Emily Blue Is Reflective On Her New Single 'Aperture'
Chicago’s rising pop queen Emily Blue reveals plush new track, ‘Aperture’, in collaboration with producer Uuskhy
Photo by Morgan Paije
In a drastic departure from the bait and switch of ‘17’ and the reckless catchy hooks of ‘Bad Decisions’, Emily Blue gives way to ‘Aperture’. It’s an intimate single with Blue appearing stripped down. “The beach looks starving in winter” she sings during a time in which beaches will remain starving and empty despite the warmth. There is a solitude being explored here, but to dub it as another quarantine song would be reductive. Quarantine has affected the sound, sure, but the track has been three years in the making. Blue tells me “we've been toying around with various demos of ‘Aperture’ for a while, but it's not until quarantine happened that I reconnected with the song in such a visceral way”. Blue works with the fresh paint, opening with a delicate piano and a synth flickering in and out. In the trailer for the song she’s comfortable in the quiet as clouds pass through her skin, she gently places her hand on the camera which briefly scrambles before switching directions and focusing in on a purple sky. ‘Aperture’ is a crack in the mask. Here you couldn’t even imagine her glitchy hair metal riffs or leather adorned outfits. Instead of upping the ante she’s changed the end game entirely; less sticky and neon, more distilled. Fluid and ambient she returns to the narrative roots planted on Another Angry Woman, her 2016 debut EP, redeveloping a more poetic sensibility. Her voice is layered in a hypnotic rhythm, “how?” she pitches up into a soprano “how long, til I wear it out and I tear it down?” Some people love things until they are worn down and tattered, refusing to let go. And those people are not necessarily wrong. This is what happens when artists push themselves for authenticity. ‘Aperture’ is a willingness to dive deeper. It is a reflective pause in her discography. On ‘Aperture’ we can almost see the hole in which the light passes through.
Photo by Morgan Paije