Emei

Emei wields a nimble, crystalline vocal style that powers her energetic, dramatic alternative pop toward the strains of ordinary life. Early recognition arrived through teenage appearances on Chinese reality competitions, after which the New Jersey native captured broad attention with the 2022 release “Late to the Party.” Her debut EP, End of an Era, arrived later that year, soon followed by further tracks such as “Scatterbrain,” which registered eight-digit streaming totals in 2023.

Born Emily Li in New Jersey to Chinese immigrant parents, she first gained notice at fifteen as a contestant on Chinese Idol and finished in third place. She next appeared on the Chinese edition of Dancing with the Stars before withdrawing from entertainment to study cognitive science at Yale. While in New Haven she sang with an a cappella ensemble and formed a band with fellow residents of Timothy Dwight College.

After graduation she moved to Los Angeles to sharpen her sound and stage identity, selecting the name Emei as a fusion of her nickname Emmy and her Chinese name An Mei. Her first single, 2021’s “Distracted,” was a collaboration with LEMIX for Joyride Music Group; she followed it with the independent track “Better People to Leave on Read.” The sleek, open January 2022 single “Late to the Party,” containing the line “21 without a Grammy or degree,” spread rapidly across social and streaming platforms when she was twenty-two. A series of further self-released singles joined that track on the October 2022 EP End of an Era.

In January 2023 she performed at an NBA halftime show in Los Angeles, and a month later issued “Scatterbrain,” which exceeded her earlier streaming marks. She sustained the combination of vulnerable writing and striding, propulsive pop on later songs, among them September 2023’s “Don’t Know About the World.”