Eliza Doolittle (singer)

Early life

Eliza Doolittle was born in Westminster, London in 1988. She comes from a family with a successful and varied musical background. Her father is John Caird, a stage director and writer of plays, musicals and operas who is also an Honorary Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her mother is musical theatre actress and model artist Frances Ruffelle, who won a Tony Award for her role of Éponine in the English-language version of Les Misérables. Doolittle is the granddaughter of Sylvia Young, founder of the eponymous theatre school. She has eight siblings. Her parents separated when she was four years old.

Doolittle grew up in Camden Town and attended Channing School For Girls and Westminster Kingsway College. She was used to being around stages and seeing her mother singing and had always wanted to become a recording artist. She chose the stage name of Eliza Doolittle, the Pygmalion and My Fair Lady character, because it was her nickname as a child.

Eliza had a brief career on stage playing Young Cosette in Les Misérables in London's West End in 1996-1997. Her parents had met and began their relationship during the original production when her father was the co-director and her mother played Eponine. Eliza went on to play the lead role in Lucy Simon's Tony Award-winning musical version of The Secret Garden in 2001, when The Royal Shakespeare Company premiered the show in London.

Career beginnings

Before entering the charts, Eliza Doolittle toured the UK everywhere with her band. Her first release was an EP featuring the tracks "Rollerblades", "Moneybox", "Police Car" and "Go Home", which came out on 29 November 2009. Tracks from the EP were remixed by Plastic Little ("Rollerblades"), Sam Young and Jamie xx from The xx ("Money Box"). The EP received radio plays from Rob Da Bank, Nick Grimshaw, Fearne Cotton and Jo Whiley.

She recorded a song called 'Running For Life' which featured on the soundtrack to the cult British film AdULTHOOD in 2008. Later that year, she performed at Glastonbury on the Pussy Parlour stage, her first festival performance.

2010–13: Eliza Doolittle

In early 2010 she took part in musician Shane MacGowan's charity single "I Put a Spell on You", in aid of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Her debut single "Skinny Genes" was released on 12 April 2010, reaching #22 in the UK Singles Chart. She told BBC's Steve Lamacq the song is "a funny scenario if you didn’t like someone, if they were really annoying, but you had a good time under the sheets." Doolittle's second release is titled "Pack Up" and was released on 5 July 2010, reaching #5 on the Official UK Singles Chart on 11 July 2010.

In March 2011 she performed at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas as well as Coachella in California. In April 2011, Doolittle was touring the UK. On 19 April 2011, Doolittle's self-titled album was released in the United States almost one year from the U.K date.

In 2013 Doolittle collaborated with Disclosure on the track "You & Me" from their debut album, Settle. Early that year, she began recording new material for her second album. In an interview with Elle magazine in April 2013, she stated "I'm definitely showing more of myself than I ever have before. I feel like on my last album, I hadn't experienced very much of anything really, and it's been three years or more since then and I have felt and seen things I hadn't before, and I know things I didn't know before. In a way I have answers to questions, but then those answers open up a thousand other questions. I guess I've gone through things that so many people go through at the age I am. I've written almost every day about my every thought and emotion and the album is made up of the songs that mean the most to me".

2013–present: In Your Hands and upcoming third studio album

On 7 June 2013 she premiered a new single called "Big When I Was Little", which was released in July 2013. It subsequently joined BBC Radio 1's playlist, and features on her second studio album. On 17 June 2013 the video for the single premiered on her YouTube channel.

Eliza and UK garage artist Wookie wrote a song called 'The Hype' in 2013. Wookie also contributed a remix to her 'In Your Hands' album for her track 'Walking on Water'.

She also featured on 'YNSP' a track from hip hop artist Vic Mensa's INNANETAPE mixtape produced by DJ Dahi.

She had a cameo role as a nightclub singer in The Great Train Robbery, a drama series on BBC One in December 2013.

In 2014, Eliza was invited by Burt Bacharach to sing with him at Henley Festival in the Summer of 2014. She said "I’ve wanted to sing one of his songs since I first heard his music and to be able to do it with him in his show gives me a feeling I can't even describe!"^[14]

Eliza is currently working on her third studio album.

Tour

Opening Act For Gary Barlow's Since I Saw You Last UK/Ireland Tour 2014.

1. Back Packing
2. Skinny Genes
3. Rollerblades
4. Big When I Was Little
5. You and Me (Disclosure Feat. Eliza Doolittle)
6. In Your Hands
7. Mr Medicine
8. Walking On Water
9. Pack Up
10. Let it Rain