Emlyn

One Liner:  Aggressively empowering pop from a gal who is not taking your crap anymore

Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia - pop and angry pop

Home: Nashville/L.A.

Poster Position: Level 5 (26) 
Weekend Two Only.
Friday.

Thoughts:  Emlyn was an ancient district in Wales, and the name derives from some of the jacked up Welsh language bits - "am (around, on both sides of) and glyn (valley)" - so this singer is on both sides of a valley.  Also, if you can't tell by now, she is not on Wikipedia.  

Her label biography states that she was a songwriter first, and then lists seven artists I have never heard of as her super important co-writing credits.  You know, Kiiara!  And Rachel Crow!  She grew up in Nashville and started writing songs with her session musician dad, before moving to New York for university.  After graduation, she moved to L.A. and started performing as well as writing.  It sounds like her debut album came from a place of pain after a hard breakup, and boy can you hear it.

She has some soft tunes, but overall this is very in-your-face pop.  An article I read called this "grunge-tinged," but it is more like P!nk-rock-tinged.  "rapunzel" makes me think of Katy Perry with an anger issue.  In fact, the more I think about the listening experience of all of these songs, it seems like she is very much in an aggressive stance in almost all of these songs.  "I'LL FUCK UP YOUR LIFE!" and "I'M NOT A PRINCESS I'M A MOTHERFUCKING QUEEN!" and "ANYTHING YOU CAN DO I CAN DO BADDER!" and "I'M NOT GONNA BE YOUR PLAN Z!" and "YOU MAKE A WOMAN WANNA MURDER A MAN!" She claims Taylor Swift as an influence, but other than using the word "karma" in a song, I don't hear that at all.

Top track is from her debut album loneliest b!tch in america, "god sent me as karma," with 17.1 million streams.

Really weird movie references in that chorus.  "John Tucker Must Die," a terrible 2006 romantic comedy with a 27% rotten tomatoes score makes the chorus for reasons that I do not understand.  Took me multiple tries to understand what she was yelling there, but once I figured it out I was no less confused.

The other top song is also from that new 2022 album - "rapunzel."  14 million streams.

It is all so grating.  Like, I can appreciate the catchiness of the chorus and the clever wordplay going on, but also it is so hard-edged the whole time that is just puts me on edge.  This would be really hard to just listen to while hanging out - it feels like you have to be working out at the kickboxing gym while this is playing.  I would not go see this one.