recorded Music at New York University before dropping out in 2023. Not long after, she moved across the country to Los Angeles with nothing but a vintage fedora on her head, stars in her eyes, and a dream in her heart. Her grown-up bedroom became her new studio, and she soon found herself signed to Mark Ronson’s Zelig Records, in partnership with RCA. Like something out of a Disney Channel Original Movie starring Hilary Duff, her dreams were slowly but surely coming true.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.teenvogue.com ’
