Emmy Wildwood found herself writing a stream of songs in a blur of days during the fall of 2020. Just one story in a whirlwind of words, “Falls On You,” is Wildwood’s anthemic blast against a turbulent year and all its emotional baggage—the restlessness from stalled tours, love and its tribulations, and loss.
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“All last year, I found myself writing in these big pockets, and I noticed that they do kind of follow seasons of my life—like some significant thing happens in the fall and a couple of songs come out of it,” says Wildwood. “Last year, there was no shortage of reasons to write.”
“Falls On You” is a feverish blitz through Wildwood’s love affair with music, and the juggling act of patience, discipline, and sacrifice it takes to keep it intact. As if crawling out of her own skin in the video, produced at her home studio in Tucson, Wildwood, provocatively sheathed in a white, peplum sleeve leatherette motorcycle jacket, rabidly spurts Love makes you lose yourself… Love can confuse the mission / But I would die for it.
“When taken literally, there’s a sort of fight in [the lyrics] that insists I’ve been wronged,” says Wildwood, “but the song is really about love and all of the ways in which it competes with my music career.”
Amid everything happening in 2020, Wildwood was also trying to start a family with her partner, but was unable to carry the pregnancies through. “It slowed me down a lot,” shares Wildwood. “There were weeks I didn’t get out of bed but then there were these pockets. As if necessary to survive my own feelings, I would write these songs furiously in healing, and this was one of them.”
“Falls On You” (available Jan. 29 on Spotify) is as much about her own insecurities as it is her desires. “There are reasons why things don’t happen scientifically, and sometimes the fall of those things are just not on the person they’re happening to,” says Wildwood. “I have trouble justifying the time I’ve taken, because it felt like it set me back in so many ways, but right now I’m seeing it set me up to start over.”
Produced virtually with multi-instrumentalist Chris Kuffner (Ingrid Michaelson) Wildwood brought her batch of songs in frames for him to paint in. “He made the song sound as big as it is stuffed with feelings,” says Wildwood, who also enlisted Zach Jones on drums and Kuffner on bass.
“It’s really a three piece band,” says Wildwood. “The whole thing was meant to sound like the ‘White Album’ or a heavier classic rock jam. I really wanted to sing a lot, and unrestrained, and I can truly say we left everything on the floor, sonically.”
Working on a new album with producer Steven Lee Tracy at Saint Cecilia Studios in Tucson, a follow up to 2020’s Heavy Petals and All My Blood, moving into 2021 Wildwood will also release duets with Hannah Winkler and Gabi Montoya and produce her partner Nic Pool‘s project..
For now, “Falls On You” is a resurrection, embracing music and a new beginning.
“This song is a clean slate for the new year,” she says. “It’s an angry thank you that everything is exactly as it has been so that we can finally be what we’re supposed to be.”
Wildwood adds, “There’s a lot of different ways to fall. You can fall on your knees, you can fall from tripping; you can fall in love, you can fall from grace. This song is all of those things.”
