Empress Of: "Standard"
To craft a decently hooky pop song, one to blare out of club speakers and car radios, given the established templates of lyrical tropes and synth patches, isn’t that difficult. To craft a truly memorable pop song, though, one that gets under the skin and scratches something deep and real, is precious and rare. Lorely Rodriguez, aka Empress Of, has that true pop gift. With her clear, emotive voice and attention to every detail of melody and structure, her lyrics smart and often funny, the Brooklyn native’s work, which she produces herself, is precise in a way that immediately hits the marrow. She’s said that her imminent debut album, Me, is intensely personal, a shift from the abstract opacity of her earlier work.
“Standard”—like Rodriguez herself, who started writing songs at 13, making beats at 17, and who released her first finished work to immediate critical acclaim at 22—is anything but. From the moment the beat kicks hard to establish the chorus and Rodriguez’s bell of a voice shifts to mezzo-soprano range, “Standard” is all goosebumps and shivers, a sense of hollow absence under the sternum. The layers of vocals and synths draw in and draw back at the sharpest times and Rodriguez’s lyrics, about the diffuse line between longing and greed, are meant to hit home with anyone who’s ever been human. “Standard” is proof that Empress Of is a pop project heads above the pack, a project not just to watch but to indulge in, to explore, to carry with you etched on the bone.
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