Eli

Norfolk, Massachusetts, by way of Vine

Eli Miller was born on 12 October 2000 in New Jersey and raised in Norfolk, Massachusetts, the middle of three children of Cindy and Jeff Miller. The household was Catholic, the local public school was not a happy fit, and music functioned as the exit. The first album she bought was Katy Perry's One of the Boys; Mariah Carey and Ariana Grande sat alongside it in the formative listening.

She began posting covers to Vine in November 2013. By August 2014 the account carried 1.2 million followers and she had appeared on Good Morning America. A first single, "Double Tap", went up on iTunes in June 2014, when she was 13. She played Brave Fest in San Diego that July and released an EP, Seconds, on 9 September 2014. A second EP, Rise, followed in October 2017 with five of its six tracks co-written by her; the video for "Whatever It Takes" premiered through Billboard, and iHeartRadio and AT&T placed her in their About To Break campaign the same year.

Then the momentum stalled for years. She enrolled at New York University to study recorded music, dropped out in 2023, moved to Los Angeles and signed to RCA Records through its partnership with Zelig Music.

The turn

The deal predates her transition, and by her own account the transition is what unlocked the work. "The turn was transness," she told The FADER in March 2026. "I was finally feeling like I was in my body and allowing myself to show up truthfully." The visual language she now performs in — wigs, sequins, beads, a fedora she keeps returning to — dates from that same stretch.

The label period before it was obstructive. She sat on "Marianne" for seven months, and described the wait in blunt terms: "This feels like my voice is being stopped. It felt like I gave my voice away to capitalism." What broke the deadlock was rebuilding an audience directly online until release was cleared. She changed management to John Geraghty, signed with Jenna Adler at CAA, and came out publicly as transgender in 2025, having spoken since about earlier suicidal ideation.

"Marianne", written out of a New York relationship, arrived on 30 May 2025. "Girl of Your Dreams" followed on 20 June and drew public attention from Doechii, Lizzy McAlpine and Meghan Trainor.

Stage Girl, and the musical that came first

The stage version preceded the record. In September 2025 she wrote, directed and produced Stage Girl: A One Woman Show, staging it at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Los Angeles and the Slipper Room in New York, with a return run in Los Angeles in February 2026. Demi Lovato, ADÉLA, Zara Larsson and Madison Beer each came on during "Girl of Your Dreams" at the Los Angeles shows. "It feels really really special to be seen by these women that I love," she said afterwards.

Stage Girl the album came out on 31 October 2025 on Zelig Music and RCA, running just under 55 minutes of pop and R&B built on Nineties and Y2K radio shapes, opening with "Stars (Lullabye)". "Like a Girl" (27 August 2025) and "All at Once" (26 September 2025) preceded it as singles. She has described the title figure as "a kind of divine delusion – the belief that a girl singing alone in her bedroom could one day make rent from her art". "Somebody I'm Not" and "I Wish I Was a Girl" are the tracks that travelled furthest with queer listeners.

Vogue placed the album in its 45 best albums of 2025. Jacob Gardner wrote in The Washington Post that "At the end of Stage Girl, Eli's persona is more than a character; it is a philosophy." Pollstar called the record evidence of "the power of pop music, positivity, and accepting yourself".

Deluxe, and the year it all compressed into

"Glitter" arrived in December 2025. On 16 January 2026 she announced a first headline tour, Eli Is the Next Stage Girl, which ran 8–28 March across ten dates in the United States and Canada and sold out, with Le Poisson Rouge in New York as its third stop. She performed at the GLAAD Media Awards, where she was nominated for outstanding breakthrough music artist. "Feel Your Rain" followed on 27 March.

Stage Girl (Not a Dream Anymore), the deluxe edition, landed on 22 May 2026 with six additional songs including "Nobody's Girl", "F*** the DJ", "Beyond the Bend" and a collaboration with Ayleen Valentine. Her explanation for extending rather than moving on: "I felt like I had a storefront with one T-shirt in it and was like, 'Guys, I have a clothing brand. It's just one T-shirt.' Now I have 10 T-shirts." Pitchfork scored it 7.2. Reviewing it for Melodic Magazine on 25 May, August Nguyen singled out "Beyond the Bend" — a sequel to the original album's "Sunny" — as "such an intelligent, moving commentary on survival in pop and in life that it brought tears to my eyes", and called her "the pop star of a generation".

The other addition was outward-facing: "Crush (Girls Trip)", her feature on Zara Larsson's Midnight Sun: Girls Trip, with the remix release set for 1 May 2026. Larsson, she told NYLON that April, "represents to me a beautiful case study of what it means to let your hair down, lean into being an artist".

Where she stands, autumn 2026

On 22 July 2026 she announced Strange Girl (Live On Stage!), a North American run pitched at larger rooms with a production expanded out of the theatrical material of the previous year: Chop Shop in Chicago on 20 August, the Mod Club in Toronto on the 23rd, Webster Hall in New York on the 25th, Olivia Rodrigo's first Daisy Chain Fields festival at Irvine on the 29th, and the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles on 2 September. Webster Hall and the Fonda were the largest headline shows she had played.

She then joined Zara Larsson's Midnight Sun tour as support for two nights at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, on 29 and 30 September. On 21 August came the first UK and European headline run, billed Stage Girl: Starring Eli, with an artist pre-sale at 5pm BST on 26 August and general sale at 10am on 28 August through Ticketmaster. Seven dates are on sale: the Courtyard Theatre in London on 7 and 8 October, Les Étoiles in Paris on the 12th, Mikropol in Berlin on the 14th, the Yard Club in Cologne on the 15th, Bitterzoet in Amsterdam on the 18th and the club room at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels on the 19th. The original announcement listed London on the 8th alone.

The stated next ambition is an opening slot on Ariana Grande's Eternal Sunshine tour, which she framed as "this really beautiful passing-the-torch thing" — one of several remarks that suggest the current room sizes are treated as a stage rather than a ceiling.

What the show is

The Webster Hall show on 25 August, in a room of roughly 1,400, gives the clearest picture of the current production. She entered through the venue's side doors and crossed the floor during the opening song. The structure carries over from the one-woman version: two interview segments with a fictional chat-show host, one of them scripted into an argument, video-diary monologues delivered to camera, choreography with backing dancers and costume changes, all held inside a club-sized space.

The set drew on both halves of the record, "F*** the DJ" among the deluxe material, and included a cover of Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful". Reviewing it on 23 September for Pop Princess Diaries, Lulu McDonald described a predominantly queer New York crowd and wrote that "it's as if, paradoxically, she is most herself when she is performing" — before concluding that the material and the staging have already outgrown venues of that size.