Diandra Interviews Elijah Grae: How Music Teaches You To Love

Elijah Grae sees music as more than just healing: it is the answer for him and life’s biggest questions. Every human has to figure out what it means to be human, and some people use their talent to pick up this hefty investigation. For Elijah Grae loving others and loving himself have been locked in to his music capacities, and become the foundation to his songs.

Diandra: Music is often used as a coping mechanism. What part of the process of making music helps you cope with life’s hardships and personal anxieties?

Elijah Grae: Every part really. Music has always been a place where things make sense to me. Even when it gets tricky or I hit a wall with writing or producing, there’s still this sense of clarity. When I’m working on something, I don’t feel any sense of anxiety…the exact opposite really and I think that’s carried over into my day to day life and dealing with the pressures and anxieties that life brings. It also tunes you into emotions and things you might not experience otherwise so you feel this sense of relation with other people; the ability to identify with things that other people might be going through helps get rid of social anxiety because you realize we’re all going through a lot of the same shit.
Elijah Grae – Rivals (Official Music Video)

 
Diandra: How do you balance making your music personal to yourself but also accessible to listeners? 

Elijah Grae: That’s a great question actually. With this project, in particular, I wanted to write about a lot of the personal things I was experiencing or had experienced but keep a broader theme. I try not to not kick anybody out of the song and let them feel like it’s theirs or they can relate it to their own thing. I think movie directors do this really well…they have this surface plot, and tell a particular story, but there’s personal ideologies, philosophies or emotions weaved into it without compromising the main plot.

For example, Rivals sounds like a love gone bad song but it really was my two cents on where we are as people and a society. I wanted to speak about things I had personally observed, and I realized where we’re at resembles a relationship on the rocks in a way. I wanted to touch on this, but not be super heavy handed or preachy about it. I wanted to take my own thoughts and observations and present them under a bigger umbrella that I think everybody can identify with and see their own self in. In that sense it’s up to the listener to decide what the song is or means to them. I don’t want my stuff to be so deliberate there isn’t any room for interpretation. 
 
Diandra: You have said that life hits you with “trapdoors” and “magic carpet rides”. What is one trapdoor and magic, carpet ride that life has hit you with? What is one trap-door that you have, personally, turned a magic, carpet ride? 

Elijah Grae: I’ve had a lot of trap doors (he laughs). Losing my mom on mothers’ day while I was on tour with my old group was one of the bigger ones for sure. Really that whole time was filled with a lot of trials and a lot of triumphs, too. To be honest, I never really had the cushiony type of life so I was probably better prepared for these things than most, but it still can test your limits. I definitely had some “ok, how much more can I take” moments but I learned how to use those things as fuel and not let them knock me off or turn me into a bitter person. Those things probably made me a better person in the long run. Taught me how important love in general is and how to appreciate things while they’re around. Not to sound too corny, but I think life, in general, is either trap door or magic carpet depending on your perspective. 

 
Diandra: You write music, like “Rivals”, on the dissipation or slow vanishing of love from a relationship. How has your artistry/ art helped you realize why certain loves fizzle and why certain ones last? 

Elijah Grae: If I could answer that question I’d write a book and make a fortune (he laughs) I think you just have to be vulnerable enough to learn from it in both instances. I don’t really think love fizzles. The idea of love might but if it’s a real type of love, for a person or a thing or whatever, it doesn’t fizzle as much as it changes. I truly think if it’s real it sticks around forever in some capacity. I think we have this idea of what love is supposed to look like, talk like, and feel like and if it doesn’t fit in that or whatever category we think it’s broken. For example, two people could be madly in love with each other but their schedules don’t line up, their finances are out of commission, or they don’t see eye to eye on some shit and it doesn’t work out. Does that mean they don’t love each other or love doesn’t exist there? I think it’s just that their physical needs or desires outweigh the true love that’s present. It’s such a trippy emotion because it fuels pretty much everything we do yet we still have no idea what it is or why we feel it. Sometimes we want to own love, but in all reality it does what it wants and you can learn and grow from it in all of it’s forms. Ok, now to write my book. 
 
Diandra: You have written music as a response to personal losses. How does being an artist help you embrace the gains of life? 

Elijah Grae: I’ve written songs about all kinds of experiences but I think writing about loss is natural because it’s therapeutic in way. Aside from music I’ve always been into art or at least artistic expressions of things. I think art lets you see life from different angles or vantage points you might not have known existed if that painter didn’t make that piece or that photographer didn’t capture that moment. In that regard, I think art definitely opens you up to the richness of life or the “gains” of life.

 
Diandra: Being that you write music in reflection of your life and person, what are certain aspects of your sound that you feel reflect your personality and your current mindset on life? 

Elijah Grae: I think the eclectic nature of the production and writing is on par with my personality. I was never able to sit still for too long as a kid and was always looking for new challenges and experiences. I also grew up listening to a lot of different music and was around a lot of different cultures etc and I think that part of my personality is pretty apparent in my music. 
 
Diandra: What is one childhood, one teenage, and one adult memory when you fell in love with music as an art? 

Elijah Grae: Childhood: hearing Michael Jackson for the first time. Teenage: hearing Michael Jackson again. Adult: Working on this album
 
Diandra: Your music has been described as “moody R&B” and “bedroom jams”. What about R&B do you feel draws the intimacy of love?  

Elijah Grae: It’s still a trip to be in the moody R&B category for me (he laughs). I honestly didn’t set out to make any particular type of songs. I was just writing from my gut. I think that’s the beauty of R&B though. There’s this space for vulnerability and honesty that tends to get squashed out of other genres of music. That’s probably why love is such a prevalent theme. It’s the one emotion we all feel, but are still mystified and simultaneously terrified by so there’s plenty to write about. The cold part about a lot of the songs on this project is, although they sound like bedroom jams, most of them are about something entirely different at the core. 

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