Nordicana Artist Eee Gee Releases “Empowering Melancholia” Single “Killing It”

Playing along the blends of eccentric folk, pop, and country with inspiration from Björk and Radiohead, eee gee is one of the most dynamic rising talents to break into the pop world. Her intoxicating sound is one of elegance and intention throughout her music.

Eee gee and her producer Rasmus Bille Bähncke, construct soundscapes filled with dramatic piano that accompanies lyrics of honesty, ballads of personal empowerment while undergoing heavy back-and-forth emotions. The coming-of-age lyrics embody eee gee’s newfound freedom and responsibility while writing for a new record label, Future Classic.

“Killing It” follows the release of her debut singles “Favourite Lover” and “All or Nothing.” The single captures a chaotic time in the songstress’ life and follows the relatable narrative of manifesting a successful career, while showing it off that you’re “killing it” on social media, but behind the scenes there’s heavy emotions of missing friends and lovers.

[UNPUBLISHED:] To start off the interview, how are you?

[EEE GEE:] I'm good. I just got in from the rain. It's raining, it's coming down here in Copenhagen. I'm just currently waiting for my passport so I can go back to New York. So I'm just waiting and waiting.

[UNPUBLISHED:] Can you give our readers a general artist's statement or background of you and your music?

[EEE GEE:] I used to be a waitress forever, and I made songs on the side, and I just got better and better and then eventually I thought, I just wanted to go all in and see what would happen. I was singing before I talked. I just always knew I was going to be a singer and songwriter and an artist, it always seemed like the people just get picked in the lottery, and then they do it. It didn't seem like a possible thing to dream about. I was always very like, ‘I'll just be a waitress or whatever’ and then I'll see if things happen randomly. 

[UNPUBLISHED:] What was your breakthrough in the music industry?

[EEE GEE:] I had a project before this, where I was signed to a major label in Copenhagen. But it was never a breakthrough, so after that felt kind of like letting all the air out of the balloon, kind of a moment where I thought that would have been the breakthrough and that would have been the thing I was supposed to do—that was like two or three years ago. After that I didn’t really know if I should keep pursuing this. I just kept writing songs and started figuring out what felt wrong in the first try. Then I started working with my producer in New York who is Danish too. I just kept coming back, and we just developed the sound that I really love now, that is kind of like a good mix between folk, pop and country. Then my first single came out this year in May. My first single from this project has only been out for five months. It's been really well received here [U.S.] so I'm really excited to see what's next.

[UNPUBLISHED:] I'm so excited for you! And would you give our readers a general background behind Eee Gee, is she an alter ego or just a name change?
[EEE GEE:] So when I was picking the name I wanted it to be my own name [Emma], but I also didn't want it to be a traditional country name. It would just be defeating the whole name and only being ‘Emma’ would be pop, I have this weird thing where it's interesting how pop artists just have one name, mostly, and country singers have both the surname, the first name, and last name. So I was like, ‘how can I do that without giving it all away?’ So Eee Gee is basically just my initials, but I thought it was funny to force people to pronounce it how you would pronounce it in English. So in Danish, it would be ‘Iggy’ but everyone says ‘EG', because I put all the extra e’s.

[UNPUBLISHED:] So I've read that your music combines indie, folk, and country, but I know it's a lot deeper than that. How would you describe your own music style?

[EEE GEE:] I would say it's like unpretentious Nordicana. To me, it's empowering, making melancholia and sadness more empowering, and turning some introvertness outside, inside out. 

[UNPUBLISHED:] You recently released your single and music video for “Killing It.” Could you tell me about your creative process or how you conceptualized your vision for the single?

[EEE GEE:] So this year has been really much back and forth between Copenhagen and New York because my whole visa situation for my passport and my work visa hadn't been approved because of the whole pandemic. It's also been the year where I met my boyfriend, and a whole lot of long-distance relationship with my music, my producer, and my boyfriend, and missing my friends. It's been a very chaotic time, not knowing where I was going to live, and just seeing my savings on the bank account just rapidly drop and being like, ‘okay, at the end of this month when my money hits zero, I need to have a plan. I need to be somewhere because I can't just move back and forth and spend a fortune on plane tickets.’ The first single came out, but I feel like it ended up being a really good narrative for the first two singles to the fact that I moved and everything because it's really about, again, addressing some of the more heavy emotions about going back and forth and missing your friends and not really knowing if you're at the right place in time always. So I just wanted to address that feeling that was really following me everywhere around, of wanting to make it and breaking through and finishing some good songs, but still addressing it's a lot of work and it's a lot of back and forth. I could also feel the pressure of people being excited on my behalf and being like, ‘we just got a baby but I wish I was you, you're just traveling the world and that's so exciting.’ There was a funny duality of saying ‘yeah, it's really exciting and at the same time I miss everyone, I just want to be in one place at a time.’ I really liked how “Killing It” came out, and the simplicity of it, really. It really gets the story out of the song, it really highlights the lyrics and I love how well received the subtle humor of it has been too. I'm not mocking myself but I am poking to that whole social media concept of ‘everything is great,’ where everyone is always just posting when they're ‘killing it.’ It’s convincing yourself all the time that you're killing it, you're getting there, you just gotta keep going and you know if everyone expects you to be killing it in New York and doing the whole career thing. Then at some point it also feels good to write a song about it and try to manifest it. So I'm faking it until I'm actually killing it.

