Elysia Brontë’s Instagram bio reads ‘attempting to see the whole world’, and at 21 she’s doing a good job of that. Through Minerva University’s innovative global experience undergraduate programme the indie pop and RnB singer-songwriter has already seen more of it than most young New Zealanders. Gently inspirational and self-revelatory lyrics have been Brontë’s diary through this life-changing experience.

Moving to New Zealand from the UK at age seven, Elysia Brontë first fell in love with music in her teen years. Attending Nelson’s Garin College, which boasts a strong music culture and well-known alumni such as Broods, played a key part in fostering this love.

“A lot of people were just so talented around me,” she says. “So I kind of got into performing then, and my ambition was to do journalism at the broadcasting school down in Christchurch. I spent like, five years working for MediaWorks and everything to try and get in.”

This changed in Brontë’s final school year when her health took a turn for the worse.
“I was putting a lot of pressure on myself with swimming. I was swimming for New Zealand, and then school and everything was getting a lot, so I sort of fell into a mix of depression and eating disorder. I ended up in hospital, inpatient for about two and a half months, and then I was outpatient for that rest of that year.”

The prospect of studying at a university which would involve travelling to eight different countries, provided a lifeline through this difficult time.
“I met someone who went to Minerva University – and then I got accepted for the broadcasting school! But I declined it so that I could go to Minerva in the end. The prospect of living in eight countries kept me going. I was like, ‘I have to get better so I can go.’ So I worked quite hard with that, and then I honestly was just songwriting, because it helped me.”

Listening to Brontë’s introspective yet uplifting lyrics, it’s no surprise that they come from a personal experience of healing, which fuels a desire to help others facing similar challenges.

“A lot of my music is about confronting societal norms, or finding beauty in the mundane and things like that. I do it to process and inspire others or help others get through those situations.”

This drive to contribute positively also inspired her chosen course of study, a double major in Law and Ethics and Political Science.

“I have this huge passion about breaking that societal silence around under-discussed topics, whether that’s eating disorders, PCOS, menopause. My capstone project is going to be a podcast where I’m discussing with different stakeholders and point experts about the societal silence around menopause and what women actually go through during that stage of life. Just because depression, and things like that, is a lot higher between those ages, and people are not being provided any support in the workplace. It’s a really big passion of mine to learn how governance works, and learn the ethics behind policy making, and then see if I could create change in the future with regards to that.”

In 2022, she moved to San Francisco to begin her studies.
“That was definitely a shock, just because of the amount of homelessness. In NZ there’s not a lot, especially in Nelson. You may see the odd person, but in San Francisco, it was absolutely surrounding us, and there was just like, drugs everywhere. That really threw me into what a city is and not some of the nicest aspects of it. But then we did a lot of projects with the university where we were seeing if we could reduce the amount of homelessness, or reduce the amount of chaos that there was in the city.

“I also had some really beautiful times in San Francisco. We went to Alcatraz and Angel Island. And we did gardening and volunteering, which was really beautiful.”

Getting to attend an Elton John concert was another San Fran highlight.
“It was amazing. My friend asked me two hours before. The tickets were like, $40 and we thought they would be terrible seats, but we had the best view! Bernie Taupin is my favourite songwriter.”

The next semester was spent in Seoul, South Korea.
“It was absolutely stunning,” she says of the city. “There’s so many different neighborhoods. They offer so much. There is so much in nature. I was part of a running club, and just met a lot of beautiful people, and got to learn about the culture, which was really lovely.”

While in Seoul, Brontë began working with Flambeau, a classmate who happens to be a reputable Afrobeat producer.
“He’s actually in my cohort at university, but we just didn’t speak in the first year. We had a public piano in South Korea in our residential hall, and I was just playing this song that I’d written, State of Mind, and he heard it, and he was like, ‘Wait, I want to turn this into something!’ And I was like, ‘Wait, really?!’ I obviously could play the piano enough to write the song, but I couldn’t do anything on GarageBand at the time, so he created this entire instrumental.”

State of Mind is a breezy RnB track addressing Brontë’s recovery journey and not conforming to societal norms. The day of its release she was in Europe, hiking the Camino de Santiago while on semester break.

“I had a radio interview as I was hiking. I think I had my mum’s phone and they called. It was somewhere in the middle of Spain, and it was a 30-kilometre day, I think. And I was just chatting with the UK radio station about this debut single! It was quite funny, because a lot of people were on that hike for similar reasons. They were working through something, or their children had gone through something, so they were sharing my music, saying they resonated with it.”

Following Seoul, Brontë spent a semester in Berlin, which proved advantageous due to its proximity to London.
“I kind of hopped back and forth between there and London. My mum was actually travelling, so she was there too, and her extended family as well.”

The next semester was spent in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a city that she has particularly fond memories of.
“I made really heartfelt connections, and was inspired for a lot of music. I joined a boxing club, and I met so many beautiful people that are my closest friends now. They taught me Spanish, and I learned so much about Argentinian music and bands and everything.”

Though a positive experience overall, Argentina didn’t come without its own form of culture shock.
“There’s homelessness, but they’re not gonna harm you in any way, and people support them, buy them things. In San Francisco, you wouldn’t walk down the street, because of drugs and things like that. But in Argentina, it felt a lot safer. The economy was really interesting, because prices would go up a lot every single day because of the inflation with the current government. Two years ago, you’d spend $5 on a meal, and now it’s like $19 or more.”

Through this colourful journey, Brontë continued to release singles. The latest of these, Casual Magic, was a collaboration with YouTube creator and Minerva graduate UnJaded Jade.

“She wrote a book that I bought when I was applying to this university, so I was quite obsessed! I was a big fan. I’ve always been so inspired by her, because her YouTube is very study focused and about finding the beauty in the mundane. It doesn’t have to just be these big things that happen in life, every single thing can be beautiful, and I love this message. I think I messaged her on Instagram, or emailed her and said, ‘Jade, I’m trying to do music. And I’m a really big fan!’ She was like, ‘Oh, would you want to collab and write a song about casual magic?’ And I was like, ‘Obviously!’”

When we talk in July Brontë is back home in Nelson, taking a break before embarking on her next university adventure, Taipei City, Taiwan, in September, to be followed by Tokyo in January. She is excited for this new phase while taking time to reflect on how her travels so far have already shaped her and her music.

“I see the world as so much bigger, and the smaller things that would have phased me and bothered me haven’t been so stressful. I’ve seen a lot, and I’ve been through a lot, so I think it’s a different sort of perspective, but it’s a beautiful one too.”