Emma Nadine Stevens (born May 4, 1986) is a British singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist (guitar, ukulele, mandolin, banjo, piano, cello) based in Guildford, UK. She achieved significant success with the single “Riptide” from her debut album Enchanted; the track was released as the iTunes Single of the Week in October 2013 and garnered over 150,000 downloads. She describes her music as “sparkly folk-pop.”
Stevens is currently promoting her third studio album, To My Roots, released in July 2017.
Early Life and Education
She was born in Guildford, England, to parents Toby and Tina Stevens, and has a younger sister, Ellen. Emma grew up in Shalford, just outside Guildford, living there until the age of 17. Her education included attending Shalford First School, St Theresa’s in Effingham, and St Peter’s in Merrow, where she studied for her GCSE in Music.
Stevens began playing the guitar at the age of three or four after watching her mother play a Spanish acoustic guitar. Recognizing her talent, her parents enrolled her in cello and piano lessons starting at age six; she later joined the Surrey Youth Orchestra. Around the age of ten, she began taking orchestral and piano classes at Charterhouse and performed on stage at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in 1999. She started writing songs when she was around 12 or 13—an age when she could finally hold a guitar properly: “I wrote a lot of melodies on the piano. I also started writing poetry—I even submitted a poem to a national competition—and began combining the poems with melodies.”
She made her first appearance at a Guildford music venue at the age of just 13. “I was terrified, but I remember loving the feeling of singing on stage—just like I do now.”
On her 17th birthday, she was dumped by her boyfriend at the time; this later inspired the song “How to Write a Love Song,” which appeared on her debut solo EP, Heart on the Hand.
From 2006 to 2007, she attended the Academy of Contemporary Music, earning a diploma in guitar and contemporary performance. It was there that she met guitarist Sam Rommer.
Early Career
After graduating from ACM, she worked as a session musician, playing guitar and piano for acts such as fiN, H-Boogie, and Ronit & The Aramingos. During this time, she met her first manager, Bob James, and began collaborating with songwriters across various genres. Her work included writing and performing on the debut album of Britain’s Got Talent finalist Andrew Muir; she penned the lyrics for “Can’t Say That It’s Over” in 2009. Shortly thereafter, she wrote a song titled “Wowowow” for the South Korean boy band SHINee; it appeared on their second album, Lucifer, in 2010. The track sold 100,000 copies as a single within its first week.
Her songwriting for the band Shooting Lead Rabbits—described as a “three-piece, retro, art-house, alternative folk-rock band”—led to a European tour in 2010 and a distribution deal with FNAC.
While songwriting in Los Angeles with Charlie Midnight, she was encouraged by him to seriously consider a future solo career.
Other collaborations included work with Sharon Vaughn, Eric Shermehorn, Andy Goldmark, Wayne Rodriguez, Mimoza Blinsson, Adam Kagan, Will Simms, Russ Ballard, and John Beck.
In 2011, she toured with the British rock band fiN.
Solo Career
In early 2012, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Together with Charlie Midnight, Tina Stevens strongly encouraged Emma to launch a solo career—”She was my biggest supporter and believer, always saying, ‘You have the potential to make it happen.’ So I thought, ‘Yes, I’m going to do it!'” Two weeks before her mother passed away on March 26, 2012, they sat down together and decided that her debut album would initially be released as a series of four EPs. Tina Stevens designed the cover art for each EP; when pieced together, the four designs formed the complete cover for the album Enchanted.
Earlier, in November 2011, she began working with songwriter and producer Pete Woodroffe (best known for his work with Def Leppard); they would go on to co-write 14 tracks and produce all four EPs and the album. In a December 2013 interview, she described Woodroffe as her “ultimate hero.”
In August 2012, Stevens was selected as an emerging artist for a BBC showcase series. On August 19, 2012, she performed four songs live alongside band members Sam Whiting, Belinda Webb, and Emma Hughes.
The first single, “A Place Called You,” was released on October 28, 2012, following its national radio debut on BBC Radio 2’s Weekend Wogan program on September 2, 2012.
