Shellesha

"Shellesha" is a commonly used portmanteau describing the songwriting partnership between British recording artists Alesha and Shell Ruin, one of the best-known and most successful musical collaborations in recent pop history. Between 2007 and 2010, Alesha and Shell Ruin collaborated on writing and producing dozens of hit singles for themselves as well as artists like Emily Henning and Jack Stevens.

Alesha initially contributed to Ruin's second and third studio albums Kill Pop and The Dirty Is Done in 2007. The pair collaborated on the "Power Power" EP the same year, sharing songwriting credits for the first time. Ruin later contributed five songs to Alesha's fifth studio album The Second Is Coming (2008), whie the pair co-wrote "Smoking Gun (Fuckery)." Unlike many songwriting partnerships that comprise separate lyricist and composer, both Alesha and Ruin wrote words and music. Sometimes, especially early on, they would collaborate extensively when writing songs, working "eyeball to eyeball". Later, it became more common for one of the two credited authors to write most of a song with limited input from the other.

With Alesha's Bigger Than God and Ruin's Never Stop (both 2009), the pair's writing partnership became even more collaborative as they shared numerous credits. That year, they collaborated extensively to write and produce Emily Henning's third studio album Only Human (2009) in its entirety. The album spawned the number one hits "Folie de l'Amour", "Strike", "Crash and Burn" and "Heaven's Grace". Other famous "Shellesha" collaborations that were neither recorded by Alesha nor Shell Ruin include Jack Stevens' number one single "The Siren's Call". Both members of the songwriting team have also written and produced many tracks individually.

In 2015, Alesha and Ruin collaborated for the first time since 2010, co-producing Ruin's comeback album Play.