“The songs on my album were and are my path to healing. I need them,” Kings Elliot says with the kind of honesty that makes her music so profound. For the Swiss-British artist, her entire life journey is embedded in her debut album. “Born Blue is the essence of everything I am,” she tells Apple Music. “With all the facets that make me who I am.” Elliot’s songs are raw confessions, inspired by those moments in life that seem most hopeless, but also serve as little lifeboats. Sometimes fragile on the piano, sometimes carried by epic intensity, they embrace contrasts and shape the central message of refusing to see vulnerability as a weakness. “I hope that Born Blue reaches people who find themselves in their sadness or uniqueness and can feel comfort or a moment of freedom in it,” says Elliot, who clarifies that “‘Blue’ doesn’t just stand for sadness and melancholy, but also endless freedom, boundless depth and strength. The colour blue, for me, unites heaviness and lightness, darkness and hopefulness.” Below, the artist presents three personal highlights from the album. “I Can’t Be Hurt By Anything” “This was created during a phase when I felt so down that nothing could reach me anymore. That’s exactly when this paradoxical feeling of untouchability grew, almost like invincibility. The first verses had been around for a while, originally even with a chorus, but it didn’t feel quite right at first. Eventually, it just clicked, and it became the song you hear now. Although we worked on it for a long time, it ended up being the shortest song on the album. That’s precisely why it means so much to me: It pinpoints a feeling I couldn’t put into words before, making it one of my favourite songs.” “Whiskey And Wine” “‘Whiskey And Wine’ is, for me, a tribute to women—and I really mean all women. It’s an anthem to my first queer experience and also the first song I’ve ever released that wasn’t born from pain. Instead, it shows a side of me that hadn’t found a place before: playful, free and openly queer. Part of the song actually came to me in a dream, and right after waking up, I sang it into the phone for my co-writer and producer, halfrhymes. We immediately realised there was something special there that we needed to pursue. Whenever I hear the song, it lifts my mood, and I’m sure it will be one of the highlights at my live shows. The music video is also one of my favourites, full of lightness and fun.” “Made For Me There” “I wrote ‘Made For Me There’ [in 2019]. It’s the most vulnerable and the last song on the album. To this day, it’s hard for me to listen to it without my eyes filling with tears. It’s a song that really gives space to sadness. I reflect on the idea of an ‘afterlife’ because the happiness I’m searching for might not be meant for me in this life. I find the second verse the most impactful: First, I reference stories about a place where loved ones wait for us and everything feels lighter. But then I immediately question this image with the line: ‘But someone said it wouldn’t be worth it / The place is deserted / There’ll be no more roses, no more stings.’ That’s where I find the most important message of the song.”