Elle King puts a gritty, bluesy spin on her blend of pop- and country-tinged retro-rock. After debuting with 2012's The Elle King EP, she hit number one on the Billboard alternative chart with "Ex's & Oh's" from her Top 30 debut album, 2015's
Love Stuff. By the early 2020s, she had released collaborations with artists spanning
Ronnie Spector,
Dierks Bentley,
Wanda Jackson, and
Andy Grammer; she landed just outside the Top 40 with 2021's "Drunk (And I Don't Wanna Go Home)," a duet with
Miranda Lambert. 2022 brought solo recordings including The Bad Guys soundtrack contribution "Feelin' Alright."
Elle King was born
Tanner Elle Schneider in 1989 in Los Angeles, the daughter of London King and
Rob Schneider (actor, comedian, and former cast member of Saturday Night Live). She grew up in Ohio, and after hearing the all-girl pop-punk band
the Donnas when she was nine years old, she decided she wanted to be a singer and musician. By 13 she was playing guitar, later adding banjo to her skill set.
King began street busking and gigging around New York at the age of 16, moving to Philadelphia to attend the University of Arts, where she majored in painting and film. During that time, she acted in films including 2009's Wild Cherry. After college, she spent time in Copenhagen and Los Angeles before returning to New York to settle in Brooklyn.
Signing to RCA Records,
King released a four-song EP, The Elle King EP, in 2012. Her debut album,
Love Stuff, followed in 2015. It included the single "Ex's & Oh's," which reached the top of Billboard's Alternative Songs chart and helped
Love Stuff place as high as number 28 on the Billboard 200 in addition to number seven in Canada. In 2016, she recorded a duet with
Dierks Bentley, "Different for Girls," that appeared on his album
Black. The track was released as a single and rose to number one on the Country Airplay chart. It was later nominated for a Grammy for Best Country Duo/Group Performance and won a Country Music Association trophy for Best Vocal Event of the Year.
October 2018 saw the arrival of
Shake the Spirit,
King's second long-player. It peaked at number 68 on the U.S. album chart (and a notch higher in Canada) while landing in the Top Three of Billboard's Americana/Folk Albums chart and the Top Ten of the rock and alternative charts. Late the following year, she released a Christmas song, "Under the Mistletoe," with
Ronnie Spector before delivering "Best of You," a duet with
Andy Grammer, in 2020. That year, she also issued the three-track EP In Isolation and appeared as a singer in the film Love, Weddings & Other Disasters.
In 2021,
King had a platinum-selling single with "Drunk (And I Don't Wanna Go Home)," a duet with
Miranda Lambert that peaked at number 44 on the Hot 100. She hit the rock Top 40 later that year with the solo "Please Come Home for Christmas" and was featured alongside
Joan Jett on "Two Shots" from
Wanda Jackson's
Encore album.
King started 2022 with the banjo rocker "Out Yonder" and soundtrack entry "Feelin' Alright" from DreamWorks Animation's The Bad Guys. ~ Steve Leggett & Marcy Donelson