Interview with Emma Rose

I was at a Waldorf school, where creativity is especially encouraged. I really, really liked singing and also did a lot of theater. At 13 years old, I participated in the project "Jugendsongs" at the Ruhrtriennale, where you could write and record your own songs with a producer. However, I never dared to dream this dream of really becoming a musician. That came more from other people who saw that in me. Still, I kept uploading covers on Instagram. During Corona, I then thought: Okay, I want to study music. However, the preparatory year in Arnhem was my least creative year so far; only the singing teachers helped me move forward.

I found it totally funny, for example, to interpret pieces by Moneyboy as a ballad when a delicate female voice sings something like: “Fuck your mother, you son of a whore.” The people from Cornelia Records sent me to many sessions. Sometimes I only have producers by my side who design a sound for one of my pieces, but sometimes there are also other songwriters involved. In the past, I wrote in English because I thought it sounded better. I had to find my language first. Now I write in German. I was very honest with the label from the beginning, I didn’t even know how to approach making music. But they just said: We’ll send you to the studio with people, completely without specifications. That’s good because I find it terrible when people have “visions” for me.

I want to go to the place where it hurts, where it can also be uncomfortable. Music is also like a valve. There I say things that I wish I could scream into the world more often. Actually, I am a nice, polite person. But in my music, I show a side that only my closest friends and family get to see. Sometimes it worries me that many people might hear it soon, but it’s like an urge: It has to come out.