A Conversation With Eliza King

A few months after the release of her debut album, I catch up with Eliza King to ask some pertinent questions.

Oct 09, 2024

Hi Pal,

If you’re new here, welcome aboard! Everyone else, I hope your week is going well.

About Eliza King: Eliza King is a singer-songwriter and worship leader from Brisbane, Australia. She writes devotional worship music with strong scriptural references, exploring themes of peace, healing, repentance, and intimacy with God. Her goal as an artist is to release an authentic sound of worship that glorifies the Lord and connects with people.

With a background in classical music, Eliza grew up learning piano, singing in choirs, and performing from a young age. She began to write music to enrich her devotional times with the Lord and soon found opportunities to share her music with her local church community to encourage others in their faith.

Since teaming up with the UK-based distribution company Wings in 2021, Eliza has been able to share her music with a broader audience, gaining an international following from those who desire faith-based music that offers something different to the standard Sunday worship sound. She has seen significant growth in the last 12 months, sustaining an average Spotify monthly listener base of 160K, with 4.7 million total streams of her music in 2023.

Some of her more congregational releases (‘How Deep,’ ‘I Shall Not Want’) feature regularly on local Christian radio station 96.5’s Sunday morning segment. Eliza also works part-time as a secondary English teacher at a Christian high school in Brisbane, sharing her love for language and passion for the gospel daily.

Introduction

For many reasons I cannot go into, this interview has been on the back burner for the past few months. Still, I’m glad I can finally get it across. Hopefully, you enjoy it as much as I did.

The Conversation

Q: It's been a few months since the release of your debut album, The Pressing In. Now, that there has been a little distance from the creative process, press, and promotion; how are you feeling about it as far as you know, what impact has it had?

It has been a fulfilling few months since releasing the album. I’ve experienced the delight of the Lord first and foremost like I sense the Father is proud of me, and that is what means the most!
It’s also been a real blessing to hear people all around the world discover my music and connect to the messages of this album particularly, as there is a lot of heartache as well as a lot of hope contained in these songs. Listeners reach out mostly on my social media platforms, or via email, and hearing the individual stories of how the Lord has used a song to speak to someone impacts me as a writer and makes me grateful to be in a position where I can release music.

Q: You've often described your music as "devotional worship", what does this expression mean and how would you explain it to someone who hasn't heard your songs?

Describing my songs as ‘devotional worship’ is more about the context I imagine my music would best be experienced in, rather than a particular genre or sound. The word ‘devotion’ makes me think of a heart posture that is intentionally focused on the Lord, and leaning into His presence in a personal way.
It is music that might be listened to and reflected on, rather than necessarily sung along to or led by a worship team in large gatherings. I hope that it can be used as a resource to help people connect to the presence of God, whether as a soundtrack for times of prayer and reading his word or in the everyday moments of driving to work and doing the laundry.

Q: I love the album a lot and one of the reasons why is it unites two creative approaches within the Christian indie scene that have been growing further apart in the last few years. These approaches are the need for "artistic expression" and a focus on "Godly reverence". How do you reconcile these two elements in your creative process?

Absolutely. My biggest passion as a writer lies in the substance of the lyrical content I create. I love to craft lyrics drawn straight from God’s word, combining this with testimonies of the outworking of His word in my own life.
My reverence for scripture always leads me to drink deeply of it first myself, and then every time I write, it seems to come streaming out of me with the help of the Holy Spirit. And thankfully, in God’s presence, I always feel like there is full permission to be creative in limitless ways as well– just by spending time looking at the Lord, my creative ideas start to expand.
Because this creativity is born out of communion with Him, it remains submitted to all that is true, pure, lovely, and praiseworthy, as Philippians 4:8 describes.

Q: Anyone who listens to the album attentively will know that those songs are born from a place of personal experience. Can you pick a favourite and share the inspiration/story behind it?

The song ‘All I Have Left’ is a special one and the first song I wrote back in 2021 that ended up on this project. It is based on the first few verses of Psalm 40, which became a lifeline when I experienced rapid change and was grieving parts of my life that I felt I’d lost.
Due to the pandemic, I had to step down from my job for a few months and also experienced a significant strain in a few close relationships that left me feeling quite isolated. I felt I had two choices, and the Holy Spirit made it clear to me that I could either wallow in self-pity and fear for the future or exercise this faith that I’d professed my whole life to have!
In choosing the latter, I experienced the closeness of the Lord in real and tangible ways. I found freedom from the things I’d anchored my identity and purpose in, and instead put my hope in the Lord. So as He always does, the Lord brought something beautiful out of something difficult, and that’s the premise of ‘The Pressing In.’

BTS Recording Sessions for The Pressing In | Photo Credit: Eliza King

Q: In the past three years, my list of Christian indie artists from Brisbane and Australia in general has grown exponentially, can you tell me a little bit about the Christian music community over there?

We love Brissy! The Lord is certainly stirring a really powerful culture of worship in this region, as well as raising up gifted songwriters and producers to give voice to the authentic sound of God’s people in this place.
The strongest sense that many of us feel (both artists in this region and collectives /worship teams) is that God is marking us with purity, and the courage to resist compromise. Along with that, there is a great sense of unity and a culture of celebrating and championing each other, which is such a gift in a space that can potentially be riddled with jealousy and competition.

Q: You recently released, The Pressing In: Piano Sessions, an EP that features some live recorded tracks and instrumental covers from the album. What was the inspiration behind this mini-project?

When you write and produce an album, there are often multiple versions or potential versions of songs that are never released, as you ultimately have to choose 1 path to take for each song.
My producer Brett and I enjoyed the whole process, felt like some songs lent themselves to just piano and vocal arrangements, and were able to capture some special worshipful moments in recording them live. In a similar way, there were a handful of songs that Brett had written and recorded beautiful string arrangements for, so releasing them as instrumentals was an easy win!

Q: Do you have any words of encouragement that have been a source of strength for you lately?

No specific words, but more a revelation that’s been shaping me and my husband’s life recently, which is the gift of Sabbath rest. I’ve been reading The Ruthless Elimination Hurry by John Mark Comer (highly recommend!) and we’ve intentionally been reevaluating our priorities and the way we invest our time on a daily and weekly basis.
As a creative, engaging with the Sabbath helps me to remember that I am enough before I do anything, and that in the eyes of God, I have nothing to prove. The satisfaction I find in any kind of artistic output must remain secondary to the satisfaction I find in communing with the Lord, as that is His primary calling on my life. Simple but life-changing!

That’s all for today. If you’re new to Eliza King, see all the links below.