Presenting your next stage girl:Eli. If you don’t know who Eli is, you will be seeing her name on billboards and sparking lights soon. Singer-songwriter Eli is quickly making her way across the pop scene. She started rolling out her debut album and rebrand on social media in April of 2025, with her debut singles as Eli “Marianne” and “Girl of Your Dreams” exploding online and having fans locked in right from the get-go. Since the release of her debut album, she has released a couple of one-off singles, one of them including “Feel Your Rain,” has gotten co-signs from the likes of Madison Beer and Olivia Rodrigo and embarked on her Stage Girl tour, selling out shows all across North America.
To put it point-blank, her music feels like you are reading the entries of a 2000s passcode journal written with a feathery sparkly gel pen. Her sound and aesthetic has a certain nostalgic quality to it, very reminiscent of the late ‘90s and early 2000s pop and R&B scene. It’s the type of song you would find the music video for on the Disney Channel and playing inside of a Limited Too or Justice back in the day. Her songwriting often touches on her experience as a trans woman, and is one that so many can identify with and have fallen in love with.
Eli first started performing “Feel Your Rain” as an unreleased single on tour, and finally released it for the rest of the world to hear. On her Instagram post, Eli mentions this song as in a way a tribute to her idol Ariana Grande, her pitch to go from, as Adela put it, the khia asylum to the Kia Forum (the Eternal Sunshine tour). Eli is a student of pop music, taking the greatness of the likes of Ariana Grande, Katy Perry and early Mariah Carey and pulling that source material into the sound she has curated for herself, particularly in this song.
Throughout the track, Eli’s voice feels like butter with how smooth it is – from the way she articulates her wording to the effortless riffs she does throughout the song, to her falsetto. Her vocal tone has a certain ease to it that makes the entire song feel so natural and easy to listen to. This, paired with the synths sprinkled throughout the song, the layered harmony tracks and simple percussion by long-time collaborator Mike Wise, makes this song so enjoyable for the ear. The lyrics also have this wistful reminiscent feel to them, that feels like a page off of a 2000s pop track and similar to many of the pop stars that Eli draws inspiration from. With lyrics like “You’re such a thirst trap/When you ask me how’s my day” in the first too and in the pre-chorus “You got me feeling like a flower in bloom/So put your CD in my boombox, bump that tune,”the lyrics has this vivid storytelling element so many of Eli’s fans adore, yet also this nonsense and playfulness to them as well, fitting so well into the Y2K world that Eli has built thus far.
Teasing a deluxe for Stage Girl later this year, I am so excited to see what Eli brings next. If this track defines anything, she should be in the class of 2026 pop girlies yearbook and is a name we should all be watching out for. All signs point to Eli and this track not just arriving onto the scene, but defining the next wave of pop with a voice, vision and story that feel both timeless and unique.
Stream “Feel Your Rain“, out now
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