INTERVIEW: Emalia on latest single 'Stacks' and her starring role in 'Paper Dolls': "I've never felt so fulfilled and aligned with my purpose and what I want to do."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Ever since first releasing music in 2019, Emalia has been a trailblazer on the Australian R&B scene, with her impact and remarkable talent seeing her labelled Australia’s ‘princess of R&B.’
Releasing her debut EP Unmuted in 2021, at the end of November this year Emalia launched a new chapter in her era with the release of the single ‘Stacks’, her first new solo music since 2021. Written with fellow artists Chelsea Warner and Nardean, it is a smooth, bass heavy slice of R&B with an assured, confident vocal delivery from Emalia as she sings of the empowering effect of unwavering self-belief in her own ability and success: “I’d put the stacks on me…I’m banking on me.”
“I felt it was an incredibly fitting song choice to mark this exciting stage of my journey as an independent music artist,” Emalia said on the song’s release. “Betting on yourself, although sometimes daunting, can lead to some wonderful life experiences, and I wanted to celebrate that”.
Alongside the release of ‘Stacks’, Emalia has also entered another new creative era in her career with a starring role as Izzy James in the new eight part scripted drama Paper Dolls, screening exclusively on Paramount+. Developed and executive produced by Belinda Chapple, who rose to fame as part of Bardot in the early 2000s, the series explores the rise and fall of fictional manufactured girl-group Harlow. Lead by Emilia’s character Izzy, the five women navigate the dark side of a glamorous industry determined to commodify them.
A beguiling artist with a powerful voice and music that is both bold and intimate, with more singles to come, and the release of her second EP in 2024 there is a sense this new chapter in her career is seeing Emalia arrive at her truest self and as a result is more powerful, assured and just utterly brilliant. We recently caught up with Emalia to chat all about her new music and starring role in Paper Dolls.
Emalia, it is so lovely to catch up with you at such a momentous juncture in your career. How are things for you?
it's been amazing. This has honestly been amazing, I've never felt so fulfilled and aligned with my purpose and what I want to do. [Paper Dolls] was a dream role in the sense that I've been able to combine all of the elements of performing that I love into one. I was acting, singing, dancing every day, and that really filled me with joy. But not only that, it's a show that handles themes and issues that I really, really care about and that matter and that I want to advocate for. So it was super special to have the opportunity
Talk to me a little bit about Paper Dolls.
Paper Dolls follows the rise and fall of a manufactured, fictional girl group called Harlow in the early 2000s. We watch them navigate the industry and the dark sides of it, and also having to just be in a group with each other. They're all strangers at the start, and they're put together in this house and this band and we see all of the dynamics and tensions that come with that.
Paper Dolls was created by Belinda Chapple, member of Australia's OG televised girl group Bardot. It must have been incredible to have her insight when making the show?
Yes, she was incredible to talk to just to see her experience at the time. It's not a biopic, it's not based on Bardot, there's elements that are inspired by the story that kind of pay tribute to the original concept and her experience, but it's not the Bardot story at all.
You've been a solo performer all your career, how did you find portraying those elements of the group dynamic? Was it something that you were familiar with and the way things are applied, or was it completely different for you?
It's something I'm familiar with. Growing up, you do ensemble shows, and things like School Spectacular and Southern Stars. I would do little girl band performances when I was young, I did a performance for the School Spectacular, and we performed ‘Wings’ by Little Mix, we were a group of four. So that was my first girl group experience. So I have a little bit of experience, but it was really cool to come into it. My character in Paper Dolls, there was a nice synergy in the sense that she was also previously a solo artist, and she comes into the group being the only one that has that experience, So for me to come in and have that previous experience, it was kind of a similar dynamic that we had within the band. I remember when we were performing together for the first time as a girl group for one of the scenes, and we kind of stopped and had a moment, we looked at each other and it just feels really special. We're like ‘we actually are a girl group! This is cool, I'm living out my 90s fantasies!’
Isn't it so beautiful that I feel like the notion of ‘girl group’ has shifted in our vernacular as to what that means to us now. We know see it as a great thing, it always was a great thing, but it was almost like an embarrassing thing before.
Yeah, for sure. I think the show does a really great job of handling that. It really looks at the resilience of women, and it also looks at we don't have to be best friends to get along and work together, which I also quite like, because it looked at it from a not romanticised perspective of ‘look at this amazing girl group and pop group.’ It actually looks at it from the angle these are five women who are working in their field and they have to come together and not all five women are gonna like each other. But they can respect each other, and they can get mad and they can continue working together. I've really enjoyed that because you didn't have these female characters being written as stereotypes and romanticised versions. They're flawed, and they have their own opinions and their own thoughts on everything that's happening to them, but they have to work as a collective, otherwise they don't survive in this industry.
That's so true, the resilience and also that myth that we are sold. Speaking of resilience, let's talk about your first independent release ‘Stacks’. This is a song that just screams persistence, resilience and determination. It's such a great track. Talk to me about ‘Stacks’.
