Born in Vinterbro, Norway, Emelie Hollow released her first song with Universal Music at just 12 years old after winning a singing competition run by the Norwegian radio station P4, and nine years after the three-year-old Emelie sang in public for the first time at her cousin’s baptism with what can only be described as an altogether original musical composition.

“I was a really shy kid, so it was pretty out of character for me, but that maybe also says something about this great need to talk to the world that suddenly came along and overruled everything.”

She grew up in a home surrounded by music. At a young age she learned to play the piano and then the cello on top of also singing in a choir. Her dad, a New Zealander, was into rock and bands like Iron Maiden, while her mum was more interested in classical music and singer-songwriters. Music has always played a key role in Emelie’s life, and in the twelve years since she wrote her first song, she has developed her own unique style characterised by musicality, beautiful vocals and her extremely personal lyrics. She’s said in interviews that she was a Swiftie from a young age and was drawn to and inspired by the rawness and brutal honesty of Swift’s lyrics. For a then ten-year-old Emelie, it was comforting to know that she wasn’t the only one going through all these complicated feelings.

At 18, she was a participant on TV 2’s The Stream, and even though there maybe aren’t many people today who remember her for that, it was an experience that solidified music as the path that she wanted to follow. Six years on and she is an established artist in her own right with a unique ability to write songs that mix melancholy and euphoria, where raw and stripped-down tunes evolve into majestic orchestral pieces. Watching an Emelie Hollow concert is a moving experience – few artists can bring such a hush over a venue and give goosebumps to their entire audience.

Over the years, she has become a sought-after songwriter, with her commissions taking her to cities such as Stockholm, Copenhagen, London and Nashville, and she has been part of countless collaborations with the likes of Dagny, Alan Walker, Ruben, Seeb, Ruben, Emma Steinbakken, Victoria Nadine, Alexander Oscar, Jesper Jenset, TIX and Skaar to name just a few. Emelie and Alan Walker’s LILY, which she wrote and was a featuring artist on, has been streamed more than three billion times globally. Besides Taylor Swift, she cites Adele, Ane Brun and Norah Jones as some of her inspirations. After she released her first EP in 2019, followed by a by:Larm concert at Kulturkirken Jakob in Oslo, described by VG as “shamelessly brilliant”, Emelie released her debut album Half the Story in 2021. The record is made up of three chapters, focusing on the different aspects of a break-up, and took people by storm and even saw Aftenposten claim that Emelie Hollow “could easily be our next great pop export”.

She has described songwriting as a form of therapy and a way of expressing things she has no other way of expressing. She sees herself as an “extroverted introvert” and almost always has a book in her hands. Her love of literature led to her starting Literature Studies at the University of Oslo in autumn 2019. A dream of hers is to one day hold a concert at the Oslo Opera House, and another is to learn more about producing music. Her greatest dream, however, is to create something timeless that people will still be listening to in twenty, thirty or forty years.