La Roux hasn’t exactly been in hiding for the past decade, but you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise. She hasn’t performed in the U.S. for 10 years, and her last album, 2020’s Supervision, dropped one month before the coronavirus pandemic shut down the world.
But while she may have been out of sight, she wasn’t just resting — she was quietly perfecting a new album and gearing up for a residency in Los Angeles. A comeback is brewing, and based on the crowd’s reaction at her New York City show, her fans are ready.
“It’s sort of like one of those things where it doesn’t feel long now that I’ve kind of got back into the swing of playing shows again,” La Roux exclusively told Us Weekly before her Wednesday, April 9, concert in NYC. “It’s all come flooding back to me in good ways and also in ways that I kind of didn’t expect as well, where you’re just like, ‘Oh, yeah, I kind of forgot about that element of touring and stuff like that.’ So, yeah, it’s been nice.”
La Roux, whose real name is Elly Jackson, rose to fame in 2009 following the release of the hit single “Bulletproof.” Back then, La Roux was a duo, and the rest of their eponymous debut album sounded much like “Bulletproof” did: heavy on synths and ’80s vibes. By 2012, however, La Roux was technically just Jackson, who was uninterested in replicating her debut album’s sound on her sophomore album, 2014’s Trouble in Paradise.
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“My first record, obviously the reference was and the world I was living in was ’80s, completely ’80s synth-pop, that kind of thing, and a bit of French electronica and stuff like that to keep it modern-feeling,” Jackson, 37, explained. “I think a lot of people decided at that time that I was gonna be that artist. And I was never intending on being that artist for the rest of my life. You can’t do a genre for your whole life unless you’re, like, Chic, you know? It doesn’t really work, I don’t think, as a new artist. And for me, it wouldn’t be engaging enough. I would get bored.”
For Trouble in Paradise, Jackson shifted to a more funk-influenced sound, while Supervision channeled new wave. She’s undergoing yet another shift on her fourth album, the title and release date of which she hasn’t yet announced.
“Genre-wise, obviously, I’ve stepped left again slightly,” she told Us. “I never step too far, but it’s definitely another step where I’ve tried to challenge myself as a producer and a writer in terms of just doing something that I’ve always wanted to do, or maybe I didn’t know I always wanted to do but I have. I’ve had to learn some new techniques as a writer and a producer, which has been really great. It’s not an R&B record, but it has huge R&B influences and some hip-hop influences as well.”
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Jackson and her two-person band played three new songs on Wednesday — “Cabin Fever,” “Babyline” and “Lose Myself” — and they were all well-received by her fans, who she says have been hugely supportive at her recent shows.
“Within seconds, they seem to be into it,” she said. “They seem to be really happy that I’m playing new music. They seem to get it. All their heads are bobbing in the right way very quickly, which is quite rare for playing new tunes, so I’m really pleased about that.”
That’s not to say that she won’t still play “Bulletproof” — she will, and she did on Wednesday. It just sounds a little different now, more like the “Discoproof” version she recorded with Chromeo in 2023.
“I’m tired of the original,” she explained. “[The remix] is more of a modern, disco-y take on the original, but it doesn’t lose anything that the original has. In fact, I would argue it feels more exciting than the original.”
Disco-fied or not, “Bulletproof” was a success on Wednesday, with the crowd scream-singing along to every word. Given the so-called indie sleaze revival that’s been sweeping the worlds of music and fashion, perhaps it’s no surprise that this nearly 16-year-old song still hits so hard, or that La Roux’s contemporaries are heading back out on the road this year. Sleigh Bells just released a new album, after all, and Rilo Kiley is reuniting for a tour after a more than decade-long hiatus.
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“For all the people that came out at that time, there was a huge change right after that happened. Musically, media-wise, everything changed. … And I don’t think really many of us knew how to adjust,” Jackson said. “Now we’re like, ‘Hang on a minute, we did know how to do this. Actually, I don’t really like much music that’s come out for 10 years. Maybe I should just do my thing again.’”
Just please, don’t go too hard with the aughts fashion throwbacks.
“I was in West Hollywood the other day and I saw this girl across the road wearing what I can only describe as that kind of classic Ed Hardy, Juicy Couture kind of look,” Jackson recalled. “And I was like, ‘That cannot be real. This cannot be happening. This cannot be f***ing happening.’ But it is happening! And it’s f***ing hilarious. I love it.”
