Emily Portman: 'I was stung by AI-generated recordings, I'm now more determined than ever to show music is about human connection'
Yorkshire-based singer and songwriter Emily Portman was comfortable about turning 40 and growing older. "Then I had what you’d probably call the classic midlife crisis,” she chuckles.
She uprooted her life, moving from Liverpool to Sheffield, and after a decade of focusing on collaborative projects and working as a lecturer and voice teacher, she turned her attention back to writing solo again and is moving towards performing being a full-time focus.
“I had a health diagnosis as well which really made me have to confront my own mortality actually,” the 43-year-old says. “It all knocked me sideways and for me, returning to writing felt like a brilliant way of processing all of that.”
Emily, who grew up in Glastonbury, is releasing a solo album of original songs, titled Dominion of Spells. Central to the record is the idea of midlife metamorphosis – tales of women encountering challenges and shifts. It draws too on fairy tales and ballads, inspired by Emily’s lifelong fascination with folk stories and music, to explore themes including burnout, misogyny, motherhood, miscarriage and transformation.
One of the songs is written about her son and the pretend games that he plays. “A lot of the album is themed around stories of shapeshifting and transformation which is something that really fascinates me,” Emily says.
“Watching my son play all these games and turn into all these different characters made me realise the idea of shapeshifting comes naturally to kids. It can seem quite out there and strange to adults but when you chat to young kids you realise they’re always turning into different characters or creatures in their imagination."
The songs sit at the heart of Emily’s current tour, giving audiences an early glimpse of the album alongside her back catalogue. She performs with a line-up featuring guitarist Louis Campbell and Lucy Revis on cello and vocals.
The Dominion of Spells, she says, stands as a reaffirmation of human creativity and connection following the shock release of AI-generated recordings falsely attributed to her name last year. "If people listen to music and they can’t trust that it’s the real artist, then that sows seeds of doubt in people’s minds,” Emily says. “And that was a really horrible experience for me to know there were listeners who were not only embarrassed they had listened to music and believed it was me but also didn’t know if the next single was really me or not.”
“I’m not saying AI is all bad at all,” she continues. “I recognise the benefits and I know there are musicians using it creatively but I was stung by it. It made me more determined than ever to bring out this album, the real album and double down in my belief that music is and should be about human connection. This album is a real celebration of that and the power of real, human made music.”
- Emily Portman is at Open Source, Leeds on March 21 and The Greystones, Sheffield on March 22. For tickets, visit www.emilyportman.co.uk