Growing up in Guadalajara, Mexico, Elan began singing and playing guitar and piano at a very young age. When she was 15, Elan moved to California with her brother Jan Carlo Defan, where the two of them established Silverlight, a production company designed to capitalize on the emerging popularity of English-singing Latin artists. A former A&R rep for Warner Mexico, Defan was able to secure a distribution deal with the label in the U.S., as well as rope in some top-notch talent for Elan's debut. Ex-Guns n' Roses guitar slinger Slash, composer and arranger Eugenio Toussaint, and Cracker's David Lowery all contributed to the mature pop and rock of Street Child, which dropped in May 2003.