Eliza McLamb first found her audience while on a winding journey to the west coast, where the intimate guitar tunes she recorded on the road and posted online began to rack up millions of listens. It’s a sensibility that remains in her music to this day: listening to McLamb lilt her vivid, carefully-placed lyrics rife with empathy, emotion, and sensitivity, you get the sense that this is an artist who takes her time, who is more focused on the journey than the destination.

 

Her earliest releases were recorded in a laundry shed, with nothing but her voice and a guitar. Now, with the help of producer Sarah Tudzin (aka illuminati hotties), her sound has opened up into lush, full soundscapes — but that original intimacy remains, unwavering and unshakeable even as her sonic world expands. 

 

While her audience connects deeply with the experiences and emotions put forward in her work, McLamb isn’t performing for the observer: her creative process is a personal practice. She’s been writing songs since she was six, and never really expected anyone to listen except herself. Even as her work spread to millions of viewers online, she never divested from her belief in art as a personal — almost therapeutic — act. The fact that her intimate anxieties and experiences can resonate so deeply with so many strangers only confirms her philosophy: that strong emotions are what connect us all to each other, and that we’re all a lot more connected than we may think. 

 

McLamb doesn’t write her music to be gospel, but something more like a mirror. When you connect with what she writes, you’re really using her writing as an intermediary to connect with yourself. Her work encourages you to self-reflect, accept sensitivity, embrace connection, and most of all, feel as deeply as you possibly can.