Emzae holds on to hope in her melancholic pop song ‘I Guess, Anyway’

Alter­na­tive pop artist Emzae is wrestling with life’s great expec­ta­tions on her relat­able new sin­gle ‘I Guess, Anyway’.

Fad­ing dreams and the uncer­tain­ty of this chaot­ic mod­ern age, par­tic­u­lar­ly for young peo­ple, is what she sings of in this rolling, six-minute hit of melan­choly pop.

‘I Guess, Any­way’ is the first sin­gle from the Der­by artist’s forth­com­ing debut album, All Those Things I Thought I Knew, which she wrote and pro­duced her­self, and will release on her own label lat­er this year.

“I want­ed to write a big bal­lad as a cen­tre­piece for the album. Some­thing that con­veyed every­thing I was feel­ing as a woman in her mid-late 20s, try­ing to nav­i­gate this messed up world we find our­selves in,” said Emzae about her new single.

“I hope it might con­nect with any­one who thought they knew where they were head­ing and grew up being told any­thing was pos­si­ble for them, but now find them­selves ques­tion­ing it all.”

We’ve been fol­low­ing Emzae’s music since her ear­ly releas­es. She is a spir­it­ed Der­by girl and a fre­quent evan­ge­list of her fel­low cre­atives in the Mid­lands. Tak­ing inspi­ra­tion from the likes of Fiona Apple and Lana Del Rey, there is melan­choly to her music but there is also determination.

Like many unsigned and inde­pen­dent artists, she has made an effort to con­nect with estab­lished labels and pro­fes­sion­als, but has found it tough to catch a break.

Speak­ing about her deci­sion to con­tin­ue cre­at­ing music as an inde­pen­dent artist, she told Fringe Fre­quen­cy: “I start­ed off inde­pen­dent because I had no con­tacts or clue about the music indus­try. Ini­tial­ly, I dreamt of a label get­ting in touch, but the more I learnt about the way things work, and the more I dis­cov­ered who I was as an artist and the things I val­ued and enjoyed, the more it made sense for me to con­tin­ue down the inde­pen­dent route.

“There are down­sides to every­thing – one of them is that I am cur­rent­ly a one-woman team doing far too much on my own – but it’s also incred­i­bly reward­ing this way.

‘I Guess, Any­way’ is out now on stream­ing ser­vices. A music video, filmed with help from her fel­low artist and cre­ative assis­tant Madi­son Fioren­za, will be released on April 14. 

All Those Things I Thought I Knew is due to be released on Sep­tem­ber 1 on Zir­co­nia Records. Lim­it­ed edi­tion vinyl is avail­able to pur­chase on Emzae’s web­site.

You can fol­low Emzae on Insta­gram, Face­book and Twit­ter – where she likes to share snip­pets of her cre­ative process and her love of Eas­t­en­ders.

Image: Madi­son Fiorenza

Tags: Alternative music, Derby musicians, Emzae, Featured, Music singles, UK music