Elle King Uses Her Phone to Record Her Пение in the душ | Vanity Fair 

Singer-songwriter Elle King—whose bluesy voice and soulful songs you can hear on her new-this-summer EP—has already made the jump into film, even before her debut album drops (in early 2013): at age ten, she appeared in the movie

alongside her father, comedian and actor Rob Schneider. King, who just turned 23, lives in Brooklyn with her pit-bull-American-bulldog mix named Blue, the self-professed man in her life. “I’m the worst person to date. I got out of a relationship that kind of broke my heart recently, so I’m steering clear,” she says of her single life. We sat down with Elle at RCA Records to talk about her music, her songwriting, and her love of

When you write music, what’s your process? Do you jot ideas on napkins, or do formal writing sessions?

Well, it’s kind of evolved a lot over the past two years, I think. I used to write when I was really, really sad and it was my way of coping with the bullshit that I was going through. Pardon me if I curse.

And so I used to be just, like, crying and, like,

I’ll just play music, and it was really cathartic. And now I really enjoy coming up with things. So I always have my phone really close by to record if I’m in the shower, because I always make up songs in the shower. Now I come up with lyrics and I write them down, and I go back to them later. It kind of just pops into my head, and I don’t know—I’m late for a lot of meetings ’cause I’m like, Oh, I’ve got to sit down for 30 minutes and play guitar really fast. You know, because it just comes and goes.

A lot of things. I write a lot about myself. I write a lot of mean, kind of angry, sad shit, but sing it in a pretty way, which is, you know, kind of like my life. I do a lot of weird shit, but, I don’t know, pass it off that it’s O.K., right? [

] I don’t know. I don’t think anything’s bad if you don’t get caught.

I guess this is a weird question for a musician, but is there a way that you would describe your sound?

I say that I sing a little bit of country blues, but that’s what I normally play. Now my music is, I don’t know, very different. You know, I play a few different instruments, so it kind of changes from song to song, whatever I’m listening to or feeling. Sometimes it’s really country, sometimes it’s soulful, sometimes it’s, like, wrist-slitting folk music; sad songs.

I grew up loving Etta James and Aretha Franklin and Al Green and Otis Redding, and I just love old-school R&B. It’s just music that moves you and grooves you, and it was very important, I think, for music. That sound was, and still is today, my favorite. And I also love country. I’m from southern Ohio, where it’s like, you know, people live in sheds. [

] So it’s like I grew up listening to Hank Williams and Johnny Cash with my grandpa, so I’ve got that part of me. And then I’ve got rock ’n’ roll. My mom was like this wild child, and the man she married, my stepdad, who basically taught me everything I know about music, he’s, like, rock ’n’ roll, so. I have an AC/DC tattoo, because I love AC/DC. [

You got a record deal and you just turned 23. That’s quite a feat.

I mean, yeah, at any age, at any time, I think it’s awesome to get a record deal. It’s super cool. I was singing in a lot of empty bars for a long time.

I started playing in New York when I was 16. I had a fake ID so I could play shows, and, I don’t know, bouncers didn’t really say no to me, I guess. I’m fun!

In London, Hammersmith Apollo. That was just . . . so cool. I broke a string my first song, in front of 4,000 people.

Your song “Playing for Keeps” is the theme song for

. I’m obsessed with trash TV. I love horrible TV shows. It’s the white trash in me, you know?

let’s just put it that way. I call it serious Springer, because it’s, like, people come on and . . . I don’t know. It horrible. It’s horrible! But I love it. I think it makes me feel normal, honestly, watching those shows.

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