SEXY & SASSY JAZZ

Elisabeth Earl

Filipino singer songwriter Elizabeth Earl – better known as Earl – has already lived a distinctly colourful life. Alaskan born and raised, threetimes married and mother to a seven-year-old son, Earl has reinvented herself as a sassy and provocative jazz chanteuse on her new album Tongue Tied.

She further proved her worth with a much-celebrated cover of Drake’s One Dance at this year’s Glastonbury.

Earl’s upbringing played a key part in shaping her uniqueness.

“Alaska was like growing up in a bit of a different country to the rest of the world,” she explains.

“I grew up feeling so at peace in nature, taking it for granted that I could walk outside and nap on a bed of moss in the wild forest – like a little fairy falling asleep.

“I snacked on freshly cracked pine nuts and wild berries.”

By her teens she was changing wheels at the family truck stop, and dreaming of a musical career which began when she moved to LA in 2004. Her current invocation of the Charleston dancing, 1920s Flapper Era isn’t simply a retreat into the past.

“It’s rebellious. It gives itself over to the unpredictable, or rather the predictably chaotic world we are living in,” she explains.

“Jazz, through its willingness to buck convention and the box of traditional chordal structure – or even refusing to participate at times via the norms of language but use scatting – allows emotion to be unleashed both for the performer and the listener.”

As her brand of va va voom finds favour with radio programmers and live audiences alike, Earl’s already chequered career is getting a much deserved reboot. And wedding number four, to her military man boyfriend stationed in North Dakota, is now in the planning.

“I see us getting married in the Deep South amongst fireflies at sunset in a circle of candles under a willow tree with our chosen family as witness,” she smiles.

“This man is the one I wished on the moon for as a little girl and since he appeared he has managed to restore my faith in that kind of love.”

Earl is certainly riding the crest of a wave. She’s just been named Radio 2’s Album of the Week for next week - a huge honour considering its 15 million listeners.

Tongue Tied is released on July 28.

’I see us getting married in the Deep South amongst fireflies at sunset under a willow tree’