Charli XCX Protégé Elio Learns to ‘Luv My Brain’ on Dreamy Bop
Your fave pop girlies love her and you should, too. On Friday, Elio — the British songstress behind songs like “@elio.irl” and “Jackie Onassis” — dropped her sweet, dreamy single “Luv My Brain,” the second taste of her upcoming mixtape, Elio’s Inferno, which Rolling Stone can exclusively announce.
“I Luv My Brain” was the first track she wrote for her upcoming project.
“It’s about learning to appreciate my brain for all that it does and allows me to do while also acknowledging that it can be a bit difficult a lot of the time. I’ve had a constant battle with my thoughts and my feelings because they set me back in so many things, but they also allow me to be creative in so many ways,” Elio tells Rolling Stone about the new song. “I really wouldn’t be where I am without it being the way that it is — sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes that’s a bad thing, but I think I’m getting to the point of accepting it.”
Elio says she wrote the collection of songs over the span of several months, some over Zoom and others via writing camps, alongside her close friends. “It was really fun to make, and thematically felt like a great natural progression from my last two EPs,” the singer says.
“I Luv My Brain” is the singer’s folllow-up to tracks “Vitamins” and “Read the Room,” which she released earlier this year. It also comes after several shows in the U.S., where she performed some of her early tracks at venues such as The Peppermint Club in Los Angeles. Troye Sivan was among the attendees. During her L.A. stop, she performed “Charger” featuring Charli XCX, who is taking Elio on a handful of dates on her European tour for Crash.
“To have some of my favorite artists listen and want to put their name to my songs is so incredible. Charli has been such an amazing support for me as an artist,” she says. “It’s really nice to have someone who has been through it all and knows the industry and everything surrounding it.”
The new mixtape follows her 2021 EP Can You Hear Me Now? and 2020’s U and Me, But Mostly Me. “I hope people connect to it in some way or connect their own memories and feelings to it,” she says of her new project. “While I’m making the songs, I’m not really thinking too much about releasing them. So, I think that’s what allows me to be able to be a little more honest with them. The music is for anyone who relates.”
Elio’s Inferno Tracklist:
1. “Inferno”
2. “Typicast”
3. “New and Improved”
4. “9 Lives”
5. “Vitamins”
6. “Read the Room”
7. “I Luv My Brain!”
8. “Godly Behavior”
9. “Off My Chest”
