There’s a certain magic in the way music can capture memory, the golden haze of a late summer evening, the echo of a laugh you haven’t heard in years, the longing that comes with looking back. Emily James taps into all of this and more on her stunning new EP Summer Nostalgia. This dreamy six-track collection chronicles the highs and heartbreaks of first love, self-discovery, and the bittersweet pull of the past. Blending folk-pop sensibilities with cinematic flair, James crafts intimate moments that feel both deeply personal and universally resonant.

Having already earned comparisons to Taylor Swift and Lizzy McAlpine, Emily is no stranger to tugging at heartstrings. Her previous songs have found homes in hit Netflix shows like Ginny & Georgia and My Life with the Walter Boys, and she continues to gain traction with Spotify features such as “Women of Acoustic” and “Created by Women.”

On Summer Nostalgia, however, James brings her most vulnerable and conceptual storytelling to the forefront, using the lens of a relationship to explore themes of growth, memory, and identity — all wrapped in melodies that shimmer like old photographs.

Now based in Brooklyn, Emily is preparing to take these songs on the road, joining Amistat and Joshua Radin on tour this fall. But before she hits the stage, we chatted with Emily about her new single, her writing process, and how she brings personal experiences into universal stories.

What has it felt like moving back to New York after years in LA and time in London? How do you think the unique vibes of each city have shaped your music and your creative perspective?

Moving back to New York has felt like coming home. I absolutely adore London, and LA will always have a big piece of my heart, but a part of me always knew I would end up back in New York. 

I lived in LA during some pretty developmental years of my life, not to mention a global pandemic, so there are a lot of core memories attached to that city. The people I met there and the community they provided changed a lot for me. Those are lifelong friends that I plan to never let go of. I think the kind of growth that I experienced in LA is reflected in the music I made during that time. I experimented a lot with genre and style, and I owe a great amount of gratitude to my wonderful collaborators who facilitated and encouraged that kind of creative stretching. 

Moving to London came as a result of a mini quarter-life crisis, and not to sound all “moving abroad changed my life” …but it did. It’s such a dreamy, otherworldly place, and I’m deeply grateful I got to experience life there. It brought out the whimsy in me, and it was an incredibly prolific time. I was writing every day, which isn’t typical for me, but doing so challenged me to dig deeper and switch up my narrative perspective so that I wasn’t just writing the same song over and over again. There’s also something to be said about being in a totally new place that you have no ties to; that kind of distance from home allowed me to reflect on and examine past experiences in a slightly more objective way. That’s where half of the EP was born, so I guess my instincts were telling me to go there for a reason.

How would you describe your musical evolution from your earlier work to Summer Nostalgia?

I think at its core, my music has always had the same me threaded through it, but the colors of myself that weave in and out of that thread have changed as I’ve evolved as a person and an artist. The most prevalent evolution I’ve seen in myself as a songwriter lately is that I’ve become much more comfortable with listening to where a song wants to go, rather than trying to inject some sort of arbitrary structure or narrative into it. I like to let the song breathe and guide me, whether in its form, its content, its instrumentation, etc., and not question why I’m being led there. It’s a kind of trust I have built with the process, one that has come with doing it for so many years now. I’m more interested in a song flowing naturally, even unconventionally, rather than forcing it to be something I think it “should” be.

Do you remember the moment you knew you wanted to be a songwriter, not just a singer?

Yes absolutely. I was about 10 years old and I heard “Someone Like You” by Adele for the first time and was completely awestruck by her melodies and the raw emotion in her performance. Prior to that, I didn’t fully comprehend the power of music and how deeply it can evoke a feeling; even that of a life-altering breakup within a 10-year-old girl who had never been in love before (though she would have argued otherwise at the time). I had been writing little songs on the piano up until then, but once I wrote my first “real” song (it had a bridge and everything), it gave me this feeling of satiation that nothing else ever had. I was hooked from then on, and have since leaned into songwriting as my way of understanding and processing my emotional world.

How has being featured in shows like Ginny & Georgia changed your connection with your audience?

