Written by Annie Barber.
Guernsey singer Empara Mi joins our call from the comfort of a hotel in the South of France, radiating a youthful joy from the second she picks up. As we chat about holidays and night life abroad, she is very upbeat, charming, and easy to get along with. I ask about her upcoming sophomore album, ‘Monsters & Masochists’, which comes 5 years after her debut album, ‘Suitcase Full of Sins’, which has had all of its tracks featured in TV shows or games.
The name of her latest album draws on the titles of two of its tracks, ‘The Monsters Interlude’ and ‘Masochist’. What made her pick it as the name for the album? “I had already written ‘Masochist’ but I hadn’t written ‘Monsters’ until after I came up with the name, so I wanted this sort of duality between the two. I mean, they’re not actually fully opposites of each other, but they are in a way. So I refer to them as like the twin sisters that don’t like each other, because one’s not truly good and one’s not truly evil,” she says laughing. “The word[s] masochist and masochism actually don’t sound that good or innocent, but in this context, it’s very much like a sort of self martyrdom thing where you are like, woe is me, you know, how is this happening to me again, in this very victim complex [way]… and then the monsters is obviously the opposite in terms of that’s the one doing the hurting. I mean, in plain speaking, monsters hurt people and masochists hurt themselves.”
The songs on the album deal with a range of topics, such as grief and transformation. I ask Empara Mi how she taps into your emotions when making music. “I feel like it happens straight away, I’m not gonna lie. Well, I feel like you never write unless you are inspired in some way… you very quickly know when you’re not feeling it and you just know nothing truly genuine is gonna come from that day, so that is why I tend to write alone… You can kinda reach a more deep space with yourself when people aren’t watching,” she admits. “I mean, I always have this one indicator, even if I’m writing a happy song, if like a little tear comes out of my eye when I’m writing. I know that I’m at least being honest!” I suggest that’s to do with her intuition and that she must have very strong emotions linked to it, to which she responds, “I am an emotional person!”
‘It Was Always You’ is a touching and beautiful song on the album which is about how her childhood sweetheart became her husband. I ask Empara Mi if she can take me through the process behind the making of that song in particular. “It was probably either the week of or the week after we got married. I was like very much in that lovey-dovey head space, which I’m not usually in when it comes to writing music. Really happy emotions don’t really inspire me that much, so with a song like that, it just felt right. I was in a great mood and I was like, he deserves a song, it’s fine!” She laughs. “The story of that song are true events… about him picking me up and I was going down to the beach and I was like, forcing him to tell me, I was like, ‘go on, just tell me you love me’ and he was like, ‘I can’t’. It was giving Rom-Com! We’ve known each other since we were like 12 and been very, very good friends our whole lives but it was one of those things where [we were] like, are we friends? Come on, let’s be honest, and we’d always deny it. I think I was walking back from a restaurant in Guernsey with my mum and she was just like, ‘okay, I’m literally doing an intervention. This is ridiculous. The fact that you and Tom are not together is so weird.’ I was like, ‘what Tom?’. That went on for years. So I do make a joke about that [in the song], which my mom loves.” Now that really is straight out of a Rom-Com.
The album includes orchestral arrangements recorded with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra which came about because her husband is a film composer. “I’ve had to sit there and watch him do all these incredible films and work with orchestras all the time and of course, I’m jelly wellies,” she laughs. “It was a very extra way of doing it and I brought my parents, which was quite sweet, and they were just so happy ‘cause I’ve been writing these songs for so long as well, so to see it live like that and sit in the room whilst they’re recording it and everything, that’s like a different experience. It adds a lot more than you realise. I mean, I obviously program lots of strings as well and that’s fine, but you can’t emulate the emotion people playing gives you… but yeah, it was a great experience and they’re such great players. My dream is that when I’m performing live, there is an opportunity to get an orchestra on stage at some point. I feel like the songs deserve an orchestra!”
Which song on the album is she most excited for fans to hear and why? “Well, it does change a lot. It was ‘Hurt Like Me’, but my current favourite is ‘Drag Me Back To Hell’ because it’s the last one. I finished it the night before it went live on TikTok, which was a couple of days ago and that was scary. I was sitting there at midnight like pressing the button and I was like, ‘oh my gosh, this needs to go up right now ’cause it’s about to go live on TikTok and you can’t take it back’!” She says that ‘Hurt Like Me’ and ‘Mercy’ also come to mind because she recently shot music videos for them. “We shot those two videos in one take – which is terrifying – and on film! ‘Hurt Like Me’ was one of those ones where I sat, I wanna say like four years ago, at a piano, by myself. I was working with somebody at the time and I sent it to her. She was just like, ‘I love this. This has to be the one, don’t forget about this one’. So I dug it out quite recently, ended up finishing the production, got an orchestra of course and I just loved how it feels quite eighties in a way. It sort of reminds me of that old school songwriting that I used to like.”
I turn next to visuals and the album concept, observing that the album cover is very other-worldly and like a fantasy novel cover. I ask why she went for that look and she says “I had mocked that up ages ago and I don’t know why I went down that route. I guess I was sort of going for the obvious monsters versus masochists, wanting to make the two worlds and have them almost fighting with each other.” She also mentions the iconography that she’s included on the cover: “I don’t if anybody can tell, I’ve got a sword in there, I’ve got the wings, I think I was meant to have snakes in a video, which is why there’s a snake. There is a flying pig in there because somebody said to me, which I won’t say who, something along the lines of ‘when pigs fly’, basically, saying it’s never gonna happen for you. They were quite an important person in the music industry, at the time, so that’s like a private joke to myself. I was like, it’s happening, it’s fine, I’m doing it! I have a fallen ballerina, which is a symbol of my former life, sort of like the downfall of my innocence as a child when I used to do ballet.” She talks about how she worked with a visual effects artist to bring her vision to life: “I was like, ‘make it fantasy, make it this, it should be like one of my favourite photographers, David LaChappelle’! So everything’s been very, very colourful and a little bit weird and sort of otherworldly.”
