EMMMA is mastering the art of saying no

Through her astute observational songwriting, EMMMA is stepping out from the shadow of her past and re-casting herself in a newly independent light. This new found confidence through the medium of pop, however, has been in the making for over a decade.

Whilst Ruchefsky studied pop songwriting at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, her earliest memories of music all centre around classical genres. There is an impressive musical heritage in her family. Her late grandmother was an operatic voice teacher in Chicago, her grandfather was a choir director and classical music radio host and her mother was an Juilliard-educated opera singer. Around the house, Ruchefsky says her parents would play mostly classical and baroque jazz, but she remembers hearing the sounds of songwriters like Norah Jones, ENYA, Carol King, James Taylor and Joni Mitchell too.

With this rich musical inheritance, it’s unsurprising then, that at age four, Ruchefsky began learning to play the violin, but decided to switch to the piano instead a year later. “I famously told my mother – who will never let me live this down – that I wanted to switch because the violin was ‘too in’ and I wanted to be ‘out’,” she recalls, laughing at her precociousness. When she hit her sixth year, inspired by seeing her mother perform on stage, the young artist also began taking voice lessons and attending musical theatre classes.

For most of her childhood, Ruchefsky didn’t listen to contemporary music, but she remembers one of the first pop songs she added to her iPod - Rihanna’s “Take A Bow”. She laughs as she dubs it a “scandalous moment” for her teenage self. That same year, she began writing her own pop songs, initially just as a past-time to help her process her emotions. Fast forward six years, and her mother actively encouraged her to pursue pop songwriting full-time at Berklee. “She gently nudged me in that direction. I’m really, really glad I didn’t go to school for musical theatre. I’m so happy my calling was songwriting. It worked out really well in the end.”

Things may sound like they have been straightforward for the songwriter, but her new project EMMMA was born years learning how to block out the external voices that undermined her true desire to create the alt-pop that she is now so deeply proud of. “For a very long time I was anti-pop,” she shares, laughing at the embarrassment of rejecting the genre for a period of time during her later teenage years. “I thought that made me cool, but it does not make you cool. I was like ‘I’ll only listen to indie-folk or classic rock.’” She speaks passionately about her enduring adoration for Bon Iver’s music as a high school student, but this love has since extended into pop music too. “Good pop music, done right, can reach millions of people in a way that other music can’t. I think that’s why all of our favourite pop girlies are doing really well right now. Pop, it’s not a genre, it’s just what’s popular. There’s no need to be scared of pop!”

Initially, the songwriter explored her poppier tendencies by releasing music as Emma Ruchefsky. Whilst she is proud of her previous creations, she admits that she struggled with the demands of self promotion on social media. “I don’t feel comfortable selling myself to a camera. I think that was kind of the detriment of that project, me not being super willing to be a self promoter.” She remembers being fatigued by the process, with friends often telling her that she looked visibly unhappy in the videos she posted. This, and other factors, made the artist want to transition into a different project. “For so long I was like ‘okay, I’ll write music for me, but I’ll also write music for TikTok or music that could go viral.’”, she shares, reflecting on her previous output. “But that’s not going to be the music that withstands the test of time. It’s going to be the music that you love to sing. Everything I’m releasing [as EMMMA], I’m really excited to sing live. I can’t wait to perform it and that means a lot to me.”

Initially, the songwriter explored her poppier tendencies by releasing music as Emma Charles. Whilst she is proud of her previous creations, she admits that she struggled with the demands of self promotion on social media. “I don’t feel comfortable selling myself to a camera. I think that was kind of the detriment of that project, me not being super willing to be a self promoter.” She remembers being fatigued by the process, with friends often telling her that she looked visibly unhappy in the videos she posted. This, and other factors, made the artist want to transition into a different project. “For so long I was like ‘okay, I’ll write music for me, but I’ll also write music for TikTok or music that could go viral.’”, she shares, reflecting on her previous output. “But that’s not going to be the music that withstands the test of time. It’s going to be the music that you love to sing. Everything I’m releasing [as EMMMA], I’m really excited to sing live. I can’t wait to perform it and that means a lot to me.”

These extensive reflections have led to the creation of EMMMA’s four track debut EP, Secondary Character. On the record – a collaboration with producers Doug Schadt and Emily Haber – Ruchefsky faces up to the detrimental impact of conforming or behaving in a way that is deemed “good” or “right”, which she details on the EP’s opening track “Playing It Safe”. Her confessional lyrics are accompanied by lilting cinematic synths and propulsive beats, pushing her towards the realisation that playing by the rules is no longer serving her.

“I was missing out on a lot of life’s opportunities by making everything so nice and so perfect and trying to control that in so many ways,” she comments about the epiphany that inspired the track. “[I’ve realised] it’s okay to be a little less safe and make decisions and make art the way that I want to make art. I feel like I’m finally doing that, which is really liberating.” This transcends into the following track, “Plastic Swings”, where lyrically she traverses physical and emotional landscapes - the coastal town of Westport, Connecticut where she grew up, as well as her inner world of heartbreak and indecision - over soaring synths and evocative beats. She describes the writing process for the whole EP as cathartic and “radical” and this feeling of liberation extends into EMMMA’s next release too.

Whilst she is naturally excited to share her debut EP with her fans this year, Ruchefsky feels her follow up record, which is due in January 2025, really pushes her new project forward, developing her from a Secondary Character into the true protagonist of her own narrative. “I think that the evolution from what I have now, is going to be kind of extraordinary,” she shares. “This next EP is so truthful and so honest. It’s everything that I wanted to be as an artist, but I was just too afraid to do. I’m starting a new cycle of being okay with being more radical and interesting and not so nice and perfect. It took me until this year to be okay with doing that. That’s the theme of the whole EP. Killing off this version of you that is not fully true.”