Ella Bleu Travolta Reveals Why Dad John Travolta Was 'a Huge Part' of Why She Started Recording Music (Exclusive)

When Ella Bleu Travolta first started writing music, she looked to dad John Travolta for advice.

Ahead of her forthcoming debut EP Colors of Love, which is set for release on Nov. 8, the singer-songwriter opened up to PEOPLE about her journey to music — and the role her famous dad played in it.

"At the beginning of the pandemic, I had a bunch of little voice notes on my phone of snippets of songs that I came up with or melodies. I play ukulele, and I write a lot on ukulele, so little ukulele songs [too]," Ella Bleu, 24, tells PEOPLE exclusively.

After writing a few, she decided she ought to show somebody and played them for her dad.

"He was like, 'Oh, wow, you should really finish these. You should finish these songs, and then, you could record demos of them or something,'" she recalls of their conversation.

"So I was like, 'Okay, well, I'll do that.' So then, I just started finishing songs," she adds. "It was just this gradient of how everything came up. But that was definitely a huge part of me wanting to really get into it even more, was just my dad."

Ella Bleu went on to record more songs and started showing them to more family members, including her 13-year-old brother Benjamin.

"I'll hear him humming it later," she says of Benjamin's reaction to her music. "They're so supportive and definitely a huge part of if I'm ever like, 'Okay, do I like this song? I always have them to get their opinions. And I value that a lot."

Ella Bleu also turns to the Grease star for industry advice.

"I run things by him a lot. He's a complete role model for me and one of the biggest things also that he does is he'll give me advice," she says. "The best advice that I've gotten obviously is from him, but he also really leaves it up to me, which I really appreciate. He very much so trusts me and my instincts."

And she acknowledges that it's a privilege to have been born into a famous family.

"I'm so fortunate to have been exposed to that from so young. And that definitely sparked my interest to want to do it," she says. "I'm really excited and trying to carve my own path and learn from my experience in my family and not take any of that for granted."

On Colors of Love, each song is "a different viewpoint on love, whether it's friends or uncertainty or unrequited love," she adds.

The last song she wrote, titled "Little Bird," is a tribute to her late mom Kelly Preston, who died at age 57 of breast cancer in 2020.

"It had been a couple of years since my mom's passing, so I could take a step back and see what I wanted to communicate," she says. "And I just wanted it to be as real and personal as possible."