Even If

Album: Feline (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • For a time Ella Eye and Yorkshire singer-songwriter John Newman were lovers. They agreed to spilt up by mutual agreement when their careers took off in different directions. This song finds Eyre looking back at the relationship. She told You magazine: "It's taken me this long to write about it because I had never quite understood how I wanted to discuss what happened. My song 'Even If' is about appreciating something that ended: instead of feeling bad, you can acknowledge whatever it was you did have."
  • Both Ella Eyre and John Newman were given their breaks by the London group Rudimental. Newman's voice can be heard on their debut UK chart-topping single "Feel The Love" and Eyre sung on their second #1 hit, "Waiting All Night." Newman told us about his relationship with Eyre on his 2013 track "Running."
  • Eyre explained during the 2015 Camp Bestival at the Guardian Literary Institute that she wrote the song in just 45 minutes. "On 'Even If,' the producer I was working with had these chords ready before I even arrived. We were sat by the piano and I pretty much sang the entire song as we played through them."

    When she was asked about her favorite song she has ever written, she responded, "Probably 'Even If,' because I feel like it's the most vulnerable, most personal and the most open I've ever been in a song."

    She went on to reveal how the song is sometimes tough to sing live. "It was, but I've done it quite a few times now. It is quite a sad song and every time I used to sing it I'd end up crying by the end, so I had to rein it in and try and get through the song."

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