Elijah Woods: Are You Listening?

Years into his career as a soloist, the Ontario-born singer-songwriter steps forward with his debut album, Can We Talk?.

By Cam Delisle

Published on October 16, 2025

Elijah Woods is the kind of artist that you’ve heard but haven’t met yet. He’s penned tracks for others, crashed TikTok open-verse challenges, and, over the years, built a sound that balances honesty with crisp instrumentation. Can We Talk? is his official debut—though calling it that feels slightly offensive. This isn’t a “first step” for him, it’s more like a formal introduction. The kind of record you make once you’ve played the game long enough to know which rules are worth ignoring. You know his voice already, even if you don’t know why. Now, he’s betting you’ll want to hear what it actually sounds like.

“Ghost On The Radio,” the lead single from Can We Talk?, straddles the line between acoustic balladry and slick, minimalist, trap-pop production. It alludes to the impassioned tone of the album without trying too hard—like overhearing a late-night call through a closed bedroom door. Woods calls the phrase “sticky,” and he’s not wrong. It wasn’t his idea, but when collaborator Michael Matosic pitched it, Elijah couldn’t let it go. “I’ve had so many relationships in my life that aren’t present anymore, but I’ll have all of these songs that I’ve written about them, and I can hear their voices when I listen to those songs.” In that tension between past and present, the album finds its center.

Like “Ghost On The Radio,” Woods keeps coming back to another track on the album—“Cutting The Grass.” “That song was the biggest tipping point for me with this album… We came up with this concept and it really summarized how I was feeling at that time in my life,” he says, underscoring the track’s importance in shaping the record. “The lyric is ‘Am I cutting the grass just to watch it grow?’ It felt like this perpetual summary of the last few years of my life sort of, and as I wrote that song, it was like I had pulled on a thread that led to me finishing the album in the next couple weeks.”

Talking to Woods, it’s obvious he’s cut out for songwriting. He’s articulate without being rehearsed, measured but never dull, with a dry humour that surfaces just often enough to undercut any chance of taking himself too seriously. He wrote close to 150 songs for the record—most left behind, with just 11 surviving the purge. “I don’t have kids but I imagine it’s like picking favourites. You’re like, little Jimmy is my favourite because he woke up this morning and made his bed. And then you look at him the next day and you’re like, Jimmy’s actually a bit of a little shit,” he laughs.

The album is very much Elijah’s, but it’s far from a solo endeavour. His wife, whom he recently married, was a vital presence in the process. “She has, I think, four or five writing credits on the album,” he says. “She’s not a trained songwriter or anything, but she’s just a wicked lyricist.” More than just a co-writer, she’s the first person he trusts to navigate the messiness of his ideas. “I bounce so many of my ideas off of her… without her and people like that, it’s impossible to see through the fog of your own creativity sometimes.” There’s a different kind of clarity that comes from working with someone who knows you beyond the music—someone who can read between the lines without needing a map.

Woods’s ideal session sounds less like a studio appointment and more like an episode of MTV Cribs: “Come to the house, we’ll hang out, maybe have a swim,” he offers, as if songwriting and pool time are just natural bedfellows. The goal isn’t some manic search for perfection, but to catch the song mid-drift, “get it down in the most basic concept,” and then let it do its own thing. There’s an informal magic in that nonchalance, a refusal to cage the muse behind deadlines or pressure. “The best songs I’ve been a part of,” he says, “are oftentimes the most nonchalant and the most casual,” as if great art isn’t forged in the fire but found in the laziest moments—when you’re not even trying.

Can We Talk? is exactly that: an invitation wrapped in a half-asked question, the kind you toss out knowing full well the answer might be “not really.” Woods slides the door open just a crack—enough for you to step in, maybe catch a glimpse, but no promises about what you’ll find. The album doesn’t shout or explain; it whispers under its breath, like a conversation that’s both familiar and a little uncomfortable, where the pauses matter just as much as the words. If you come ready to talk, great. If not, well, that’s part of the point.