Emily Burns

Sharing emotional truths against sparse backdrops, Emily Burns creates a confiding closeness that’s rare in pop music. Born in West Lothian, Scotland in 1994, she grew up in the English town of Rugby and began performing at showcases for unsigned artists at age 16. Burns further tested the industry waters with a receptionist job at Abbey Road Studios and the 2018 mini-album Seven Scenes from the Same Summer, the latter adding beats and other programmed flourishes to her incisive songwriting. Yet she peeled back those layers for her 2019 breakthrough “Is It Just Me?”, an unadorned piano ballad detailing the intensity of connection between two people. Subsequent singles successfully married her intimate vocal approach with selective pop motifs, and after performing a livestream concert from her erstwhile workplace Abbey Road in 2020, Burns spent the pandemic compiling a cache of new material. Veteran producer Cameron McVey (Massive Attack, Portishead) convinced her to release these revealing songs, culminating in the catharsis of her 2024 debut album Die Happy.