TEAM RNS PRESENTS

TITLE: Pearl Days

LABEL: Sugar / Universal

RIPPER: Team RNS

223kbps avg - Rock
0hr 41min total- 70.5mb

RELEASE DATE: 2004-10-15
RIP DATE: 2004-10-14

05 Written In Your Eyes           4:08

07 In The Green                   4:52

10 Life Goes On                   5:15

Elisa is 24 years old and one of the
best female singer-songwriter Italy has

What special magic does Elisa weave?
It's very simple. Her songs are sung
in English, but they speak the
international language of soul. Not soul
as in a brand of music, but soul as in
songs that come from that human region.
Songs that map every contour of the
heart, songs that communicate love,
pain, desire and feeling with a passionate
insight rare in one so young.

"My songs are all about not trying to
escape emotion," Elisa explains. "I
want to use my songs to express
something true about myself, about all of
us. They're about the reactions to
emotions and not about trying to escape
those feelings. And the sound is
eclectic because while my heart is always
true it changes like the seasons. I
write songs to evolve."

Her output compares favourably with
fellow sirens Tori Amos and Kate Bush,
but the lineage stretches back much
further, back to the day the eleven-year
old Elisa went to see the movie 'The
Doors'. Entranced by the lyrical,
mystical majesty of the band's music,
Elisa bought a book of poems by Jim
Morrison and taught herself to speak
English by reading aloud from it. And
because all her favourite artists sing
in English she figured she would too.

"In Italy, they thought I was English,"
she laughs. "They've come to realise
I'm not now, but that's another thing I
like - to surprise and shock people. I
don't want to be easy to predict. That's
what I love about artists like Bjork or
Radiohead, that element of surprise."

That element of surprise stretches
throughout her personal biography too.
The product of parents who never
married, nor even lived-together but
who were nonetheless together, Elisa has
always been independent minded. She left
school (and home for a year) at 14 and
became a hairdresser. She then spent
several years singing with a swing
band in local bars, playing bass with a
punk outfit and also locking down
classical piano lessons along the way.
Throughout these teenage years she honed
her own songs, too, practising every
day. She was trying to define her
personal style, though, rather than
searching for musical perfection. That's
never been her goal.

"For me, the ability to change and grow
is far more vital than slickness. I want
to recognise my own limits because that
allows the music to be even more human.
And I prefer an error to be heard
because that makes it more soulful and
it means you can trust the message of the

Eventually, at 17, her songs found
their way into the hands of Milan-based
label Sugar whose president Caterina
Caselli recognised her enormous talent
and signed her immediately. Her
trajectory towards the stars was
subsequently very swift, although not

"I'm famous in Italy," she agrees, "but
that's not something I search for. I
see being famous as only a method for
people to hear my songs, a necessary one
but sometimes it's uncomfortable. But for
me the most important thing is to
communicate and so people need to know
who I am. I like to therefore play with
my image, to provoke a reaction even in my
videos. I want to project the message of
emotion through my music and I want
everybody to get a sense of me."
Soon that message will be clear for all

New Elisa, produced by Glen Ballard