Lorely Rodriguez appears onscreen for our Zoom call from Los Angeles. She beams in from her home, which she claims is a mess. The singer, songwriter, and producer, who releases music as Empress Of, attended the Billboard Women in Music Awards the night before and hasn’t had a chance to tidy. “It looks like a hurricane came through here. I had hair and makeup and ring lights,” she explains. Rodriguez is bemused that showing up camera-ready on red carpets is part of her job now, but if performing the...
- 3/22/2024
- by Beverly Bryan
- Rollingstone.com
Empress Of’s For Your Consideration is a celebration of Lorely Rodriguez’s voice as both an artist and vocalist. Where a similar artist might use synth pads as musical accompaniment, Rodriguez inserts the hum of her own voice. On the title track of her fourth studio album, the Honduran-American singer rearranges her breathing into a shuffling rhythm, while “Femenine” samples her vocals to serve various functions, including as percussion.
For Your Consideration can’t be classified as hyperpop per se, but the album’s sonic manipulations and their queer implications owe something to the subgenre. “Femenine”—the title of which subverts the Spanish language’s binary gender system, ending with an ambiguous “e” instead of a masculine “o” or feminine “a”—is about a woman’s desire to dominate a man. The song’s angular melody is pitched down, often mid-syllable, to emulate a masculine voice before Rodriguez responds in her natural tone.
For Your Consideration can’t be classified as hyperpop per se, but the album’s sonic manipulations and their queer implications owe something to the subgenre. “Femenine”—the title of which subverts the Spanish language’s binary gender system, ending with an ambiguous “e” instead of a masculine “o” or feminine “a”—is about a woman’s desire to dominate a man. The song’s angular melody is pitched down, often mid-syllable, to emulate a masculine voice before Rodriguez responds in her natural tone.
- 3/18/2024
- by Steve Erickson
- Slant Magazine
Empress Of has announced her fourth studio album: For Your Consideration, due March 22nd. Today, along with the announcement, she shared the single “What’s Love” featuring Muna.
For Your Consideration will be Empress Of’s first full-length release since 2020’s I’m Your Empress Of, and follows 2022’s Save Me EP. Spanning 11 tracks, the new record’s press release explains that it will be “a bi-lingual album that embraces camp and fantasy playing with the idea of Hollywood.”
In a statement, Empress Of’s Lorely Rodriguez explained that the title of the album is a reference to an ex-lover. “I was in love with a director and he was announcing his ‘For Your Consideration’ campaign for the Oscars,” she said. “He took me up on a hill and said he was emotionally unavailable and he kind of broke my heart. I went into the studio that day and we wrote...
For Your Consideration will be Empress Of’s first full-length release since 2020’s I’m Your Empress Of, and follows 2022’s Save Me EP. Spanning 11 tracks, the new record’s press release explains that it will be “a bi-lingual album that embraces camp and fantasy playing with the idea of Hollywood.”
In a statement, Empress Of’s Lorely Rodriguez explained that the title of the album is a reference to an ex-lover. “I was in love with a director and he was announcing his ‘For Your Consideration’ campaign for the Oscars,” she said. “He took me up on a hill and said he was emotionally unavailable and he kind of broke my heart. I went into the studio that day and we wrote...
- 1/24/2024
- by Jo Vito
- Consequence - Music
“I have so many crazy stories from that tour that half of them are blocked out from my memory,” Banoffee says over the phone from Melbourne. She’s recalling her stint as a member of Charli Xcx’s backing band in 2018, when the British pop artist was opening for Taylor Swift’s Reputation Tour – a kind of synth-pop Russian-doll situation in which Banoffee found herself performing for as many as 75,000 fans a night. “I’d like to think I’ve compartmentalized it for my own sanity,” she adds. “Once you’ve seen one sports stadium,...
- 3/4/2020
- by Claire Shaffer
- Rollingstone.com
Lykke Li didn’t always intend to host her own music festival. But when she partnered with her friend Yola Jimenez to form a mezcal company – based on a family recipe from Jimenez’s Oaxacan grandfather – the two began to promote it by hosting “informal music gatherings” at Li’s house.
“I met Yola maybe five, six years ago, and then it took us a couple years to get [the company] off the ground,” the Swedish singer/songwriter explains. In addition to her home, Li hosted Yola Mezcal events in what she...
“I met Yola maybe five, six years ago, and then it took us a couple years to get [the company] off the ground,” the Swedish singer/songwriter explains. In addition to her home, Li hosted Yola Mezcal events in what she...
- 8/22/2019
- by Claire Shaffer
- Rollingstone.com
The L.A.-based singer-songwriter Lorely Rodriguez, better known as Empress Of, reprises her masterful synth-pop track “When I’m With Him” with a dramatic interpretation by indie pop visionary Perfume Genius. Pulled from her 2018 sophomore album, Us, Rodriguez’s misleadingly sunshine-laden production is cast by shadows under Mike Hadreas’ touch; sung in both English and Spanish, Hadreas’ slow rolling vocals add a more chilling timbre to Rodriguez’s lyrics, reflecting her dwindling interest in a relationship that might as well be on life support.
“Dime dónde voy/Dime dónde fui,...
“Dime dónde voy/Dime dónde fui,...
- 1/30/2019
- by Suzy Exposito
- Rollingstone.com
Three years ago, the producer and singer Lorely Rodriguez capped a steady rise to indie pop almost-stardom with Me, her precocious debut album under the moniker Empress Of. Contained and sharp, it layered diary musings over self-produced electronic flair, winning the bilingual performer praise and a guest spot on avant-pop artist Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound. If Me was unrelenting in its depictions of Rodriguez’s innerworkings, her second album, Us, isn’t so much a turn towards extroversion as a scaling back: safer and less urgent, Us often feels...
- 10/25/2018
- by Jackson Howard
- Rollingstone.com
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