Photos Lori M. Gottschling / Story Luna Bacce
Simple yet delicate, carried by acoustic guitar and a versatile voice that moves with effortless lightness, singer-songwriter Lee Emi introduces her new single, “Smoke in Empty Rooms.” The song unfolds gently, but beneath its serene surface lies a subtly mournful and timeless lyric about loneliness, distance, and the fear of a loss without a goodbye.
“This song came from the depths of the COVID-19 lockdown, unable to go to a loved one’s funeral, desperately trying to find human connection through FaceTime calls, listening to my dad cry on the phone and wishing I could be with him, knowing that I couldn’t. ‘Smoke in Empty Rooms’ is about that feeling of isolation and the fear of losing someone you’ll never get to say goodbye to,” she said.
The song speaks to a sense of anxiety and isolation. Its emotional world takes shape in the quiet details of everyday life, with a morning slipping away in bed, daylight gradually shifting across the wall, and thoughts growing louder in the absence of other people.
“I get anxious on my own / And it gets worse when I’m alone / Won’t you take me somewhere else / Where I cannot hurt myself / Anywhere / I’d go anywhere,” she sings in a chorus that condenses that anguish into a few lines. The words inevitably evoke quarantine, but they can also speak to any period of vulnerability when solitude amplifies intrusive thoughts and the need to get away becomes urgent.
The song is accompanied by a music video that serves as an extension of that feeling. Lee Emi appears with her guitar in a room overtaken by smoke as the furniture disappears and shifts around her. Mannequins take the place of people who are not really there, while an analog telephone becomes the only visible connection to the outside world.
“Smoke in Empty Rooms” will appear on “DESTROY EVERYTHING,” Lee Emi’s debut solo album, which is set for release in October this year. The title might suggest a record dominated by destruction, but it uses destruction as a step toward rebuilding. Across eleven songs, the artist examines identity, family relationships, illness, grief, and the need to let go of ideas that no longer allow us to move forward.
The project was written amid several experiences that transformed her life, including the pandemic, a diagnosis of a rare kidney disease, and her search for belonging as a Korean adoptee raised in Michigan.
Emilee Petersmark, better known as Lee Emi, has served as principal songwriter, co-vocalist, and guitarist for The Crane Wives, releasing five studio albums and touring throughout the United States and Europe. Along the way, she collected the deeply personal songs that would eventually take shape as her first solo project.
Lee Emi is currently in remission from her kidney disease and says the past four years have been an intense process of caring for herself mentally, emotionally, and physically. That experience informs the duality between darkness and hope that runs throughout the album.
“Smoke in Empty Rooms” is beautiful in its precise simplicity, its delicate notes, and the expansive atmosphere through which Lee Emi brings her most private struggles into the everyday. Through vivid imagery and intimate songwriting, she turns personal isolation into something that feels unexpectedly collective.
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