Emily Blue


Emily Caroline Otnes, known as Emily Blue, is an American singer-songwriter and the lead singer of Champaign-based indie rock band Tara Terra. She was born and raised in Urbana, but is now based in Chicago.

Life and career

1994–2015: Early life and career beginnings

Emily Blue was born as Emily Caroline Otnes to Norwegian parents on June 28, 1994, in Urbana, Illinois. She wrote her first song when she was 13, and got motivated to become a songwriter. She says her mother was the guiding figure in her home, and that she inspired her by taking a powerful female role in the household.
She went to a high school in the same area as that of Colin Althaus and Joey Buttlar, and met in the early 2010s and started making music together. The three later joined Nick Soria to form an indie rock band named Tara Terra, and were later joined by Evan Opitz.
Meanwhile, Blue achieved local success with her Urbana-Champagne band Emily Otnes and the Weekdays. The band was active from 2013 to 2014.
Tara Terra released their debut album, Daughter, on August 30, 2014. Blue worked as a live performance host for Audiotree and interviewed many artists on behalf of the Chicago record label, who she later went on to sign for as a solo artist.

2016–2017: Solo career and ''Where's Your Light?''

Blue describes the beginning of her solo music career as an accident.
In 2016, while touring with Tara Terra and planning for the band's second studio album, Blue went through a mentally difficult time and felt the need to express her thoughts about womanhood, rape culture, and trauma. According to her, she packed those emotions that she felt in song form, and later produced the tracks she created and got ready to release them.
Blue's first single, "No Pain", was released on August 6, 2016, along with the announcement of the Illinois singer-songwriter's debut EP. The lyrics of "No Pain" discussed rape culture in a very poignant and daring manner that caught the attention of music reviewers.
The debut EP was eventually released on November 4, 2016. It was titled Another Angry Woman, with its lyrics speaking of subjects considered taboo, but conveyed with a mellow indie pop sound. The EP's title got its name from society's alleged response to women who were abused or assaulted. According to the singer, it "is a title that intends to take a critical stance on our culture's lack of empathy towards survivors". The album was positively acclaimed and was labeled as "unapologetic pop" for its reluctance to stay within the limits of topics that it is considered alright to speak about. All the income from the album sales and merchandise for Another Angry Woman went to RACES organization. On the official tracklist of the release, the five songs featured on the EP are joined by three interview tracks, titled "Anastasia", "Gene" and "Christine", all one minute in length, making this release an LP rather than an extended play. After the release of the album, Blue confessed that she had planned a different debut release, but scrapped it.
Blue's post-release touring was cut short as Tara Terra planned ahead for their upcoming 2017 album, Where's Your Light?, which was announced only weeks after the release of Blue's debut non-profit album. During the run-up to the album, Emily Blue released two surprising tracks which showed a drastic change in the singer's genre. The two-sided single, "Blackberries // Rico Acid", included both tracks, and was released officially on April 7, 2017. It showcased Blue's musical diversity and shifted from her regular indie sound to fun, up-tempo pop. Blue's single "Blackberries" became largely popular on music streaming service Spotify, and currently has over 1 million streams.
Three days after the release of the soloist's double-sided single, on April 10, 2017, the lead single from the upcoming Tara Terra album was released, titled "Like the Clothes". Huffington Post praised the track, labeling it as the band " off their rhythmic chemistry underneath Blue's falsettos and Althaus's bright guitar riffs." The Illinois band released the rock album, which was recorded in Audiotree prior to the release of Blue's Another Angry Woman, on May 31, 2017. It was described as having a harder sound than their 2014 release and received mostly positive reviews.
By the end of 2017, Tara Terra went on an indefinite hiatus, which in turn allowed Emily Blue to embark on a new direction in her solo music career.