She toured extensively throughout the remainder of 2012 to promote the Heart on Hand EP.
In January 2013, she collaborated with British folk-rock singer-songwriter Passenger on the song “I’ll Be Your Man.”
In early 2013, Terry Wogan continued to promote the Heart on Hand EP, culminating in a live appearance on Weekend Wogan on March 17, 2013, where she also performed her next single, “Once.” American singer-songwriter Jenn Bostic also appeared on the show, and together they performed a live cover of Ed Sheeran’s “Give Me Love.” Stevens and Bostic became close friends and went on to tour together twice in 2013.
Shortly after this appearance, “Once” was released in March 2013… …broadcast on BBC Radio on the 27th.
Following the success of Once, the original single “A Place Called You” was re-released and subsequently played on BBC Radio 2 on July 27, 2013.
Thanks to further support from Chris Evans, host of the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show, she appeared live on the program on August 16, 2013, to perform “A Place Called You.” During the broadcast, Evans invited her to perform at his Carfest festival on August 24, 2013, in aid of the BBC Children in Need charity.
Shortly thereafter, on August 18, 2013, she made another live appearance on BBC Radio 2, performing “Sunflower” on the show Good Morning Sunday. The following month, on September 8, 2013, she headlined the BBC Introducing stage at a festival in Hyde Park.
Recording for her debut album was completed on September 9, 2013, and her growing success led to the accelerated release of two final EPs. Sunflower—the last of these EPs—was released on October 20, 2013; it featured the third single, “Riptide,” alongside the title track “Sunflower,” a song she wrote in memory of her late mother. “When I wrote ‘Sunflower,’ the title came to me because my mum used to grow sunflowers at the bottom of the garden when I was a little girl, and I really felt compelled to turn that into lyrics. It’s one of the saddest songs I’ve ever written, but I really needed it—it helped me through the difficult times after losing my mum and kept me going as I sang on stage every day.”
Both “Riptide” and “Sunflower” were written in less than a day. BBC Radio 2 aired the new single again on September 28, 2013, and it received further support from iTunes on October 22, 2013, when it was named “Single of the Week” in the UK, Ireland, Russia, and India.
After completing the album, she decided to release Enchanted independently and signed an agreement with Absolute Marketing and Distribution Ltd.
In January 2014, her manager announced that “Riptide” would be released via Go Entertainment (part of Universal Music) in the Benelux region and Ireland. Over the following month, the single was played by Radio 2 and radiomol in Belgium, as well as Radio 2 in the Netherlands.
In 2014, she teamed up again with co-writer and producer Pete Woodroffe to launch her second album, Waves. The first single from the album, “Make My Day,” was released in August 2014 and received airplay on BBC Radio 2; Stevens performed the song live on Weekend Wogan on September 7, 2014.
Recording for the album was completed on August 15, 2014, and Waves was subsequently released on November 10, 2014.
In August 2015, an expanded deluxe edition of Waves was released, featuring new artwork and eight additional tracks (a limited-edition CD/digital version included ten extra tracks). Among these, “Never Gonna Change” was released as a single in June 2015.
During the summer of 2015, she spent a month in Nashville collaborating with musicians and songwriters to prepare her third studio album, To My Roots. This was her first self-produced album and included songs co-written with Charlie Midnight, Pete Woodroffe, and Buck Johnson. Musicians featured on the album included Michael Spriggs, Bruce Bouton, Jonathan Yudkin, and Miles Bould. “Sing Out (Hey La Hey Lo),” remixed by Ash Howes, was released in June 2017 as the lead single for the album—which was promoted via a tour bearing the same concise title. The album To My Roots was released on July 21, 2017, followed in August by the second single—the album’s title track, also remixed by Ash Howes.
In November 2017, a Christmas collection featuring four festive songs was released digitally and as a limited-edition CD EP. It included covers of “Stay Another Day” and “Somewhere Only We Know,” as well as a version of the traditional carol “Silent Night” recorded in collaboration with Nashville-based Michael Spriggs.
