Ella Red – It’s Not Real
At just 22, alt-pop singer-songwriter Ella Red releases her highly anticipated debut album, IT’S NOT REAL.
The project marks a striking arrival for an artist already known for transforming raw emotion into expansive, myth-like pop storytelling. In celebration of the release, Ella will hit the road on her debut headline tour, with support from fellow Nettwerk artist, PEGGY.
IT’S NOT REAL traces beginnings and endings, drawing from songs Ella first wrote as a teenager and reshaping them into a cohesive, cathartic debut. The album opens with “Parasite,” where sparse piano and haunting imagery set an intimate, existential tone. Throughout the project, Ella transforms vulnerability into power, exploring themes of identity, femininity, mortality, and reclamation.
Previously released singles “Ball and Chain,” “Parasite,” and “He Asked For It” preview the album’s range. On “He Asked For It,” Ella reclaims language long weaponized against women, while “Ball and Chain” pairs confident guitar with pulsing beats and distorted vocals.
Elsewhere, “Religion” balances reverence and sacrilege, “Predator” captures the thrill of the chase in 6/8 time, and “Funeral” uses gothic imagery as a metaphor for release.
Ella reflects, “There’s always been something all-consuming to me about humanity—our existence, the beauty and the mistakes. It’s eaten at me since I was a child and continued until it was almost unbearable in my late teens and even now. I wanted my music to feel as all- consuming as these episodes, and I feel like with IT’S NOT REAL, I’m telling more than my own story—I’m telling a part of humanity’s.”
Raised on piano, guitar, and cello, Ella Red approaches songwriting with curiosity and a love for the experimental. Influenced by artists like Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, and Sofia Isella, she refuses to choose between softness and ferocity, instead embracing both. That duality resonates deeply in live settings, where songs like “Aphrodite” and “Always the Artist” have connected powerfully with audiences, particularly women who see their own experiences reflected in her lyrics.
The album closes with its title track, “IT’S NOT REAL,” crystallizing Ella’s thesis: a story of a girl existing across time, living vicariously through others, and leaving proof of that existence through art.
With her debut album, Ella Red is already reshaping pop storytelling with a debut album that’s as cyclical as it is cathartic. IT’S NOT REAL traces beginnings and endings in equal measure, pulling threads from the very first song she wrote at 16 and flipping teenage angst into something existential, comforting, and urgent.
#ellared