2018: Musical rebirth: ''*69 EP''

Following the release of Tara Terra's second studio album, Blue went on to concentrate on her solo career. She decided to experiment with new, out-of-the-box musical genres, and her musical style started to revolve around 80's music revival.
Borrowing elements from 80's synth-pop, the glitch movement and industrial music, Blue started working on new material that continued the musical development that she has shown in her 2017 solo release.
On April 6, 2018, almost precisely a year after the release of her two most recent singles, Blue released "Cellophane", an experimental and heavily synthesized pop track that presented the change that Blue has gone through. The song later turned out to be the first single from Emily Blue's *69 EP, which was initially released on August 8, 2018.
The second song from this extended play, "Microscope", was released five days before the EP was out, along with a minute-long excerpt from the dance pop track "Waterfallz", which eventually was not an official single from the album. The experimental pop sound on the EP, which featured a cohesive yet very diverse style palette, was described by the Chicago Reader as "a glossy, idea-packed EP whose five tunes burst with pulsing electro beats and walloping synth-pop choruses". It was also said that a few listens to Blue's "Microscope" and "Falling in Love", "make it clear that she can translate her razor-sharp hooks into any musical language". On the album's re-release, three songs were added to the tracklist, making *69 the singer's second EP to eventually become a full-length studio album.

2019–present: Tara Terra reformation and ''ICONIC''

On January 10, 2019, Blue commercially released Emily Blue on Audiotree Live, her first live album, including all songs from the original *69 release, as well as three of her earlier single releases.
On March 8 of the same year, Blue released a pop-rock cover of Blondie's "Call Me", just three weeks before the release of her band's comeback single "Ithaca", which was revealed on April 1, 2019, premiering on Atwood Magazine. Along with Tara Terra, Blue released a five-track extended play entitled Couch Surfer, Lover, on April 7, 2019. The band went on to perform a short tour, which upon ending allowed the group's front-woman to work on her new musical style.
In mid-June 2019, to build up to Blue's upcoming single, "Bad Decisions", Blue hosted a contest to decide which two bad decisions she should make, titled #DecisionSubmissions. The contest's results saw her tattooing the word "impulsive" on her thigh and eating a birthday cake with her bare hands on the train in California. The song was made available on all platforms on June 28, 2019, the day of Emily Blue's 25th birthday. The cover art for the album depicted the singer mooning to the camera in front of a McDonald's branch. The controversy surrounding this cover art was key in the track's rise to success on Spotify, where it reached 100,000 streams in just over one month. The song was notable for being a shift back in the singer's career route, displaying her indie-pop roots but with musical inspiration taken from MARINA.
On October 11, 2019, the singer released an indie-metal fusion track titled "17" on Spotify. Due to an audio error, the song was taken down but brought back up shortly after. The song was described both by reviewers and fans and by Emily Blue herself as inspired by Lana Del Rey, who had released her critically acclaimed album Norman Fucking Rockwell! just one month prior. The song builds up from a very soothing indie sound with keyboard-based instrumentals to a heavy metal riff, which carries the chorus which repeats twice, eventually ending with a glitch pop sound reminiscent of *69. The song was subject to an internet challenge on Instagram titled #17CHALLENGE, in which fans had to upload a video of them headbanging to the song's refrain and tag the singer in the post.
On October 14, 2019, Blue announced an 18+ LGBT music festival organised by her, titled ICONIC. The festival, which hosted by Becca Brown, will took place on December 6, including performances from Chicago band Flora, artists Carlile, SuperKnova, Thair and GirlBoifriend. According to the festival's site, a portion of the proceeds will go to nonprofit organization Brave Space Alliance, a pro-trans rights organization.
On November 8, 2019, Blue won first place in Chicago Reader's year-end Best Pop Artist award.
In 2020, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Blue launched an initiative entitled "Artists for Global Giving". The concept of the project was that artists in lockdown make tracks from quarantine within 24 hours, with all tracks compiled into a mixtape, the proceeds of which go to Covid-19 relief funds. Many artists promoted the concept on social media, with the process being dubbed "#1DaySongChallenge". The first volume of the project, "Artists for Global Giving | Mixtape #1" was released on March 25, 2020. "Social Distance", the fourth track on the album, is performed by Blue herself.
Blue released a new single titled "Aperture" on 8 May.

Personal life

Blue resides in Chicago, Illinois. She is a member of the LGBT community and an avid supporter of LGBT rights and pro-LGBT organizations.
In 2020, in light of the killing of George Floyd, Blue was highly active on social media in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Discography

Studio albums

Released: November 11, 2016 /
Label: Audiotree /
Format: LP, digital download
Originally released: August 8, 2018 /
Re-released: August 19, 2019 /
Label: Audiotree /
Format: LP, digital download

Live albums

Released: January 10, 2019 /
Label: Audiotree /
Format: Digital download

Singles