Ellie Delvaux was born in Belgium, on 10 June 1999. She is Jewish and speaks French, English and Hebrew. As a child she liked to sing to herself. She later attended some musical theatre classes and took part in school performances. When she turned 16, she auditioned for The Voice. After Eurovision, she hoped to complete secondary school in Belgium. Her stage name, “Blanche”, is her third name.
In January 2016, Blanche auditioned for season five of The Voice Belgique performing Adele’s “Daydreamer”, with two of four coaches turning for her. She eventually chose to join team Cats on Trees. During the Duels, Blanche battled Charlotte Villers singing Radiohead’s “Creep”, and Blanche won the duel to make it through to the live shows. During the first live show, she performed Aurora’s “Running with the Wolves”. She was saved by the coach and progressed to the next round. In the next round, she performed “Runnin’ (Lose It All)”. She was not saved by her coach and was eliminated from the show.
On 22 November 2016, broadcaster Radio Télévision Belge de la Communauté Française (RTBF) announced that they had internally selected Blanche to represent Belgium in the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 in Kiev, Ukraine. Her song, “City Lights”, was supposed to have been released on 8 March 2017, but it was instead leaked the day before. When her song was announced she jumped to the second place in the betting odds but has later been lowered. It may be that the song “City Lights” is a plagiarism of another song “Eclats” from a Canadian singer Alexe Gaudreault, while Pierre Dumoulin, the author of the song, denies these claims, saying that “It is obvious that there are similarities in the melody as can be found in a hundred or even a thousand current melodies”.
Since Eurovision, Blanche has won a 2018 European Border Breakers Award, which recognizes emerging artists that have achieved success outside their home country. In Belgium, Blanche won Pop Artist of the Year and Revelation of the Year at French-Belgian broadcaster RTBF’s 2018 D6bels Music Awards and Hit of the Year (for “City Lights”) and Breakthrough Artist at the Flemish 2018 Music Industry Awards (MIA)
