Q&A: Emei Brings the Drama on “Night At The Opera” EP
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
A LITTLE DRAMA NEVER HURT ANYBODY — and Emei is proving that sometimes it's exactly what great pop music needs as she builds an entire world around that idea on her new EP Night At The Opera. Long before she became a rising voice in alt-pop, Emei identified as a theater kid.
“I grew up doing theater, but the vibe changed when my pop music career started,” Emei says. “I wanted to lean into being a theater kid again. This project is definitely a homecoming. My subconscious bullied teenage brain is always like, ‘You don’t want to try so hard. Just be cool’. But fuck that! I like trying hard. It’s part of who I am. I care about every little detail. So, you’re going to get all of the pain, emotion, and drama from me!”
Following the passing of her grandmother, Emei found herself navigating one of the most difficult periods of her life. Grief became the catalyst for a collection of songs that confront loss and identity crisis. Working alongside collaborators including Reed and Justin Tranter, she transformed those experiences into a body of work that feels both deeply intimate and universally relatable.
“It was one of the toughest years of my life,” she says. “The project was born from grief. It's a big elevation from my past music because it was written during a season of intense and extreme emotions.”
That emotional intensity reaches its peak on the EP’s title track. “Night At The Opera” unfolds like a grand theatrical production, complete with ominous organ flourishes, sweeping strings and a dramatic sense of scale.
“The pain, the gag, the drama,” she sings. Later, she teases, “Have you never seen revenge looking cute in an A-line dress?”
The song was inspired by a real opera performance she attended for her birthday, which reframed how she thought about emotional scale in music.
“I saw an opera for my birthday, and I was inspired to make a production that was just as dramatic,” Emei says. “I put pressure on myself to put who I am on display and show everyone the worst of what was going on in my life. This song is about how everything was falling apart, but I’m acknowledging it must be great to watch from the outside. It’s my invitation, ‘Welcome to a night at the opera, take a seat, watch this fuckery. If I’m going to be up here dancing and showing you everything about me, you’d better dance too and sing along.’”
On tracks like “Bloom,” that approach takes a more exposed form. Created during a period when her mental health had reached a low point, the track captures the desperation of searching for hope while struggling to see beyond the darkness.
Yet despite its origins in grief and uncertainty, Night At The Opera never loses sight of hope. More importantly, the project finds Emei embracing every facet of who she is — artist, performer, storyteller and theater kid.
LUNA: Welcome back and thank you for talking to Luna again. It's super exciting to have you back since the last time we talked. I would love to catch up and see how life has been treating you and what have you been up to since the last time we talked.
EMEI: It's been good. You're catching me right after release day, which was Friday, and I played two underplay shows for my fans, so I got to perform the song live for the first time. I'm coming off of a dopamine high right now. It's just been really special that these songs are finally out.
LUNA: Your newest EP Night at the Opera just released and huge congratulations! What was the original spark or inspiration that made you want to build an EP around theatricality and drama?
EMEI: I wrote this EP, probably in the past year right after RABBITHOLE Tour to now, and to be honest, it was a really bad year for me. I lost my grandma who raised me, and that was like a lot of grieving, and then I also lost some friends, and it was just a very big quarter life crisis year for me, and that's how this music began. I felt like my life was so dramatically tragic that year, and I was like, this is so ridiculous, and I just want to lean into that feeling. It felt like a homecoming of sorts to just turn the drama up.
LUNA: You’ve described this project as a return to your “theater kid” roots. What parts of musical theater shaped you early on, and how are they resurfacing in your songwriting now?
EMEI: I'm from New Jersey, so growing up, every Christmas season, my parents and I would go see a Broadway show, so that was a huge part of how I started singing, even started performing. I did so much theater growing up. Also my parents are immigrants from China, so we didn't really listen to that much pop music at home. I just remember they had like a West Side Story CD in the car and that was the soundtrack of my childhood. That definitely played a huge impact on this project, and also who I am as an artist.
LUNA: In returning to this “theater kid” identity, what did you rediscover about yourself as a writer and performer?
EMEI: Good question. I think that a big thing is Ricky Reed, who made the project with me, he came to some of my shows during the RABBITHOLE tour, and when we started working on this project, he was very adamant about having me really sing. He was like, “Hey, when I went to your show, it's very obvious you can sing and you love singing, and I feel like some of your music so far has been actually not that vocally challenging.” I feel like this project, I challenged myself quite a bit, and I was surprised by my ability, honestly. Even on tour, with the past two shows, I've been like, this is so fun, I get to sing at the top of my lungs, and that's been different from my previous stuff.
LUNA: Looking back at the making of Night at the Opera, what surprised you most about yourself?
EMEI: I think the main thing is how good it felt to get back to my theater roots and focusing on also writing songs to sing them. I feel like that was surprising in regards to how great it felt to do that again.
LUNA: Do you have a personal favorite song on Night at the Opera — one that feels closest to your heart or most revealing of who Emei is right now?
EMEI: “Bloom” might be my personal favorite, just because I wrote it during probably the darkest time during the year, and it just feels really personal. I love that one.
LUNA: How do you hope listeners — especially your femme audience — can connect with or find power in this new era of music from you? What emotions or messages do you want to leave with them?
EMEI: I felt like I wrote these songs during such a hard time. I felt like I clung on to the music to get me through it, and I just hope that other people can also, if they're going through something, they can listen to my music to get through things. I think it's always like magic. I feel like music is so magical in that way, where I can write my journal entries out, and then somebody else in their life can be going through the same exact thing. I just hope it can help in any way, like it helps me.
LUNA: What is fueling your fire right now that’s pushing you into this new era of your career?
EMEI: I think it's always been the shows and my fans. I just love performing so much, and even this past week of performing, I played the Troubadour and the Slipper Room, and I haven't played a headline in a year and a half, and it was just so inspiring to be on stage again and to see my fans and to talk to them. I think that's always been a huge driver. I want to make more songs for them and perform them and have amazing nights together.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like that you would like to share with Luna?
EMEI: I am feeling amped up and excited. Oh my god, I'm so excited. I would say the rest of the year is going to be crazy. We're definitely still working on a ton of music, like the world is definitely not ending. I don't want to talk too much about it, but it's definitely not ending. I'm just excited. We're going on tour in the fall, so that's going to be a huge moment for the songs, and I'm just excited to bring that across America.
