After releasing her debut single last month, 19-year-old singer-songwriter Emma Ogier is back with a new song. “Consider Me a Winner” follows her first release, “First Base,” with another look at her indie-pop sound and relatable lyrics.
A song that Emma says “is about fear and uncontrollable change,” “Consider Me a Winner” is a song that is ultimately optimistic and upbeat. As an emerging artist and a college student, Emma is no stranger to change and challenges. Balancing school and creativity and even touring, Emma is learning that “change is inevitable.”
We caught up with Emma for an inside look at her music and how “Consider Me a Winner” came together. Check out the full interview below!
Showstopper Magazine Online: Hi, Emma! How would you describe your relationship with music? What does it mean to you?
Emma Ogier: Music is a huge part of my life and a huge part of me. I grew up singing and performing. My brothers and dad play music as well. It means everything to me to have the ability and mind to create music, and to also come from a family that let me grow up surrounded by music. My family love and appreciate music in a similar way to me and we are each other’s biggest supporters.
SMO: What are the essential parts of your creative process?
Emma: My songwriting process is quite simple. I tend to write alone. Any free chance I get, I sit down with my guitar and just start playing it. I will turn on a voice memo to record myself then will just start singing what comes into my head. It’s usually a bunch of gibberish with an unsure melody, but then I will listen back to the memo and take from it what I like and leave the rest. I’ll take bits of melodies and lyrics I like, then repeat the process of just playing and singing until I’ve pieced together an outline of a song. After that, I revise the structure, melody, and lyrics to be cohesive and fulfilling to sing and play. Because I don’t initially write from concepts, I’ve come to understand that my songs written this way are simply a release of thoughts coming from my conscious/subconscious. A lot of the time it takes me a few days to figure out what I was expressing in a song because when it was written, I didn’t think about it, my mind was just saying things I feel and observe in a certain time in my life.
SMO: You just released your second single “Consider Me a Winner.” How does it feel to have it out in the world?
Emma: It feels really great to have this single out into the world, especially now that the story of the song has been resolved. The song focuses on how I felt about my roommate/best friend who moved back home after our first semester and what I imagined that second semester to look like without her.
There’s a funny story about the timing of the release. During the bridge I sing, “When the lights go out on Casco Bay, I think about you every day,” in reference to a place she mentioned in her hometown. Funnily enough, she (Antoinette Hinitt) ended up releasing a song called “Casco Bay” the same week too!
SMO: “Consider Me a Winner” has an upbeat sound and a lot of weighty emotions. What led to this?
Emma: I had originally expected “Consider Me A Winner” to be a slower song. It was the first song I recorded with David Baron, Seb Mahal, and Aidan Ogier at David’s studio in Woodstock, New York. I think we wanted to start things off with open minds and it led to the current version of the song. I think we made something really cool!
SMO: This song was inspired by your best friend and roommate leaving college. Can you tell us more about the story behind the song?
Emma: Yeah! I wrote “Consider Me A Winner” right after finding out my best friend/roommate was going to be transferring out of college. It was hard news to cope with as I just couldn’t imagine school without her. I wrote this song as a way to imagine what that period of my life would look like without her there. The song is about how fear is such a driver when we try to understand what we do not yet know. I was scared to spend the next semester “alone,” but I did in fact survive and didn’t have to do it alone — I ended up being surrounded by plenty of support and love.
SMO: You also have a music video for “Consider Me a Winner.” Can you tell us about the dorm room set?
Emma: The dorm is actually the real dorm room I was living in at the time. My room was pretty crazy but I liked it. I like having color everywhere and hanging as many posters as possible. Me and my old roommate, Antoinette, were similar in that way and so our trinkets matched well. We got really lucky to have each other as roommates!
SMO: What was your favorite part of filming the music video?
Emma: I actually find music videos really hard to film! I don’t really like myself on camera, so it definitely felt super weird as this was the first music video we filmed. My favorite part of making the music video was hanging out with the rest of the crew and watching a vision come to life. It was a really interesting process!
SMO: Along with releasing your music, you have also been touring and performing. What has it been like to build your catalog and bring it to fans live at the same time?
Emma: My favorite thing about being an artist is touring and performing live. That being said, I do also love to write songs that I can’t stop playing over and over again. I think it’s so beautiful to get to share, connect, and learn from so many strangers.
SMO: What is your favorite part of live performance?
Emma: I kind of get lost when I play and I don’t really think about anything! That’s probably my favorite part. It’s really cool to get out of my head like that.
—
“Consider Me a Winner” is out now.
