Do you remember the interview Good Prattle did with Laura Marling a few months ago? Well, Miz Marling is going strong and scarcely needs a successor, but it has been long enough since her first album that maybe her fans are getting restless... which is why I would like to introduce Emmy the Great. Her first album, First Love, was released in February and it contains some of the most beautifully lyrical songs you will ever have heard. Here I speak with her about the things going on in her head.Hey, this is Keely.
Oh, hi! Hi you!
How are you?
I’m good, thank you! How are you? Are you on [web-based phone service] Skype?
I am.
Oh, that’s the delay I'm hearing. Cool!
All right, let’s talk about your music. Your debut album came out in February, but you were making music for years before that. Why did you wait until now to release your first album?
Well, it wasn’t recorded until this year. When I first started that I was very naïve; I didn’t really have the experience to be making a record. I was very afraid. It took quite a lot of time and quite a lot of learning before I was in a place where I could make this record.
And in the past you’ve also collaborated with Noah and the Whale and other musicians, haven’t you?
Lightspeed Champion, mainly. As for Noah in the Whale, it’s complicated. It was very early in their development and we fell out before they became Noah and the Whale, as you know them now. So I’ve never been on any official recordings or played gigs while they were famous or—not at all.
All right. Well, your music has a very distinct sound and it focuses a lot on lyrics that aren’t necessarily about your life but seem to be drawn from it. How do you develop your songs?
Um, I usually… I get inspiration because I want to express something to someone. And I’m really inarticulate in person about my feelings. And I’ll wish I’d said something to a friend, or an ex-boyfriend [laughs], and I’ll go and I’ll write a song and it sort of releases it. Even if it doesn’t seem like it’s about that situation, the way I look at it is that it is.
You’ve got a wealth of material and you’ve penned so many songs; what made you choose the songs that you did for the album?
Well, it’s very much like—they belong together. The feel of them all works. I had felt it very deeply at the time: they were all about this one experience, pretty much, that I’d had, peppered with the countryside and England that I wanted to sing about, and the other songs just didn’t apply. There are plans to record those songs that people know about that haven’t been recorded and put them out.
Like ‘Two Steps Forward’, which you played in the Black Cab Sessions.
Yeah. Yeah, we never put that on the album because it doesn’t fit. To me an album has to be connected; that’s why that song will never be on the next album either, because they all have to match each other, all the songs.
On First Love there are a few songs that draw from older songs: the title song of course samples Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, and ‘The Easter Parade’ seems to be a riff on Patti Smith’s ‘Gloria’.
Actually, it’s not! ‘The Easter Parade’? That’s like a hymn, a Christmas carol: “Gloria, in excelsis deo.” That’s what that’s a ripoff of. Like, a loving ripoff. [laughs]
Well, the reason it seems like it plays homage to ‘Gloria’ is because of the line that’s along the lines of “Jesus died for everyone but not for me.”
Oh, I didn’t realize that was in the Patti Smith song! That line is more about wanting to be a Christian but not being able to because it just doesn’t speak to me. And that’s awesome that she has a line like that too. But when I first started I did write a song called ‘Gloria’ which was about the Patti Smith song, but this one is completely separate.
That’s interesting, because the opening line of the Patti Smith song is “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine.”
Oh my god! That’s really interesting! You know, I wrote that one song about that song and then I just completely forgot about it. I moved to a next phase in terms of what I listened to, and then I just didn’t think about it. And this song, I had no idea that it referenced—sometimes people find references in my songs that I didn’t know about, but if that’s what they think about while they hear it then it’s good that they have that reference.
Then there’s ‘Hallelujah’ on the song ‘First Love’.
Right. That’s not so much a homage as it is for the effect of the story. When I was writing the song I was like, “She goes to the room with this guy, and then there’s only a tape. And a tape player. What’s the most obvious tape that everybody would have in their tape player?” And I just thought of 'Hallelujah'! [laughs] And I thought people’d probably have the Jeff Buckley version, but I’ve gotta stick to… gotta represent the original.
In the song you mention that it was the original Leonard Cohen version.
Yeah. I changed it, because [laughs] I’m not gonna put the Jeff Buckley version in my song! Because I’ve got to nod to the greatest songwriter of all time.
I love him. In terms of that song, Leonard Cohen gets overlooked a lot. People always forget that it was his song.
His lyrics, I could just read them and listen to them every day and it still knocks me back, you know? There’s a purity in what he writes.
I love ‘Chelsea Hotel No. 2’. I think it’s one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.
I saw him a few times this summer and I fell in love with ‘Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye’, which is from the early really folky stuff, which I didn’t think I was that into… but oh my god, just the lyrics in that. “I see you on the other side / I don’t know how the river got this wide”… I was moved. [laughs]
I’m so jealous! I can’t believe that you saw him live.
He’s playing a lot of gigs!
Yeah, I know, I’m just in school so I can’t really plan around that—which is highly frustrating because I would give anything to see him live.
I highly recommend it! Before he stops playing, I would just go and see him. Because it was just such a once-in-a-lifetime thing—well, three times in a lifetime! [laughs]
He has this one song… I forget exactly what the song is called, I think ‘Little Viennese Waltz’, but it’s based off Federico Garcia Lorca’s poem ‘Little Viennese Waltz’.
Oh! ‘Take This Waltz’! Cool, I love that album. That album has some of the greatest lyrics.
I’m so glad he doesn’t disappoint live. Because some musicians, I mean… for example, I’ve heard that seeing Bob Dylan live—except for the fact that you’re seeing Dylan live—is a complete disappointment these days.
I’ve heard he just doesn’t have his voice anymore. I mean, he doesn’t have the greatest voice, but he just doesn’t have it anymore. He smoked too much. But Leonard Cohen is very chaste. He’s like a Buddhist, so.
[laughs] It means that we get to keep him around longer.
Yeah. I mean, I love Dylan too, but… in terms of songwriting there’s just nobody like Cohen. Romance as well... Leonard Cohen is so romantic.
For more about Emmy the Great, and to listen to some of her own lyrically and romantically exemplary music, visit her MySpace.
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