Rising Star
Photo by Victor Hilitski
Ellie Banke’s journey from small stage to stadium tour
Downers Grove-based singer-songwriter Ellie Banke has held Ed Sheeran as her “greatest inspiration” since she was 12 years old and saw him open for Taylor Swift at Soldier Field. Banke is about to have a “full circle” experience. On June 27, she will perform her original music in front of thousands at none other than Soldier Field, opening for Sheeran at his Loop Tour’s Chicago show. Banke is also scheduled to perform at Sheeran’s Minneapolis concert in August.
Ellie Banke and Ed Sheeran in London after filming content and singing together.
The Viral Video that Created a Cross-Continental Connection
A series of small steps and big breaks led Banke to the opportunity to open for her idol. She graduated from Downers Grove North High School in 2019 but took a gap year turned “gap life.” Instead of attending college, she was teaching voice lessons and posting videos of herself singing on social media. “I was focusing more on covers, still feeling a little unsure of myself,” Banke explained.
However, she had loved writing songs since she was a child, so she pushed herself out of her comfort zone, posting her original music. “People loved it,” she recounted, including vocal coach Sheryl Porter. In Nov. 2024, as a guest on Porter’s livestream, Banke recorded a cover of Ed Sheeran’s “Dive.” Months later, that video went viral. Among the millions who saw it was Sheeran himself. He commented, “She’s good.”
“It was like striking gold,” Banke said of receiving Sheeran’s comment. She responded to him, stating how much his compliment meant to her, and — half-jokingly — inviting him to come sing with her if he was ever in Chicago. “By the end of the day, Ed responded,” Banke said. “His team reached out to me a couple of days later and planned to fly my family and me to London.”
Banke met and sang with Sheeran in London last May. “Our voices just sounded so good together,” she said. “It was the most magical moment.”
For Ellie Banke’s 18th birthday, her sister Belle took her to see Ed Sheeran’s Divide Tour at Miller Park in Milwaukee. At this concert, Belle bought Ellie the jean jacket Ellie wore when she met Sheeran in London last May, and in the cover art for her cover of Sheeran’s hit song, “Dive.”
Sheeran treated Banke “like an equal the whole time,” she said, but that didn’t prevent her from having “a lot of performance anxiety” when he called her up to sing “Dive” with him at a pub during an afterparty for U2.
She gave herself a pep talk, however, and ended up singing like never before. “There are times as an artist where you are truly locked into something,” Banke said, and her duet with Sheeran in that pub was one of those moments. “I felt like my soul was flying above me.”
Afterward, Banke was “freaking out.” The Edge, U2’s guitarist, noticed, grabbed her hands, looked her in the eyes, and the two simply breathed together, bringing Banke “back down to earth again,” she shared.
That night wasn’t the end of Banke’s contact with Sheeran. She had given him a flash drive with some of her original songs. He told her he enjoyed her music and encouraged her to keep writing. He even said her song “Starlight” gave him a “good proper cry,” Banke recalled.
The two artists stayed in touch, and Sheeran ultimately offered for Banke to be a guest performer at a couple of the Midwest stops on his tour this summer.
An Album of Her Own
Opening for Sheeran is a 2026 highlight for Banke, but it’s not the only one. She also plans to release her debut album, Starlight, in August. Starlight and its namesake song, which is the outro on the album, are tributes to Banke’s late father. He had a connective tissue disease and died after complications from a surgery before Banke turned 2.
The “Starlight” title was inspired by her dad’s habit of “going outside in the dead of winter to look through the telescope at 2 a.m. – peak viewing time,” she explained. “Later, when I looked through his telescope, I felt like I could peer into the heavens and maybe catch a glimpse of him.”
“Starlight” is a “kind of melancholy lullaby” about that telescope eventually being given away, Banke explained. “I felt like I lost another little piece of my dad.”
Still, Banke feels a strong connection to her father based on the stories she has heard and the recordings he made for her and her older sister, Belle. “A couple of days before he passed, he recorded a bedtime story for us called I Love You as Much,” Banke said. “The outro [“Starlight”] is from the VHS tape he recorded, and I get to immortalize my dad and his voice with this song.”
Another single from Starlight also grew out of a video from Banke’s father. It featured her as a toddler learning to walk. In the background, her dad can be heard saying, “She’s persistent, she’s tenacious, and I hope that’s a quality you never lose.”
These words inspired “Tenacity,” a song about Banke’s connection with her dad and about her tenacity as she moves through life. “The song just flowed out of me,” Banke said.
While Starlight “starts and ends with him,” Banke said of her father, the first single she released from it is about platonic love and loss. Titled “Her,” the song, released in April, “is kind of like writing a letter and then burning it,” Banke said. “It’s an ‘I miss you; I’ll never stop caring about you, because you were awesome.’”
Future Focus
Although Banke is looking ahead to her career beyond this summer’s milestone moments, she wants to be fully present in this current chapter. She has done a lot of therapy to date, and her current goal is to take care of herself – physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
“I’m not banking everything on these shows,” Banke said. “I’m going to take the pressure off myself and allow myself to just do what I’m capable of doing.”
Ellie Banke with her sister Belle at Ed Sheeran’s Divide Tour at Miller Park in Milwaukee.
Ten years after Ellie Banke performed “Photograph” by Ed Sheeran at DGN’s 2015 homecoming assembly, she returned to her alma mater and sang Sheeran’s “Dive” and her then unreleased original single, “Tenacity.”
As part of DGN’s drumline, Ellie Banke performed in the 2016 Thanksgiving parade at Walt Disney World in Orlando.
Ellie Banke performs in the lead role, Belle, in DGN’s musical production of Beauty and the Beast during her senior year.
