Emma Stevens is one of the most exciting people to enter the world of music for quite some time. Her upcoming single 'Riptide' is an infectious slice of pop heaven, and we got the chance to chat to Emma about the single, her album and collaboration dreams.
How did you get into the world of music?
Started off at a very young age! (laughs) I was massively influenced by my mum actually, she encouraged me to pick up the guitar, and pots and pans at probably the age of three - so yeah, from quite a young age.
As an artist where do you draw inspiration from?
Kind of from everything and anyone really - I know that's quite a generic answer - but like meeting new people, and travelling a bit and even art. Also, a lot of it's to do with personal things that have happened to me, and turning them into songs. A lot of different things in life (laughs).
Tell us about your single 'Riptide'.
I'm a bit of a surfer - I love my surfing - there's actually no such thing as a riptide, you have rip currents! (laughs) But it's not very poetic! So, 'Riptide' is basically about being caught up in the emotions and the adrenaline and the excitement of love and I wanted to find a way of incorporating that with something that I love, which is the Ocean so it's kind of like an amalgamation of the two of them put together.
The music video was released yesterday - how was the experience of filming that?
It was actually wonderful! We did it in one day and we were so lucky because it was a really lovely, sunny day. I wasn't expecting it because it was actually quite recently that we filmed it - I thought it was gonna be all grey and rainy - I was worried about spending the time outside in that type of weather! (laughs) But I had a lovely team of people there and it was just lovely. We had a great day - it was down by the beach in Brighton - and it was wonderful. It was a great experience and I was working with some great people. Gavin Randall who's an up and coming video director directed it and filmed it and yeah - wonderful! When you're with a great team of people it doesn't feel like work, it feels like, play, (laughs) almost! So it was a really good day.
How does it feel to now be playlisted on over 40 regional BBC radios?
I literally nearly cried when I heard that news! It's the most overwhelmingly humbling feeling ever. I'm like 'Why?', I've got no big label backing me and putting me into all these places - it's purely done from the song and the team of people that I have around me so to find out that they - all the regional BBC studios - liked the song enough and liked me enough to wanna play the song - it was incredibly humbling and I still can't believe it actually! (laughs)
The song comes off of your album 'Enchanted' - what can you tell us about that?
The album 'Enchanted' came about from four EPs that I released. Each EP - the artwork's incredibly special to me because it was designed by my mum just before she died last year, so I'm very, very lucky to have her with me on this journey as well through her artwork and also she was hugely inspirational to me - each EP is a painting in itself and they come together and form the album artwork so it's been a bit of a puzzle in my stages of releasing it and now I piece together the final piece which is 'Sunflower' which is the fourth EP and which forms the album artwork. So the songs on 'Enchanted' are all an amalgamation of the songs from the EPs.
If you could collaborate with any one act, artist or producer who would you choose and why?
Well I recently collaborated with Passenger, which was like a dream come true in itself really because he's so cool. Collaboration wise there are maybe a couple of people that I've really always wanted to work with - Jason Mraz is one of them. He's so incredibly talented and I'd love to write a song with him. British female singer wise, Imogen Heap has always been up there, I love her style - she's greatly inspirational. Paul Simons is really up there as well! 'Graceland' is possibly my desert island disc, so I'd just adore to collaborate with him. As you can tell I can't narrow it down! (laughs)
What's next for you?
Next I'm touring - doing lots and lots of gigs. I'm starting to work on my next album as well so I'm writing whenever I can and I'm looking forward to booking my headline tour next March, but before then I've got the Jenn Bostic tour which is the end of November and December where I'll be supporting her on tour around the UK.
So where do you hope to be this time next year?
It would be great to be doing major festivals. Again, doing full-on headline shows and I'd love to be able to say that I'm selling out on my headline shows - that would be incredible. Those are like the massive goals to have but I think it's really important to aim high. It'd be a dream to be able to sell out somewhere like Shepherd's Bush Empire at some point, but I think that should be a further down the line goal! (laughs)
'Riptide' is out October 21, while 'Enchanted' the album is out now.