Oh, it’s so fun—I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity. It’s been amazing to make new friends with people who are getting introduced to my music for the first time through the show and to see the people who have been with me since the beginning feeling as excited about it as I am. It’s really sweet to feel like it’s a collective win, not just mine, and we’re all in this together. I love the community that we are building.

Summer Nostalgia feels incredibly cinematic — you’ve said it moves like a movie, zooming in and out of moments. Did you structure the EP like a movie, with each song as a scene or chapter?

Thank you so much, I really appreciate you saying that. Yes, in my mind, I do see the whole EP like a movie. Certain songs like “Suburbia” and “Blueprint” are meant to offer a bird’s-eye view of the story, as time jumps from one place to another. The other songs are like little vignettes of significant moments in the relationship. The kinds of fragmented memories we all have: the first kiss, that one fight, a random, magical day where both nothing and everything happened… I love movies and TV shows that play with time and sequence in a non-linear way, because that’s more representative of how our minds work. I wanted the EP to really emulate what it feels like to go in and out of those memories and the directionless nature of that feeling.

How does “Suburbia” set the tone for the rest of the EP? Was it always the intended opening track?

Yes, I always knew “Suburbia” would be the opening track to the EP. It has this very “once upon a time…” vibe to it, where I’m giving a summary of what went down and where we’re at now. Even the way the song opens, it sounds very whimsical and fairytale-like. It’s as though we’re flying over the hometown, seeing these characters grow up, grow apart, and eventually find their way back to one another. I also wanted to start the EP with this song, because it means the first lyric you hear when you start the EP is, “‘Cause in my mind… it’s glorified…” which poses this question of, “how much am I romanticizing what happened, versus what really happened?” 

“Under the Influence” feels innocent, while “Underdog” is raw. Were these written at different times or from different emotional places?

Sonically, these two songs are very different, but at their core, they share a similar energy of naïveté and callowness. In each of these songs, the narrator is experiencing certain states of feeling for the first time. “Under the Influence” illustrates the recklessness with which we fall in love for the first time, where we’re like, “Ahhh, what’s the worst that happens, I get my heart broken? I’ll be fine.” Meanwhile, “Underdog” explores the frustration and angst that come when things aren’t working out between two people, learning how to process and communicate all these new emotions properly. So really, I think “rawness” and “innocence” have more in common than how they appear on the surface. 

You’re hitting the road with Amistat and Joshua Radin this fall — how are you feeling about bringing Summer Nostalgia to the stage? Do you approach live performance differently from recording?

I am soooo excited to play these songs live, and get to experience sharing them with people in real life. I do approach live performance very differently from recording, mainly because right now I perform solo, so I have to find ways to arrange each of the songs in a way where the emotion and story translate on a single instrument. My goal with a live performance is never to emulate the recording, because anyone can go and listen to that when they want to. When I’m performing live, I want to dig into the deepest part of the emotion of that song and try to instill that feeling within each person in the room. That’s what drives me to go see live music; to be moved and to experience that magical, intangible energy of a whole room feeling something deeply together. So when I’m the person on stage, my job is to try my best to create that kind of mood for the people who showed up. 

When people listen to Summer Nostalgia, what do you hope they feel or remember it when the final track ends?

The most important thing for me, any time I’m releasing music, is that I leave enough space for the listener to attach their own meaning, interpretation, and experience to the song. I chose to end the EP with “Sunburn” because that song concludes in an inconclusive way. It’s a song about the period of suspension when you’re forced to decide whether it’s time to part ways with a person or dive deeper into the relationship. I intentionally don’t answer that question, so it can be left up to the listener to decide what they think happens or want to happen. 

With the EP as a whole, I hope that it leaves the listener feeling moved and feeling a bit softer. The more we can encourage ourselves to lean into those soft emotions, the more empathy and compassion I feel we can give one another, and that’s something that’s really needed in the world right now. 

Looking ahead, what excites you most — the tour, new music, collaborations? Or is this a season where you’re just taking it all in?

I feel excited by the combination of it all! I am really looking forward to the tours this fall; they are going to be a blast. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be on the road and play in so many different cities this year. As much as I appreciate social media as a tool to connect with new people, there’s something special and irreplaceable about being in a room together.