Breaking Up With Emmy the Great
A decade of gigs, grief, and growing up
On April 22nd 2023, Emma-Lee Moss played what would be her final gig as Emmy the Great. The evening was one of celebration and closure, as Moss retired the name she had performed under since 2006. On a stage decorated with daffodils, Emmy worked her way through songs full of wit and heartbreak, songs I’d played on repeat. The show wasn’t just a farewell to Emmy the Great as we knew her, but to the messy twenties she had soundtracked and counselled us through.
For the uninitiated: Emmy the Great, aka Emma-Lee Moss, was a singer-songwriter who rose to cult status in the world of anti-folk in the 2000s. Her lyrics playfully combined devastation with an arched eyebrow as she playfully tackled a variety of romantic disasters with autobiographical authority and allusions to pop culture, theology, and Greek myth. For every break-up there was the perfect song to accompany you through it. She was the smarter friend who had been through it all before.
Older, wiser, and with better music taste, my friend Kat was the real-life smarter friend who introduced me to Emmy. For us, Emmy was more than background music; she was a shared language and for a decade our friendship and her music felt inextricably linked. We felt genuinely aggrieved if ever she didn’t top our Spotify Unwrapped and her gigs were essential cornerstones of our calendars. Emmy the Great’s songs got us through breakups, flatshares, night bus rides, and jobs that didn’t deserve us.
We saw her live whenever we could, the first being at Oslo in Hackney where her brother played in her band. The show featured an evolved sound from the two albums Kat had trained me on and I was hooked on the dreamlike quality of songs that included electronic elements and ambient textures. A year and two gigs later and we were just across the road in Paper Dress Vintage, a tiny performance space in a dress shop on one of the hottest days of the year. Emmy had to walk through the cramped crowd to reach the stage, sweat was flowing, and my shirt changed colour entirely. It was uncomfortable, chaotic, and magical. From there, it became clear that every Emmy gig would be completely different; one year synths and loops, the next an acoustic set of old favourites.
Flash forward a few years and we were in the Purcell Room at the Southbank Centre in 2018. Kat’s phone was resolutely not in Flight mode as this marked her first evening out since giving birth and she remained on high alert. (Don’t worry, Emmy gave her official dispensation via Twitter to leave in case of emergency.) Her son and husband joined us for dinner before the family reluctantly went their separate ways. The show that night was another departure from the norm: a blend of songs and storytelling as Emmy explored the concept of destiny. Through soundscapes and music she told a story that spanned continents and told of how she embraced fate and found love after giving up on it. Just as her audiences lives were moving on, so was hers.
By the time we next saw Emmy in 2019 she had her own baby and was learning to master touring with a 5 month old. This tour wasn’t to support a new release but to celebrate the tenth anniversary of her first album, First Love. The gig at Union Chapel was spectacular in scale and setting but no less intimate. Everyone in the room seemed to be clinging to the past. The album was written by someone at an entirely different stage in their life, and we weren’t who we were when we first found solace in it either.
And then came the pandemic. I was starved of live performances with the only theatrical offering being Alan Bennett monologues at the Bridge Theatre. In October 2020, Emmy held a show at the Barbican focussed on her fourth, and ultimately final, album April / 月音. The show was socially distanced and I had to go alone; Kat couldn’t take the risk. It felt surreal to be sat in the vastness of the Barbican’s Concert Hall with nobody allowed within two meters of me. Once the music started, I was transported out of the isolation of the pandemic and onto somewhere more hopeful. This album continued Emmy’s exploration of the theme of destiny and the uncertainty of the future. Coming at a time when I couldn’t safely meet my friend for a performance by our favourite artist, this felt appropriate.
It was another two years before Emmy, Kat, and I could reunite. This time at Saint Matthias Church in the spring of 2022. There were no new songs, no promises of new releases, instead a series of shows dedicated to each album. Across three evenings, Emmy revisited each of her four albums: the lo-fi heartache of First Love, the spiritual exploration of Virtue, the experimental dream-pop of Second Love, and the bilingual hope of April / 月音. Each album was a snapshot of Emmy, and of us, at a different moment in our lives. At a church in Stoke Newington, old favourites were dusted off and given an airing for the gathered faithful. Thanks to Kat’s church connections, we got a reserved pew near the front and a free drink from the trestle table at the back. It pays to know the boss when gigging on hallowed ground.
Less than a year later and it was all coming to an end. When Emmy played that final show at Shoreditch Town Hall in 2023, it wasn’t just to say goodbye to a stage name. It was all of us collectively drawing a line in the sand. Over the years the gigs had become increasingly retrospective; the shows the previous year having been a final airing of the complete Emmy the Great. And now the curtain was coming down for real as Emma-Lee Moss let go of Emmy the Great so she could move forward.
And so too could we. Emmy’s music was nostalgic for all the moments it became entwined with. Hers was the LP I had tucked under my arm when my night bus terminated early and I had to walk a few miles home in the small hours. She was the artist who would reply to us on Twitter and repost us on Instagram. Hers was the music we would listen to after a teary lunch in the snow, in Soho Square. Hers were the gigs that got us out of the house for the first time after a life-changing event kept us housebound.
Our Spotify Unwrapped might have moved on but we’ll always have a decade of evenings spent in sweaty attics in heatwaves and churches at sunset. We can’t get lost in nostalgia, but it’s nice to visit every now and then. With the end of Emmy the Great, we no longer feel the need to live in the drama of those memories, repeatedly relistening to our favourite trauma tracks. Emma-Lee Moss has set us free.
I'm gonna sing a heart sutra
To rid myself of all my lovers
And I'm gonna walk out of here
All open and clearHeart Sutra by Emmy the Great (from April / 月音, 2020)
Brilliant tribute 🥹
Wonderful read, some of my best memories are thanks to Emma. 🧡