On the Rise
Emily King

The New Yorker has, for just shy of two decades now, been dealing in such. Her albums are crafted with R&B sensibility, soulful candour, and the kind of musical understanding that knows what it is to feel something.

This fact makes perfect sense. King was born to jazz singers, Marion Cowings and Kim Kalesti. She recalls watching them perform in clubs, including CBGB’s, as a formative moment. It was in these spaces she realised music could be an emotionally transcendent experience. “I remember seeing them singing these beautiful standards,” King starts. “I mean those American Songbook standards, they really know how to break your heart open. I remember watching people tear up and cry, and there was always this connection that could be made in a nightclub, and this vulnerability that could be felt in that space that you just didn't see happening in every other place.”

This early exposure to the wonders of music was pivotal for King. A rare offering that few get to experience, her career has been an endeavour to not waste this exposure. “I’ve always been a fan of songs, the way that you can express something in the most simple way that we can that evokes something in you when it's done right, it's pretty amazing,” she gushes.

King's fourth album is her strongest step yet into these personal offerings. An album that starts its journey embracing life and being self-accepting, it then begins to descend into the harsh reality of a relationship that is a fading light. Confessing that Special Occasion has been “the hardest for me,” for King delving into this confessional side was a difficult, but wholly rewarding, experience. She likens it to being a comedian. “They go on stage, and they cross the boundary of making a joke about their personal life,” she explains. “You might hurt somebody that's close to you, but it makes for the best joke. I was dealing with how much can I give away. I was being delicate because I was going through a relationship that meant a lot to me.”

There is a kinship between both comedians and songwriters. Both are excavating their lives for a natural human reaction. But where the former is doing so to turn sincerity into laughs, the latter, like King, are doing it to act as a lighthouse for others. Getting to this point involved facing the truth. “I always thought it was smoke and mirrors!” King joyfully exclaims in regards to if it’s surprised her how much she’s actually had to mine within herself. “I feel a responsibility to give more these days as a songwriter.”

Knowing there’s a difference between putting a song together with a formula or allowing the diaristic to come into play – both have their merits – the latter is something that can’t be concocted. “People relate more to a real-life situation,” reckons King. “It’s like you pass your friends on the street, and one of them is telling them their problems and the other one is trying to fix the problems, that's the relationship I have with the songs. We can get together and bond over these experiences that we all share in life.”

King’s musical understanding is rooted back in the jazz she grew up with – most pivotally, her parents and their kins improvisational methods. Likening it to having an unscripted musical “conversation in real time” with them when she would partake, it was at 15 she would begin to improvise her own songs on guitar and the cogs began turning for her move into becoming a songwriter.

As this exploration grew, eventually leading up to her debut, the R&B-soaked, Grammy-nominated East Side Story back in 2008, King began to understand her relationship with music more. East Side Story feels very of its time, with glittering, shimmering production that doesn’t quite hold the same evocative weight as her latter-day material. It’s something King herself notes. “I didn't do very well early on in my career when I tried to follow a trend,” she admits. “And tried to make music based on a concept of what you think is popular. I tried that when I was in my early 20s and it's not sustainable and it doesn't make for the best art.”

The eight years between her debut and its follow-up 2015’s The Switch found King touring with the likes of Nas, Alicia Keys, and Maroon 5. It also found her growing into a more self-assured prospect. Spending those years honing into a sound, eventually leading to her equally exploring pop and disco as much as she did R&B and soul, 2019’s Scenery offered up another new palette for King, one which was able to spotlight her expansive, expressive voice. The road to Special Occasion has been winding, but it’s all for the greater cause.

Music has been an essential part of helping King demystify her own inner workings. She mentions that it’s “the best way to get grounded again, in spirituality.” This is the burning heart of Special Occasion, even in its more sombre moments. She believes it’s “really healthy to tap into the music as much as possible, because life can be very cerebral, and you start overthinking things.

“I'm trying to figure out who I am in the world as a person,” she continues. “I find I write a lot of songs that I use as tools to give me the confidence to be a person in the world. Not because I have it, but because I need it. I'm trying to find it.”

For King, the basest level of this connection is her singing into a voice memo. No pretence, or overthinking, just raw, unbridled thoughts. “I used to think, ‘Oh, I’ve got to sit down and play a guitar and write a song on guitar’,” she says. “But more and more, I like the instantaneous, let me just say exactly how I'm feeling as if I'm talking to you.” It may even come with her simply beating on her chest, or humming a bassline. “At that moment I just want to be as free as I can, and then I'll listen back to what I did, and try to make sense out of it, and then build from there.”

With all the personal connection – attaching parts of yourself to music which is, ultimately, sent off into the world to be dissected and judged – comes a dalliance with how hard that reception hits and how much you pay mind to it. “I'd be lying if I said I wasn't aware of people's favourite songs,” she chuckles. “Sometimes you get in a low – do I have to just write a song like that again, or something? But there's an advantage to being able to tune out things around you, which I think I learned growing up in New York City, that's sort of a tool that you acquire when you're in the subway, or you're in crowded with people or in sort of dense situations. You also learn it when you're starting out and you're playing a loud club, and nobody's listening to you. There's this ability to focus on the task at hand.”

This is all King is focused on now and has been for what can conceivably be called the second half of her career. “I understand the long-lasting. It's the difference between eating the doughnut and feeling like shit, or doing what you know is better for you – [but] I do love doughnuts! Don’t get me wrong,” she laughs. “But I think now the achievement, the idea of success, and achievement, for me, is, can I just be happy with what I did on this earth? Like, can I just feel good that I was honest in this creative moment, and that I did my best?” And for King in 2023, the answer is simple: “Yes, absolutely.”