Honey for Wounds: how Ego Ella May has healed us through the year that changed it all
By Ellie Carter
Releasing her debut album amid a global pandemic may not have been exactly what Ego Ella May had in mind for the career-defining project that Honey for Wounds has come to be. Through her evocative sonic backdrops and sharp lyrical observations of the human condition in both her debut, and more recent follow up EP Fieldnotes, the voice of the 28-year-old MOBO and Jazz FM Award winner has become a healer for so many within the year that changed it all, and beyond.
Over a year has passed since the Honey for Wounds release, but Ego’s eloquent discussions of loss; ‘For Those Who Left’, loneliness; ‘Table For One’ and redefining the narrative in ‘Girls Don’t Always Sing About Boys’ remain astute and timeless.
With a deep resonance and understanding, Honey For Wounds continues to speak to the sign of the times, with Ego lending her voice and perspective to ongoing conversations surrounding identity, self-expression and, inadvertently, surviving a lockdown.
2020 saw a world dominated by socio-political shifts that no one could predict. Not only did Ego’s music resonate with the locked-down and isolated, but her lyrics spoke to a global audience during the reignition of the Black Lives Matter movement earlier in the year. Ego saw her single Give a Little frequently sighted as an encapsulation of the injustices faced by the Black community, noting the refrain ‘Do I have to die for some peace, or a little bit of extra empathy?’.
Amidst the unstable landscape, Ego was eager to deliver listeners something to heal to, describing Honey for Wounds as a ‘diary’, and something to ‘soothe people’. To get a deeper understanding of its breakthrough single Give a Little, we caught up with Ego’s co-producer Zach Cayenne Elliott, who describes the track as ‘sweet but there’s a feeling of resilience that lives underneath the whole song which really resonates’. Zach, who writes under the pseudonym Melo-Zed, told us:
‘Give A Little started in the last 10 mins of a session between me and Eun (co-producer on the track), I was walking around the room playing some chords, he was like, let’s get that down – we added drums, bass and the essence of the song was there in that moment. We had a good feeling about it at the time, but it wasn’t until Ego heard it and did her magic that everything came together. Immediately when I heard what she’d written, I knew we were on to something…after that, some finishing touches from Theo Croker on trumpet and that’s pretty much the story of Give A Little.‘
Give a Little went on to be used in the final season of Issa Rae’s Insecure, a huge accolade for any artist. This not only demonstrates the reach of Ego’s talent, but also emphasises that the ‘good feeling’ Zach has about the initial demo was a sentiment echoed across the industry.
With the changing seasons signalling a shift in the playbook of 2021, Ego took the opportunity to gig extensively over the summer months, playfully teasing snippets of her upcoming release, and piquing the interest of fans and critics alike. The Fieldnotes EP would later land in the Autumn, seeing Ego’s observations of the changing world that we’ve experienced over the past 18 months come to life. Across the four impressive tracks, she fuses jazz, neo-soul and Future R&B to platform her incredible vocal performance and ‘notes’ on what 2021 has taught her.
‘I started writing this project as a response to the confusion I felt as a result of the pandemic’ Ego told Notion Magazine; ‘I started to observe the state of the world in contrast with how people were coping with isolation, whilst I was also still in a state of confusion myself.’ While its title insinuates an almost scientific level of observation, Ego explores an interesting dichotomy across Fieldnotes as she tries to make sense of the chaotic uncertainty she’d observed and experienced through truly beautiful, self assured and candid writing.
But Ego hasn’t stopped here. Along with winning the Jazz FM Vocalist of the Year 2021, she’s also been busy playing to a sold out OMEARA, performed with a 42 piece orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, locking in gig dates for March 2022 and treating fans to a new single, For the Both of Us released on 17th November. It’s clear that not even a global pandemic can hold Ego Ella May back, and we are so excited to see where her artistic endeavours will lead her next.