After losing herself in Nashville, Lindsay Ell has finally found her true voice

The Calgary-born musician Lindsay Ell has had a pretty extraordinary journey in music and entertainment. She was discovered by the Guess Who's Randy Bachman at 15, she's been the host of Canada's Got Talent since 2022, and she's currently the lead guitarist on Shania Twain's 2024-25 tour.

As a solo artist in her own right, Ell has released five studio albums and two EPs, including her latest, love myself, which is some of her most authentic music yet. But it took her years to discover what her true voice even was. After moving from Calgary to Nashville earlier in her career, she found success, but the music she was making didn't feel like her own.

"I felt like I was creating from a point of: here are your rules, here are your marching orders, go hit all these bullet points," she tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "And I don't think that's ever a place where anybody should create from."

In Nashville, Ell was constantly being told she wasn't country enough. To get more airplay on country radio, her team would advise her on topics she should be writing about, such as drinking beer, which she doesn't drink.

"It just felt so forced," she says. "I would be in writing sessions where I would just kind of let things go in a fun direction and create a song that just felt really real, and then I would turn that in and they would be like, 'Yeah, this is never going to be played by country radio.' And so I don't think that creativity should ever be contained."

Eventually, Ell reached the point where her music felt so inauthentic to her that she refused to release it. She decided to take a risk, leave her record label and start writing more personal songs that explored things like her experience as a victim of sexual assault or her recovery from an eating disorder.

While Ell grew up loving country music, she realized she was more drawn to pop, rock, blues and jazz. One of her biggest idols and inspirations is John Mayer.

"I look up to John, just how he was able to fuse genres together," Ell says. "I think some of my favourite artists, whether it's John or Sheryl Crow, they're not really defined by one genre.… I moved to Nashville 15 years ago now, wanting to be a female John Mayer."

Ell's new EP exudes authenticity, joy and self-acceptance. Her song story i tell myself is an empowerment anthem about the false beliefs we tell ourselves that can run in the back of our minds. "The Lindsay that we hear on this record is not afraid to be herself," she says. "And it took me flipping 35 years to get there."

The full interview with Lindsay Ell is available on our YouTube channel and on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Lindsay Ell produced by Lise Hosein.