Creative, inventive and fun; Ellie Dixon kicks off her UK tour

Ellie Dixon filled the opening night of her UK tour with about as much fun and creative music as is possible, at an already full Heartbreakers venue, Southampton, UK. What a night. The TikTok- famous musician (1.2M followers), known for her musical inventiveness is still recording songs in her bedroom, and often using household objects, now signed by Decca Records.

From drinking tea between songs and throwing biscuits, to attempting to get harmonies from the crowd, this wasn’t your usual Monday night gig. In classic Ellie style, to help the audience sing along to one of her new songs, “Godzilla”, she of course had the lyrics on a noticeboard.

Ellie is a master of vocal stacking and covers of classics pop songs, inserting her own lyric verses of course, as seen on her TikTok and YouTube. She treated the audience to both during the show. One highlight was her new song, “Swing”, released this week, which she said came from a difficult period where she was getting a lot of weird hate on TikTok that nearly ended her career. Thankfully she has come through and she told the crowd how genuinely happy and thankfully she is to see a room full of friendly faces, and it’s a great song.

Ellie‘s merchandise deserves a mention: She buys second hand t-shirts, to reduce waste and recycle, and then hand prints them with her graphics, and all profits from the sale go to Barnardo’s children’s charity.

Another highlight, and saved for the encore, a quick costume change, and Ellie reappears in her inflatable space suit, for her song “Space Out!”. Genuinely hilarious as Ellie bounces around the stage. A superb show.

Support for this show came from Emillia Tarrant, with a stunning vocal performance, stripped back arrangements on piano of seven of her songs. A highlight was “Best Friend Heartbreak”, hopefully to be released soon, this was a beautifully delivered song, bursting with emotion. Other highlights were “Honeymoon Phase”, and “When It Was Chaotic”. A lovely start to the evening.