She's So Cool: A Love Study on Emily King

Photo courtesy of the Emily King Facebook page

Emily King is the coolest musician I’ve ever seen. Everything about her suggests that she shouldn’t be the coolest musician I’ve ever seen, and yet, her title remains as such. 

She trots onto the stage with her guitar in hand and settles her tiny body next to the microphone. A red rug is at her feet and two stools- one for her and one for Jeremy Most (another guitar and production GOD)- are on top of it. The stage is lit up with lone bulbs of orange and red colors, giving a warm living room’s feel to the entire theatre. She is dressed in all black and her pixie cut curls are gelled onto the side of her head. She has a habit of moving in jumps and twirls, as well as speaking in broken sentences and overly-exaggerated hand gestures. Her voice manages to sound lazy and excitable at the same time, and just two sentences into her first pre-song monologue, I could physically feel the moment the entire theatre simultaneously fell in love with her. 

As of early 2020, King has now been nominated for two Grammys, and has gone on multiple solo and supporting act tours, including opening Sara Bareilles’s Madison Square Garden show. Her soothing and electrifying R&B vocals have brought her massive well-deserved attention in the music industry, and her stage presence certainly doesn’t lag behind. After responding to some fun yelled out comments from the audience, and repeatedly thanking the audience for supporting her sold-out show, she began to play, and I immediately felt my soul clench. 

This particular tour, An Evening with Emily King: An Acoustic Tour, focuses around a reimagining of King’s most popular tracks, but acoustically this time around, in an album she’s titled Sides. She strips away any major production, and lets her voice remain raw and filled with emotion. The show functioned in a very similar manner, and it almost felt as if it were intentionally divided into layers, or sides, of who Emily King is as a person,  her personality transmitting itself onto her audience. Being the most emotionally-inducing performance I’ve ever attended, I scrambled to make sense of the major feelings and opinions I was experiencing, ultimately categorizing them into three major boxes- all circling around the theme of love, and just how much growth can come from simply loving. 

Love Music

Music and I share a very beautiful relationship. I turn to it whenever I need guidance, relatability, a hand to hold, or a good night out. Words have always failed me when it comes to describing the impact and importance I hold for songs and melodies; I could never really pinpoint the reason certain harmonies and dissonances made me tear up, ache, or want to fall in love. In her opening song, Emily King let me know that she understood this feeling, and was willing to carry the burden of putting it into words. Her track “Radio” flows in softly and surely through the speakers. It references various contradictions in beliefs. Basically: maybe I’ll never be able to fully believe in anything, but at least I’ve got music to keep me grounded. “If I had one religion, it would surely be a love song in the distance, a soft melody.” Ow. I imagine that music, especially music that is as carefully crafted and cared for as this was, can provide an experience that can only be measured up to by something like Sunday worship or a therapy session breakthrough. It was only the beginning of the show, but at this point, I had already given my soul over to this music. I sat back in my chair with my hand over my heart and tried to remember it all. I braced myself for the weight of the experience that was yet to come. 

Love Yourself 

An overwhelming amount of King’s songs focus around self-love and self-growth. Despite being an avid listener of all her releases, this fact somehow flew over my head, and I didn’t realize just how empowering a lot of her lines are until I heard her personally sing them out loud. Tracks such as “BYIMM,” “Look At Me Now,” and “Can’t Hold Me” bring almost playful moods that really encapsulate what it’s like to truly and deeply love yourself (often in a very, uh…literal…sense). King complemented her imagery-filled lyrics with a series of groovy dance moves, the dramatic reenactment of scenes for us, and constantly joking both in between and during the songs. She shared personal stories of heartbreak, redemption, embarrassment, and of course, the dreaded feeling of unexpectedly running into your ex in the middle of the street. The audience never once stopped laughing and whooping loudly at her remarks. Emily King, for about an hour and forty minutes, was our collective best friend. She provided the catharsis each person needed. Using her natural charisma, she was gonna get us all through the toughest of times.  

Love Complaining

I’ve always found it difficult to justify the ugly feelings. Everything about the world teaches us that it’s irrational and often downright incorrect to feel jealousy, narcissism, the urge to complain, and the feeling that we’ve been unjustly wronged. Because a lot of the subject matter of her songs focuses around the intensity of emotions, both positive and negative, Emily King made sure to walk us through her thought process, and gave a gentle reminder that it’s valid to feel certain emotions-- encouraged, even (especially in the music industry!). The most surprising part of the night came in the form of the artist’s vulnerability, as she opened up about her musical journey, and everything that led her to this moment. She explained that years before, she had played a restaurant in Boston shortly after being fired from her record label. She earned $75 and finished her set feeling extremely discouraged. On her way out of the building, however, she encountered a group of four teenagers, who explained that they had encountered her music on SoundCloud, burned it onto a CD, and came out for dinner specifically to watch her performance. This made her cry. She confided in us the magnitude of that moment, and how it had been a huge motivator in her career, pushing her to keep moving forward, and she would always keep Boston in a special place in her heart. We clapped, and in a shamelessly proud nod to her own song, she raised her arms above her head victoriously, and exclaimed“Look at us now!” 

The end of the show came in two parts. 

Part I

Remind Me

The first time I cried caught me by surprise. I’ve streamed “Remind Me” more times than I can possibly count, and figured I knew every hidden crevice of the song, every direction it could’ve possibly gone in. What I wasn’t prepared for, was the replacement of electric guitar with acoustic, the slowing down of the tempo, the lack of loud claps and drums, and the intimacy of knowing we were reaching the end of the entire concert. The song turned from a fan-favorite pop dance tune, to a declaration of finding a new beginning and learning to trust someone with your heart after being void of love for so long. “So long I didn’t know the difference, til you came around to remind me of what I’ve been missing.”

Part II

Sleepwalker 

The second time I cried, I felt it building inside me. King’s encore song, “Sleepwalker,” held less of an emotional toll for me personally, so I was hopeful that I might avoid walking out of the show a blubbering mess, and could just dance freely for a while. Naturally, I was wrong- in the best way possible. Before the melody could gain too much traction from the audience, she brought us back down to a lull, and gave us very specific instructions. In the end, I realize that in a way that’s only fitting for the ultimate acoustic haven, we switched from being mere audience members, to providing our very own backtrack. The theatre, now divided into three sections, was each given a melody of “oh’s” to repeat, with the center section  running through the lyric, “I gotta hold you.” Choruses and choruses of potent voices blended together, keeping time with our stomping feet and letting our arms flow around our bodies. King vocalized against our music, and the energy and happiness radiating off of everyone in the room was almost overwhelming.

As I regained composure and wiped the tears from my face just as the show ended. I took a look around the theatre and realized that this wasn't just an encore, this was a standing ovation. People weren’t rising from their seats just in hopes of an additional song or two. They were rising because they were in awe of Emily King’s performance and had to manifest it in some way or another. I had never experienced that. The applause was deafening, and the musician in question stood in the middle of the stage grinning widely and flailing her arms about excitedly. She took the mic and tried to yell back her gratitude to all of us, but we kept on clapping. My friend, who was nice enough to accompany me all the way to Somerville for the show, turned to me, and over the shouts of the audience, exclaimed, “You can’t fake a personality like that. You can’t fake talent like that. She’s so cool!” She was right. Emily King is the coolest musician I’ve ever seen.