I refer to her visuals, particularly her music videos, as having a ‘dark fantasy aesthetic’ and she says “I love that!” So how does she come up with the ideas behind the videos and how does she bring them to life? “I started with ‘I Can’t’. I don’t know what I was thinking ‘cause I hate the sea and I was just like, ‘let’s do it in the ocean in December.’ I think that the styling and everything, I wanted it to feel [like] that dark fantasy thing with the horses and the black and the sort of witchy-esque look. I think I automatically sometimes do look like a witch ‘cause I’m very pale [and have] long black hair”, she laughs. “That was meant to be like the beginning of the journey of the album. So it was like me as like a sort of earthling and then symbolically at the end, it was the death of me or meant to symbolise me ending my life to go into the next chapter, [‘Masochist’], which is basically me arriving in hell… and being some sort of sword wielding demon. I mean, that was crazy because again, I’d just seen this one photo of somebody with a sword and I was like, ‘oh, that looks fun and I wanna do some, tricks with a sword or whatever’. So I started looking up YouTube tutorials and like random videos to try and teach myself ‘cause I already do martial arts and stuff… And I was like, ‘I’m sure it’s easy’. It’s not easy…” she laughs again.
“For ‘On Call For You’ I wanted it to feel like some sort of Greek orgy… we gave no instruction to the girls around us and before I know everyone’s making out, and I’m like, ‘oh fantastic’, because you can’t really ask people to do that, I guess!” She mentions that she had to cut the video several times and has issues sharing it on social media because of this. Having seen it on YouTube, I encourage everyone to give it a watch because it really encapsulates the tension and eroticism which is often found in Ancient Greek and Roman art. “‘Closer to Heaven’ was shot in exactly the same room and, again, we didn’t really have much choreography planned or anything. I just wanted that to be a symbol of me going up to heaven to be with my loved one. It’s fun to have these visuals. They’re not necessary, nobody has to do this stuff, but I just love feeling like that’s the other side of the story. I don’t think music is enough in itself. I love visuals. I love to like [add] the hidden meanings and the outfits. I find it really fun, so it’s a big part of what I’m doing.”
‘Monsters & Masochists’ is a conceptual album and the singles each mark a different chapter in the story. When I ask her why she decided to do that, she says “Wow, that’s a good question. I think I actually stopped doing that because there were so many chapters! I think they’re all part of a bigger thing, so it felt right to explain that different things that are happening here, but they’re all part of the same story and also they are chapters in my life. Everything I write about, in some way, has happened. Whether it’s an experience, an emotion, whatever. I’m always playing characters, but it all comes from truth. Every single song will be an exaggerated story that’s happened or a way that I’m spinning it so I don’t have to tell you exactly what’s happened. If I was to write an autobiography, these songs would make the cut, as in these stories would be what I would be talking about… all of these songs were written within the last five years, during those periods of my life [where] I went from what was the worst time of my life to the highest bits with getting married and these things don’t work together, the way that I was feeling during those different times but it is all true. It’s all happened so I might as well just like look at it like different chapters of my life and my story.”
I revisit the conversation around the album’s aesthetic, saying that the videos made me think of the concept of ‘world building’. I ask if it is important for her to create a visual world for her art to exist in? “I think so. I think it helps you stay a step away from yourself, which is why I’ve changed my artist name. You know, I have a different artist name to my human name. I need there to be a little bit of a separation, otherwise, I feel like you are always holding back a little bit. When [I was] younger… there was something about somebody calling my whole government name out for me to come on stage. There’s just some horrible imposter syndrome, like very existential moment you go into where you’re like, ‘this has to be me and everything I’m doing has to reflect my name, who I am, what everybody thinks of me’. When you have a different name, you just don’t care… You can put yourself into any character… I think it does help with imposter syndrome because if somebody doesn’t like your last project, they’re not saying they don’t like you, they’re saying they don’t like [the project].” It’s evident that having that separation not only helps with imposter syndrome but also allows Empara Mi to fully lean into her artistry and create her own universe to go alongside the music.
To finish off the interview, I ask the two staple Karma! questions. The first one is: if you or your art were a colour, what would it be? “I love how I immediately thought black, and I was remembering when people tell me it’s not actually a colour.” As someone who almost exclusively wears black clothes, I chime in and say that I think it definitely is a colour, to which she says “Yeah! I feel like it is black, but then I’m very into red at the moment. Yeah, I think red. I haven’t got any particular reason, obviously my brain just tells me blood,” she laughs. “But there’s something about red and I think there’s lots of symbols in that colour when it comes to folklore and all the stuff that I’m into. You always see the figure in red and it’s not necessarily evil – I don’t know what it is, but I like it!”
Lastly, I ask if she can give us a song recommendation to add to the Karma! Playlist? “Ooh. I was gonna say, when I wanna feel a little bit naughty, I listen to Tanerélle’s ‘Boys Like You’. That’s like the top of my car playlist. She’s a bit like The Weekend to me, she’s definitely a vibe.”
‘Monsters & Masochists’ is set for release on the 10th of October and is available to pre-save now. Trust me, it’s well worth a listen.
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