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"facebook dialogPinterest\n\nWith her tailored style and gravity-defying quiff, 22-year-old Elly Jackson of U.K. electro-pop duo La Roux cuts a dramatic figure on stage. But when I call her in between tour stops at her parents' house in the suburbs of London, the person on the other end of the line is just plain Elly--grounded, witty, and endearingly real. \"I don't let myself change at all when I go on tour,\" says the \"Bulletproof\" chart-topper. \"I'm completely the same. I didn't get into the music business for the money or to escape my awful family or anything like that.\"\n\n Fair enough. Even though music isn't necesarily her salvation, it's always been a driving force in Elly's life. \"I've never loved anything as much,\" she says definitively. Her parents, both performers, encouraged Elly's early passion and signed her up for piano lessons.\u00A0\n\nThey didn't take. \"Anytime someone tells me to practice, I won't,\" she admits. \"I wanted to learn to play music that comes from me. I didn't want to memorize 'Fr\u00C3\u00A9re Jacques'--it's rubbish!\" At twelve, Elly started teaching herself guitar and writing folk songs. (\"It was all plucked and Nick Drake-y,\" she says.)\n\n A few years later, she was introduced to producer Ben Langmaid, who became the other half of La Roux. \"I had one day off from school a week, and those days I'd go over to Ben's and just write what became the record,\" she says. At first her songs were coffeehouse-style confessionals--but then Elly had an epiphany: \"I didn't want to make weird acoustic-pop crossover music,\" she says. \"So out went the guitars and in went the synthesizers.\"\n\n Though the slick tracks on La Roux are upbeat and danceable, the lyrics still convey heavy themes like obsession and heartbreak. \"That was the aim,\" Elly admits. \"Just to be really honest. A lot of modern pop doesn't speak to me. If one more person puts 'DJ, turn it up' in their lyrics, I'll take a gun to my head. I mean, there must be millions of people who like listening to songs about being in the club, but I think there are millions who don't and want something else.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.teenvogue.com/story/elly-jackson-la-roux-interview>