Rock and Pop: Interview with Emmy The Great AKA Emma-Lee Moss
Published: 15 September 2011
by ROISIN GADELRAB
EMMY The Great’s obsessed with coconut water, her guitars and the greatest love story of the modern age, or so she believes – Charles and Camilla.
Emmy, who plays Cecil Sharp House on Saturday (Sept 17), revealed she may even write a song inspired by the Royal couple.
“Maybe based on one of his letters, doesn’t he write loads of letters?
That’s what makes me really sad, he’s one of these people in this position where he can’t be the poet or artist or gardener he wants to be. I’m saying, ‘Charles, this is to you, spread your wings and fly,” she says.
Emmy, real name Emma-Lee Moss, may well be the first to liken the future King to a Beatle: “I love Prince Charles, why don’t people like him? He’s so nice, so environmentally friendly, he’s like a hippy.
They have such a cute relationship, they withstood so much – John and Yoko, Charles and Camilla are amongst my top love stories.
“There was this cute Vanity Fair article where someone I think might have tapped their phones, which is not cute, but they’re talking and she says, ‘what have I ever done in my life?’, he says, ‘you loved me’, and she says, ‘That’s easier than falling off a chair’.”
Her sympathy extends to the Prince’s future. Emmy says: “What’s with these polls every now and again saying I don’t want him to be King? Is that even our decision? Don’t let him be King then, but let him be a campaigner for the Green party or something which is so obviously what he’d be great at.”
The young songwriter has lived all over Camden and has a strong affinity with the borough.
“Camden is the most village-like place I’ve lived, it’s really a community,” she says. “It’s the only place where I’d go to the supermarket and see a lady I knew from an exercise class or something and we’d just chat as if we were in a town or village.”
When her neighbourhood was hit by riots earlier this year, Emmy was among the first to help organise the clean-up along with Get Cape Wear Cape Fly’s Sam Duckworth and Kate Nash.
Their Twitter discussions caught the eye of artist Dan Thompson, who got in touch, allocating them each an area of London.
Emmy says: “It suddenly felt like they’re here, they’re in my area and they’re smashing up things I love. I love it here and it really started to hurt.”
The response from would-be helpers was overwhelming.
“I often bitch about London because we’re mean to each other on the tube, everyone’s in a hurry, but if you ask them what they’re in a hurry for they won’t say, but that was the most positive thing I’ve ever seen,” says Emmy. “I was so, so proud to have been in the midst of it.”
Her new single, Paper Forest, was inspired by a line in a Patti Smith song about how she is blessed amongst all women: “I was like, ‘what does that mean?’ To have seven children and live by the sea, be super rich or to be very beautiful? That song was me trying to answer the question.”
Emmy’s working on her third album but in the meantime has written an album of original Christmas songs.
Her Camden date signals the start of her tour, which she has been impatiently awaiting.
She adds: “I love my guitars so much I bring them into the hotel room everywhere I go. I never leave them anywhere.
“I used to bring a basket of food so I felt like I had my kitchen but I’ve learned in each town where I will go first to get the kind of stuff that I want.
“I recently became super addicted to coconut water. I’ve developed this amazing ability to find it in any town.
We went to Wakefield over the summer and I was like, ‘I’ll have coconut water’ within half an hour and they were like, ‘we bet you won’t’. I came back with this bag full of supplements, coconut water and a balloon.