La Roux singer Elly Jackson says she felt like an impostor singing “Bulletproof,” the single that made her a UK chart topper in 2009. Its confident account of surviving heartbreak felt distant from her life at the time. Seventeen years later, Jackson has described how that distance affected her performances and why she is only now beginning to recognise some of the confidence in the song.
The opening line of “Bulletproof” made Elly Jackson sound as though she knew exactly what she was doing. Looking back, the La Roux singer remembers feeling very differently. She was in love with her best friend, insecure about herself and still working out her sexuality. The person announcing that she had been through the cycle of heartbreak and come out ready for the next encounter sounded like someone Jackson might have liked to be.
The single reached No. 1 in Britain in 2009. Its success made the discrepancy something she would have to deal with regularly, as audiences wanted to hear the song and knew its chorus well enough to sing it back. Jackson describes it as the song that represents her least. In a recent interview, she said that delivering its confidence could make her feel like an impostor.
The word captures something specific about singing a record in public. Someone can put real energy into a performance and still feel unfamiliar with the person its lyrics suggest. For La Roux, the song became a public introduction at a time when Jackson was still developing her understanding of herself. She could deliver the part convincingly enough for an audience to recognise it, while finding it harder to recognise herself in it.
The history of the project also puts that moment in context. La Roux was then a duo, with Jackson working alongside Ben Langmaid before his departure in 2012. “In for the Kill” and “Bulletproof” established a sharp electronic pop sound and made the singer’s appearance part of how people encountered the music. The strength of that public image gave listeners a clear idea of the artist they thought they were meeting.
Remixes complicated the picture for a different reason. The original La Roux recording was already widely known, and the success of later versions kept it moving through clubs and other settings. Jackson has been sharply critical of versions that push the song towards EDM. Her objection concerns the impression they can create that this is the kind of music she wants to make herself.
That matters in part because the title of a remix still leads back to La Roux. A person who comes to the song through one of those versions may have heard it in a different musical context from the one in which Jackson made it. She said she would prefer producers in that scene to stop getting in touch about collaborations. The remark gives a concrete sense of where she wants to draw the line around her own work.
Jackson has been talking about the song while preparing to release material that reflects a different point in her life. She described feeling freer than she had before and ready to start from a happier place. Her comments about changing her appearance and sound belong to that account. She can make those choices with a better idea of what feels like her own than she had when “Bulletproof” first went out.
One example is the forthcoming single “Night Vision” and the choreography associated with it. Jackson said her partner joked that it brought to mind High School Musical. That detail gives a sense of the kind of play she is allowing herself. After years in which audiences have discussed her androgynous image, she spoke about the new work as a way to approach another side of herself.
The way she talks about labels follows a similar pattern. Elly Jackson has heard people use her appearance as a way to categorise her. In the interview, she was interested in how comfortable her current choices make her feel and how that changes what she wants to do in front of an audience. Her remarks leave room for that expression to keep developing as the music does.
For La Roux, the original “Bulletproof” will remain a part of the story. It is a recording people have made their own over 17 years, as listeners and as producers who have taken it in directions Jackson would rather avoid. The interview describes how it feels for her to live with that reception and keep making choices that come from her current interests.
The biggest change comes in how Jackson now hears the person in the lyrics. The early performance required her to project a certainty she did not recognise in herself. Her account today is more tentative than the lyric sounds. She says she may finally be starting to feel a little of what the character could announce so readily in 2009. That puts a different meaning behind a chorus she has had to sing many times in the years between.
