Elle Coves

One Liner:  Pop, but a more pleasant sort

Wikipedia Genre:  No Wikipedia, this is pop

Home: Cork, Ireland (via Germany)

Poster Position: Bottom Quarter - Line 23
Weekend One Only
Friday at 1:45

BMI Stage

Thoughts:  Her Spotify bio starts with this nugget - born in Germany to Spanish parents, twenty-one year old Elle Coves moved to Ireland when she was thirteen and started writing songs shortly after.  I want to be born somewhere cool and then move somewhere else cool and become an international pop star!  There are just so many artists on this poster who are pretty women performing under their full name and singing music that sort of reminds me of a Taylor Swift era.  And once Spotify is done playing all of her songs to me, it finds another lady who sounds pretty much the same and plays me one of her songs.  Holly Humberstone.  Isabel Dumaa. Eliza Harrison Smith. It is all very disorienting.

The article I just read called this "yeehaw pop," which is a fascinating genre statement.  I don't know that I hear overt country in here, but maybe that is not really what the yeehaw there is about.  She says that Maggie Rogers was a "huge, huge, huge, huge, influence" on her songwriting.  She apparently started asking her parents for a guitar when she was four, after many family friends being around on the weekends with musical instruments.  She also said that a lot of her songs are about breakups, but they aren't romantic breakups, they are more about breaking up friendships (because of her moving around to different countries).  When she got started, she just wrote a song a day and sent it to her manager Conor O'Donohoe (member of Wild Youth), who would give her notes about them.

"Summer" really sounds like she is trying to copy TayTay.  "Calling it Love" sounds more like Chappell Roan (which, funny enough, I just had to look up because her name has already slipped out of my brain despite her being extremely hot shit a few years ago).

No actual albums yet, just two EPs and a handful of singles since 2023.  The top track is a 2025 single called "Peace" that definitely reminds me of Rogers and TayTay at the same time.  Just over 4 million streams.

It is a good song.  The tune underneath is driving in the right way, and her voice sounds good.  Nothing wrong with the lyrics either.  I wonder if a lot of the new artists are using AI to write all of their songs?  I am not accusing her of that in the slightest, but it just seems like it would be all too easy to just ask ChatGPT to write a happy love song in the style of Taylor Swift that is similar to everything in the top charts, and then use its creation to make the song in real life.  Seems simple.

Her other top streamer is her very first single, 2023's "Before I Fall Apart" with 3.1 million streams.

See how I said there was not a lot of "yeehaw" in these songs?  More like synth pop in the vein of HAIM, Maggie, and Taylor.  Again, pretty enjoyable little synth pop nugget.  I likely will not remember it at all in three hours, but it makes me kind of bop along at my desk right now.

I like her better than some of the other pop stuff I've been mired in on the poster, but no clue if that would translate into going to the show.