Elijah Woods’s latest album is an ode to his fiancé with themes of love and passion taking over the tracks.
Singer/songwriter Elijah Woods is gearing up to perform his new EP Bright Orange Everglow at the Broom Factory on Oct. 25. The EP features five songs, all written this past June to celebrate his recent engagement. The songs depict falling in love through Woods’ images of home and evoke warmth in the listener.
Speaking to the beauty of love in his fifth track “last girl,” Woods said he finds the feeling of home when he sings about the last girl he’ll ever bring home. The inspiration for this song came when he was staring at his girlfriend in the August heat under the “bright orange everglow,” which are the lyrics of “last girl.”
The lyrics begin with “St. Lawrence River / a quarter to five,” as a tribute to where his fiancé grew up.
“I specifically wrote those lyrics about a moment that we shared on the water, and I just knew that [she] was the person for me,” Woods said in an interview with The Journal.
The songs on his EP speak about the beauty of summer and warm nights spent on the dusky dock. He feels many people can relate to the memory of watching a summer sunset and uses the image of the sun to convey the warmth of love.
He said writing “last girl” felt very specific. He had wanted to write a song like this for a long time but hadn’t been able to put his feelings into words until he travelled to Los Angeles.
“I wrote it with some really talented writers in LA of all places, which normally doesn’t get really honest songs that have an elegant sound. [My other songs] are really cool sounding, but not like this,” Woods said.
It was the end of a recording session, and his team threw around ideas while playing the guitar. He sang the melody for “last girl,” and in that moment, the chorus came to him. Woods said he made the connection between the melody and the feeling of bringing the last girl home into something real while writing this song.
“It’s really cool to make [“last girl”] an experience for everybody else because I feel like it came across for me every time I listened to it. I just melt and turn into a puddle. I’m just a hopeless romantic,” Woods said.
Having a favourite song is difficult for Woods, who mentioned all of his songs feel like his children. There are songs he enjoys playing live, such as “if you want love,” but he doesn’t know what makes his songs click into place.
“When I’m sifting through these ideas to actually finish, it’s just chasing that feeling of when you listen to your song and how that’s really impacted you,” Woods said.
Woods said he gets more vulnerable and honest when drawing on a specific experience for people to relate to. When his writing is vague, Woods feels his audience becomes alienated.
Despite his nostalgia for “last girl,” “24/7, 365” is his most popular track from the EP due to its popularity on TikTok.
“Within three hours it had gotten a few million views, and I felt this was going to be a good thing. I put a lot of attention and love into the song the next couple of days and put it out a few weeks later.”
He said by the time the song came out, there had been so much attention already, it became very popular.
His first track “if you want love” tells the story of when he first slid into his fiancés DMs on Instagram, and the change from “her” to “you.” He said he switched from speaking about “her” to “you” because his dreams about his fiancé are no longer an idea in his head.
“I only want to give ‘you’ love. It’s not about anybody else. It’s like you’re my human and it’s not a nameless ‘her’ anymore. It’s literally about you,” Woods said.
He described how love is first an infatuation with the idea of someone, which turns into falling in love with the person for who they are. Each of his lyrics are very intentional.
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