Emily Barker
Acclaimed UK based singer-songwriter Emily Barker returns with her blissful and poignant new single ‘Return Me’. The track is Emily’s first release of new solo music since her exquisite 2017 album, ‘Sweet Kind of Blue’. As a restless musical adventurer and collaborator, Emily has passed through different musical whirlpools and friendships since her signature song ‘Nostalgia’ (theme of Wallander) significantly launched her career, with this new release finding its natural home with Thirty Tigers.
In recent times Emily has found herself gravitating back to themes that have haunted her lyrics since she first started writing songs. The climate crisis that dominated last year’s news brought burning questions back to the fore, and ‘Return Me’ marks her response – the yearning tug of home and family.
“I started to ask myself whether or not the path I am on is still the right one in light of the sombre and overwhelming revelation that our earth is very sick,” Emily said of the track. “Whether the journey is leading me where I want to go…whether it is time at last to return to my first home – a question that seems to have no answer, despite the number of songs I have dedicated to it.”
Listen to ‘Return Me’ HERE
Emily Barker’s last album ‘Sweet Kind of Blue’ was recorded at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis with Grammy-winning producer Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell, Margo Price) and an all-star cast of Memphis session players. The success of the album, with its seamless mix of soul, blues, country and folk influences, and the globe-trotting tours to support it helped land Emily the accolade of UK Artist of the Year at the 2018 UK Americana Awards held at Hackney Empire in London.
Emily is perhaps best known as the writer and performer of the award-winning theme to BBC crime drama Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh. She has released music as a solo artist as well as with various bands including The Red Clay Halo, Vena Portae and Applewood Road (with whom she released a remarkable album of original songs recorded live around a single microphone, which was dubbed “flawless” by The Sunday Times) and has written for film, including composing her first feature film soundtrack (for Jake Gavin’s lauded debut feature Hector starring Peter Mullan and Keith Allen).