Curb Records recording artist Hannah Ellis walked into 2024 in the greatest fashion by releasing her highly-anticipated debut album, ‘That Girl’. For fans and for Hannah herself, this has been a long time coming and it is finally here!

Hannah has spent years writing hits for other artists as well as releasing songs of her own, but now that she has her debut record out, it’s high time Hannah Ellis is seen as the well established and extremely talented artist that she is and for UK fans, well we already knew and have been following her journey for a while now!

Hannah made her Country 2 Country (C2C) Festival debut in 2023 and returned this year to a much bigger fanbase. With her album ‘That Girl’ now out, fans had a long list of songs that they knew by heart, surprising Hannah at each and every one of her shows and proving to her that she has a second home here in the UK that we sincerely hope she makes good use of from now on!

We caught up with Hannah at C2C Festival to discuss her album, her performances, being on stage with Carly Pearce and more!

Hannah was an amazing person to talk with and we discovered so many funny similarities such as the same name obviously, both having a sister called Rebecca and a dad called David and, we both waited the same amount of time to get married! I loved having these little similarities with Hannah and it would have been fun to talk for a longer period of time, that’s how easy going she is and how interesting. We will definitely arrange a more in depth interview soon!

Enjoy!

Hi Hannah how are you? I think we may have difficulty remembering each other’s names.

I know, It’s going to be a challenge.

How are you? How has C2C been so far for you?

Oh my gosh, it’s been amazing!

You were on the O2 main stage with Carly Pearce to perform ‘Never Wanted To Be That Girl’, had you known for a while that that was going to happen?

No! She talked to me a couple of days before because we were going to grab a drink for my husbands birthday while we were all over here and as we were planning the drinking she said “wait a second, you should come sing with me tomorrow” and I was like “absolutely, I would love to”

Amazing, I mean you weren’t going to turn around and say “nah it’s alright love”.

Haha no exactly! It was magical!!!!

Oh wow!

How have your sets been so far because I tried to make it to the Observatory and people were crammed up against the windows it was so busy which is great for you, not so great for me!

From day one, the very first set that I played, everyone was screaming and singing along with me, the hallway was filled with people, it was really nice!

You played last year too so has it been more impactful this year?

Absolutely, I would say that one of my favourite things was that last year I played the Icon Stage and it was the first show that I played here and then this year I also played the Icon Stage and when we were walking over like 20 minutes before, there weren’t a lot of people there and I wasn’t paying attention and then when I got ready to walk on the stage I was like “oh my gosh, there is like 150 people here”.

Which, for those who don’t know is a lot for that stage because it’s bang smack in the middle of the O2 Outlet and not enough room as people have to be able to walk by to go shopping!

Exactly! It was awesome and people were singing every word!

Let’s talk about That Girl, it’s a great album, people are going crazy over it!

I keep joking that it feels a bit like an exhale. I took a deep breathe, all these years building and building and writing these songs and going out into the world and coming up with ideas, living my life. It feels like now, to have it out in the world, it has been incredible to share my stories and hear people tell me how much they relate to the songs and it feels like I have spoken for them. Which is really what I want to do, I want to write music that people hear and relate to.

What has been the one song that people have related to mostly?

I would say probably Too Much and Not Enough! That’s a song about how some days you feel like the most confident person in the world in those moments and then go wait “did I say something weird? Did I talk too much?” I think that that song, it resonates with more people than you realise.

I definitely agree and it’s nice to know other people have those thoughts because I certainly do!

Right, exactly!

I am a ‘Plans’ person myself. It was seven years till my husband and I got engaged too. Both Hannah’s both seven years!!

Look at us!!

And it really annoys me when people say “when you know, you know”. That just implies that anyone who waits longer than a year is in the “not so sure category” which isn’t always the case at all. There are other factors, financial ones, career ones, enjoying life ones.

Yes!!! You can know and you can also be doing other things in life! You can say, yeah we’re going to get married, we are going to get there when we get there. We had a life that we wanted to build before we got there!

Us too! And money was a massive factor! We were young and stupid with our money haha!

‘Someone Else’s Heartbreak’ is really beautiful and is a song that you wanted people to hear for a while, how long ago was that song written?

Man, ‘Someone Else’s Heartbreak’ was written probably four, five years ago. I wrote it for my sister who is now married and she was going through a break up then. That song was special, from the moment we wrote it – I knew that a lot of people would relate to that song because we have all been there!

Yes we have! So you and your husband formed a duo called ‘The Richardsons’, was that a one off or can we be hopeful that it will be a thing?

It was one off!!! I think eventually we will probably put out something. So that’s our actual last name (Richardson) . Eventually we might!

That would be fun!

We would love it!

Here you can do an exclusive next year haha!

It says on socials that you always try to find somewhere cool to eat, have you found anything cool here?

Yes, girl let me tell you. Ok, favourite coffee shop so far is this place called 15 Grams. We love the Greenwich area, love love love it! My fav Fish and Chips place is The Golden Chippy, it’s so good. It’s also kind of on the Greenwich area. We are actually going to try and explore some more food stops this time because last time we just ended up eating at the O2 a lot!

What song of yours is your husband’s favourite?

You know that is a good question (looks at her husband) what is his favourite song of mine? He’s written half of them so I don’t know how to answer that without any bias haha. I would say Somebody Else!

We wrote it together and it’s our love song for people that have been together for a while. I would say that one!

What was the first song that you wrote together?

The first song??? I don’t know…one of the earliest …

Hannah looks at her husband who answers

Oh wow! Tomorrow would be the first song that we wrote together and it was like “oh wait!” We should be collaborating all the time! It’s not released! You can maybe find it on the internet somewhere!

Do you ever perform it live?

No, I used to all the time so I think there’s probably a video out there somewhere!

Well you will have to make The Richardsons a thing and perform it then!

That has to be it!