The 20-year Emily Bowen releases her debut album ‘Hate me for this’ today (3rd January), and this is the lead single, ‘Agnes.’
She’s Danish-American, with a quintessentially English name, a precocious girl who explored music from an early age, spent all her pocket money on musical equipment and who knocked on record company doors when she was 14.
That’s just the sort of artist we love.
She explores her life to date on the album via highly introspective songs connected inter alia to how self-destructive it has been, how she fears she might not be here much longer and on this one, ‘Agnes,’ she engages in a three hour chat with someone she casually met out walking and whom she has never seen since (stripped down to two and a half minutes on the song) about “understanding and accepting your own sexuality.”
That’s a lot of difficult ground to cover for someone so young and here she launches into conversations with someone who has boyfriends but also a girl for the weekend. Well, whatever tickles your fancy, eh?
She’s evidently taken with Agnes who “could get away with murder” so she “kills her (Emily), every time.”
It sounds like the beginning of the beautiful friendship that wasn’t and she delivers it with that knowing innocence that characterised (and still does), Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s songs.
And there’s something about the recording, like an old HMV record player being wound up and then suddenly winding down of its own accord that bestows a sense of dated charm on it.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emilybowennn
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emilybowennnn/
