Emma Wallace's Fairy Tale Launch Party

This is my first time being part of an album launch and I'm delighted to introduce y'all to Emma Wallace. Her album "The Stuff of Fairy Tales" is available beginning today and across the blogosphere, we're throwing Emma a virtual album launch party! Christianna from The Girl with the Blue Bow has posted an album review of "The Stuff of Fairy Tales" and is coordinating the party here.  Laura from The Blog of Worldly Delights is doing a Q&A with Emma and hosting a giveaway here and Erica from Sweets and Hearts is doing a fashion feature here.  On Friday, Kate from Scathingly Brilliant will be doing an animation to one of Emma's new tunes and Amber from The Girly Bird will be doing a music feature on Emma.

It has been a pleasure getting to know Emma and learning about the influence that literature and stories have had on her music and creative process.  It was quite intriguing to hear how she interprets fairy tales and how it translates into her songs.  Read more about Emma below and please enjoy a sample from her new album.

A lifelong lover of fairy tales and a constantly avid reader, it was the books of Emma's childhood that have shaped the landscape of her imagination.  Her favourites, including Anne of Green Gables and The Four Story Mistake, have shaped her personal writing style and added a dash of humor and light-heartedness that comes across in her music.

In creating this album, Emma was able to incorporate a handful of songs that she hadn't recorded yet that included elements of fairy tales in them.  She also asked fans on Facebook for fairy tale suggestions and ended up choosing a mix - some that are more familiar like "Snow White" and "Cinderella" and others that are a little less known like "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" and "The Princess Who Never Laughed."

One of the most unique experiences in getting to know Emma was hearing about her composition process.  She writes conversationally, her songs reflecting what she believes the characters themselves would have sung.  Emma has a soft spot for the underdogs of fairy tales and the open vulnerability and exuberance of those characters shows up in her other songs and piano compositions.  One of Emma's favourite characters from the fairy tale lore is Gerda from "The Snow Queen."  As Emma explained to me, "[Gerda's] really plucky and focused; just a common village girl who does amazing things.  I think the song I wrote for her "You're the Only One For Me" is my favorite of the album, maybe because I resonated so much with her!"

On addressing the darker and crueler side of fairy tales, Emma acknowledges that not all fairy tales have "fairy tale endings."  In Emma's words, "The great thing about being the creator of a story is that you get to choose which parts of a story to represent and, while there are many, many amazing songwriters who like to talk about the darker parts of life, I choose to keep a thread of happiness and optimism throughout. I even ended up scrapping a song from the album because it was too despairing; I want my songs to encourage the listeners to enjoy life!  That 'rose-colored glasses' perspective is something that dictates my writing."

Congratulations to Emma on her album launch!  Please feel check out her work on the following sources:

Website

Blog

Twitter

Facebook

iTunes

Amazon