[UNPUBLISHED:] You touched on this but my next question was going to be, what was the feeling that dominated you when you were writing this?

[EEE GEE:] I would say it's like hopeful frustration. I really like writing from the single I did before this “All or Nothing” also has the same kind of dark / light mood, where I'm still out of the woods but I'm pretending to be, if that makes sense. I like how you can write yourself out of a problem or you can be like, ‘yeah it's going great over here, at least I wrote a song about it.’ I feel like I was basically trying to manifest all of my hopes at the same time as being worried.

[UNPUBLISHED:] What do you want your listeners to feel when they're listening to this song?

[EEE GEE:] I feel like it can both be a song where you can be crying and then you can try to play it and try to stop crying, and pick yourself up and be like I'm killing it. I think that it’s just that song to pick yourself up to.

[UNPUBLISHED:] How did you approach writing this single differently compared to “Favourite Lover” and “All or Nothing''?

[EEE GEE:] “Killing It” was written with a really great friend and songwriter. I think the approach was the same, but the emotion, I was definitely in a completely different emotional stage than when I wrote the other ones because “All or Nothing” is two years old and “Favourite Lovers” is a year and a half old. “Killing It,” I just wrote it in March. So it's definitely lyrically a song where I'm aware that I have a label deal all of a sudden, and I know there's more responsibility in my writing where people are expecting me to deliver. At the same time I just felt I had the freedom to write the songs however I wanted it to be. When I wrote it, I never thought it would be a single but then I just loved how simple it was and how well it worked. And I feel that's actually the best way to write good songs. It's when you don't initially think it's the single. You just think I'm just gonna try my best to write a good song today and then a good song might come out.

[UNPUBLISHED:] How is your writing process in general? Does it vary, like do you go to the studio and sit down and write it or is it something like you imagine and you scribble random notes and it sort of comes organically?

[EEE GEE:] It's different. I love working with all kinds of different musicians. If I write with a guitar player, it's a different song than if I write with someone who's really good at playing piano. Every time I get the slightest feeling that I'm not contributing enough when I'm in the room with someone, I always take a few weeks off and ride alone in the studio. I go a lot back and forth between co-writing with a lot of different songwriters and writing alone. I know a lot of people who mostly write with the same people too. But I still have a lot of fun exploring different energies in a room with different people. And then I work with the same producer in New York who gathers all the strings or all of the things that I've been running around doing. So it's going to be fun to be back in New York and then I'm probably going to be writing more with my producer than I have for the past two years because that's been so much back and forth. 

[UNPUBLISHED:] What artists are some of your earliest influences?

[EEE GEE:] I would say my earliest influences are probably Björk, Radiohead, Ryan Adams, and Wilco.

[UNPUBLISHED:] Is there any advice you would like to give for up-and-coming artists who are breaking into the music scene?

[EEE GEE:] Have patience. I've been writing with a really good songwriter named Teitur. He's Farish, so I went to Faroe Island to write with him, and one of the first things he said was, when he was 20 or 23, he had already written his whole debut album, but he waited for three years before he released it because he wanted to be sure that all of these songs would be songs that you would love for an eternity. I feel like today, everyone can just basically upload a song on Spotify from day to day. So I think it's more important than ever to actually be in tune with your songs. Be sure that the material you're putting out is something that you're proud of now and that you would hope to still be proud of in two and 10 years. It feels like there's more expectations on the pace of putting out songs and some labels expect your songs to come out as slow food but it's kind of delivered as fast food. If you want to write good songs you also need to have the time to write them. So I would just say, be patient and listen to your intuition about your songwriting and don't underestimate the listener. Just write the songs at however slow pace you want to write them and share them when you're ready for it.

[UNPUBLISHED:] And my last question for you is, what do you have planned for the rest of this year? What are your hopes and wildest dreams for the next year, what does it hold for you?

[EEE GEE:] Right now I'm just hoping my passport will arrive. And then I just want to get back into my studio and write a lot of good songs, and I hope that my songs are going to come outside Copenhagen for the next couple of months and reach more and more people and awaken people's curiosity.

“Killing It” is available to stream on all platforms. You can listen to the brand new single on Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud and watch the music video on YouTube. Stream the debut single “Favourite Lover” here. To learn more about the artist and support upcoming music releases, follow eee gee’s Instagram for more updates.