US singer-songwriter Eli is celebrating the release of her debut album Stage Girl

If there’s one thing to know about the singer-songwriter Eli, it’s that she loves pop music. Like, really loves it, with an appreciation that stretches right back to her childhood, a knowledge that verges on encyclopaedic and a passion that shines through not just in her music and her visuals, but also when we catch up with her just days before the release of her debut album, Stage Girl.

The first time Eli recalls being stopped in her tracks by pop music was hearing Mariah Carey’s Christmas album as a child in her family home.

“I know it’s a random one. I wish I could say that Glitter was being played in my house, but it wasn’t,” she tells HuffPost UK, referring to the oft-forgotten Mariah soundtrack album that eventually became a fan-favourite many years after it was initially released.

“My parents would play that album during the holiday season, and it was one of the first times that, in an insanely impactful way, I was hearing something and I was like, ‘what the fuck is entering my ears right now?’.

“I hate to say this, because people say this about a lot of singers and it’s cliché, but it felt like heaven’s gates were opening. Hearing her, while I was hanging ornaments on the tree, I was like, ‘I need to Shazam this’ – too scared to ask my parents like, ‘hey, who is this?’.”

From then, a young Eli quickly became obsessed with Miley Cyrus – or, more specifically, her Disney alter-ego.

“I live for Hannah Montana,” Eli enthuses. “Now, later in life, I’m owning the fact that she was such a big influence, because maybe from 15 to 20 or something, I would not want to say that. I would be like, ‘no, I love Björk’, or like, ‘I’m really into cool shit’. But Hannah Montana is cool as fuck.”

Eli has been a pop fan since childhood, which she's channelled into her much-hyped new album

Looking back, it’s not too hard to imagine why Eli – growing up as a queer child in suburban Massachusetts, with what felt like impossible hopes of pursuing her own dreams – would feel an affinity to Miley’s character in the show, an unremarkable schoolgirl by day, who could don a blonde wig and become someone else entirely.

“There were so many layers underneath what the Disney corporation was putting forward,” she says of Hannah Montana. “That is my favourite stuff, when it peeks through. It reminds me of myself, and my little repressed life.

“Until now, I feel like a lot of things were being hidden, that were trying to shine through – things that I love about myself as a human now.”

Eli’s love for Miley continued as the former child star’s career evolved, and she shed her Disney image on songs like Can’t Be Tamed and during her headline-grabbing Bangerz era.

“Seeing it all unfold, it was so cool to see someone escape this place that may have been a bit repressed, or conservative, or ‘got to be bottled up’, ‘got to appeal to the masses’ and ‘appeal to the conservatives’ or whatever,” she says.

“I don’t want to intellectualise it too much, but it’s freaking incredible. And Hannah’s also a drag queen, and also I’m Trannah Montana – so I live for all of it.”

There’s an obvious reason Eli’s love of pop runs so deep. For the 25-year-old, it often felt like a lifeline during the more difficult and isolating times she faced in her own adolescence.

“Growing up in the prime MTV music video era, I’m seeing Britney Spears, and I’m thinking ‘who the fuck is this woman?’, and everything I ever wanted is being reflected back at me,” she recalls. “And I’m feeling ashamed about it, and confused about it. I’m also feeling invigorated and excited.”

Eli on the cover of her new album Stage Girl

For that reason, Eli is particularly upset about how pop has historically been so readily dismissed by so-called “serious” music critics and commentators, which she puts down to the fact it has always been a genre enjoyed by women and the queer community.

“It’s misogyny, and it’s patriarchy,” she states. “And it’s like, fuck your rock band. Fuck your boring dad music. It will never be Britney, it will never be Rihanna, it will never ever be Beyoncé, it will never be Madonna, it will never be the glitz, the glam…”

“And not even the glitz and glam!” Eli continues, interrupting her own train of thought. “They tried to do the glitz and glam with fucking glam rock. It’s such an annoying thing, too, when people value [men embracing ‘glam rock’] as high fucking art. And I’m like… from California Gurls and Teenage Dream, I’m getting double, triple, quadruple artistry in that than any of these boring rock bands.”

“Not David Bowie,” she quickly points out. “Sorry,........

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