Ella Jane

Roth was born and raised in Westchester County, New York to a Jewish family.[1][2] Her father, a jazz pianist, named her after singer Ella Fitzgerald.[2] She began playing the piano when she was four years old and she started songwriting when she was eleven.[3] Roth attended Tufts University in the fall of 2020 as an English major.[4][3] She dropped out to move to Brooklyn and pursue music full-time.[3][1]

In February 2020, she independently released "The City" using GarageBand.[5] This was followed "Nothing Else I Could Do" in July 2020.[5] It was written in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic after a creative and emotional rut.[4] For her final creative project in AP English Literature and Composition, she chose to write a song inspired by The Great Gatsby.[4] She posted the song on TikTok in October 2020. The Tiktok video of her performance of the song went viral, gathering over 2 million views.[4] Roth was signed to Fader Label in 2020.[6]

Fader Label released Ella Jane's debut album, This is Not What it Looks Like!, on September 10, 2021.[7][8] Her single, "Calling Card," released on October 26, 2021 and has over 500,000 streams on Spotify.[9] Roth performed her track "Calling Card" on Elton John's Rocket Hour radio show on Apple Music.[3] The song was influenced by the character, Cassie, in Euphoria.[3]

In 2022, "Nothing Else I Could Do" was featured as part of the soundtrack of the Netflix TV series, Heartstopper.[10][11] In 2022, she relocated to Los Angeles after living for a year in Brooklyn.[1] On October 28, 2022, Roth released her second album, Marginalia.[12] In 2022, she released the pop song "Sore Loser" with Charlie Hickey.[13] Roth cites singers Lorde, Taylor Swift, and Phoebe Bridgers, among her lyrical influences.[12]