Thank you. ‘Stacks’ was actually written like two years ago, at that time I parted ways with the label (Sony) and I was going through this experience as an artist where I was like, ‘I just don't know if I can do it anymore’. It's not working out for me, I've had this amazing experience, it hasn't worked out, I don't know if I can keep going. That broke musician trope was what you living now. It's hard, especially independently, it's hard to fund that stuff. So I was just trying to make it work. My car had broken down, I didn't have a car for like eight months, I couldn't afford to buy one. I was really hustling and trying to fall back in love with music after seeing the industry side of things and going ‘I don't know if I like the business side, I like the creative side, but I don't know if I like dealing with that’. I had to internally reconnect with myself and why I love doing it and really asked myself do I want to continue? It was a lot of self worth work and development and self reflection and finding people that I love working with. I found Nardean and Chelsea Warner who are two incredible women at what they do in the industry, both as people and as artists and songwriters. Chelsea's a formidable producer and Nardean is starting to produce now too. So like, hell yes girls, that's what we want! So we would just create and there was no pressure, sometimes we would just write silly songs, and sometimes we'd write for each other. It just became this real sisterhood experience for me, and I did fall back in love with it. ‘Stacks’ was a song that we'd written. I wanted to write something that was a manifestation song, I needed a song that reminds me who I am and why I'm doing this. It reminds me that I do believe in myself, because it's constantly an up and down experience with self belief. That hook, - love, respect, legacy, cheques - these things reminding yourself that yes, these are all things that I can have. And it felt very high energy and high vibration. And I mean, it seems to have worked because this year has been great!
I love what you said about the difference between the industry and the art. It's important to talk about this, particularly in the pop realm, because we're still not allowed to see behind the curtain. We're still not allowed to see that you couldn't afford to pay for your car, we're still not allowed to see that we're skint and you're paying for everything yourself, because there's this insistence or this societal pressure that you have to retain this sense of carefree glamour.
Yes, and it feels somewhat vulnerable admitting that, but I prefer to be real about it, because that was the case. That was my reality, because of what I love to do, because I'm so committed to it. I could absolutely go ‘okay, it's time for me to get a degree, I should go and get a nine to five job’. But is that going to make me happy? Probably not. So you do it for the dream, but that's not always the easiest route. And in order to be able to do that, you have to have some level of self belief. There is always self doubt that comes with it, but you have to back yourself because if you don't back yourself, no one else will. And that was something that when I was a kid I had in spades, and then you grow and just society and the patriarchy and industry and there's so many factors that contribute to the breakdown of that self confidence. I really had to come back to a moment of let's rebuild, let's get back in touch with the inner child and figure out what it is that I need and what I want. It was a long process, it took me a couple years, I had to take a step back because I was like I just can't keep burning the candle and not being authentic, and also feeling unhappy, because that's also not why I'm doing this. I'm doing this because I love it, and I want to enjoy it. So I feel like writing ‘Stacks’, the experience, was just so fun. The lyrics are fun and playful and it felt like a reclamation of that power. Whenever I would listen to it, it just made me feel confident and happy. It felt like the right song to be leading with, given where I'm at in my career, and the year that's happened, and it even feels apt with themes of Paper Dolls, so it just felt like the right one to lead with.
That pressure you must have put on yourself with the label, and having the dream career, but then not trusting yourself - I should be singing songs about this, I should be performing like this, and now you've surrounded yourself with these amazing women and you have the freedom, the joy as an independent artist and you can say ‘I'm gonna do this, because I love it’, perhaps ‘Stacks’ could never have come out before because you didn't allow yourself to go there?
Yeah, and you always have opinions from all sides, especially when you're working with a label, everyone's got an opinion, they're entitled to one and you'd absolutely want to be listening to people who are very good at what they do and have years of experience in the industry. But that can also be confusing, because there are many people who have years of experience who all have different views of how you should go about things, how you should portray yourself and you can get a little lost in it. Musically, I'm very proud of all the stuff that I have released, it always was authentic to me, but just slowly the joy gets sucked out of it. You start to feel the pressure, you want to achieve, you want to perform, you want to meet people's expectations. And suddenly it isn't about the enjoyment and the art of it anymore. It purely becomes business. And that's not why I make art, it's not why I make music. So I think like you said the joy in ‘Stacks’ and where it was born from would not have happened if things hadn't occurred the way that they have.
That's beautiful. This is your first independent release, but I imagine you've got so many songs on the back burner that you're wanting to get out. When you listen to them and you listen back to some of your earlier work, can you hear that shift, that release?
Yeah, it just feels different. I don't feel like everything is worlds apart because I have my style and when you write as a writer, you're always going to have that flavour that is you that's put into the work. It just felt freeing to have the time to just go ‘okay, let's just create for creation, not because we need to make a deadline or hit a quota on an album, just because we feel like it’. If there were days where we were writing and it didn't feel right we just go okay, let's do something silly or let's write for you instead. It just kept things fun and fresh and easy.
I would actually really love to see, even just for one night, the girl group of you, Nardean and Chelsea Warner performing
It would be a night, it would be so fun! Chelsea and I did a track ‘Nervous’ that I featured on, such a good track, and she was doing a launch for the single and I was supposed to perform but then I got really sick so I couldn't do it. So we never we never got to do our performance but one day, we’ll have to get Nardean back over from London and get her on stage, do a rap verse!
Obviously, we have ‘Stacks’, we have Paper Dolls, you've got tonnes of stuff going on, but I imagine there's music. What else is coming up for you?
So there's a whole bunch more music in the works and I'll be releasing that sooner than you think. So stay tuned. I won't say too much more for now!
‘Stacks’ is out now, you can buy and stream here.
Paper Dolls is available to watch now on Paramount Plus.
To keep up with all things Emalia, you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
