With the release of her album Crushed, out today, Emma Gabriel proves that the new wave of Ottawa RnB starts with her.
Across seven tracks, Gabriel dives into life as a teenager. And that’s fresh for her—the alternative RnB singer is only 20 years old.
Emma Gabriel releases her new album Crushed. Photo provided.
Gabriel honed her craft at City Fidelia’s mentorship program, where she met her producers and learned how to promote herself as an artist.
“They taught me so much about promo,” says Gabriel. “They taught me what it’s like to build an artist brand, and I’ve put all that into the rollouts I’ve done for 2025.”
City Fidelia’s program gave Gabriel the chance to sit in a room with a producer and co-create the album’s beats. The production comes through as one of the highlights of the album, maybe its biggest strength. The beats also influenced Emma’s lyrics, as she would often write lyrics that sounded like the backing track—words matching the melody.
Emma Gabriel. Photo provided.
“Six of the seven tracks are made from the ground up,” says Gabriel. “Some of them, I had inspiration for, some of them I just walked into the studio and said this is how I’m feeling today, and we’d work on something together.”
The only song that wasn’t produced with Emma in the room was “Should Have Been Us,” which she took from one of her favourite beat packs she was sent in 2023. She says she wrote that song while working as a fundraiser on the street.
As for the response to Gabriel’s quick rise in the RnB scene? It’s been “really good,” she says.
“I released “Sunrise” last month and people loved it, and the rollout for it was great,” says Gabriel. “I’ve had good responses to the singles but I don’t think people will know what to expect until they hear it … I want people to really, really listen, especially on the lyrics. I think people will focus on the production or on the melodies, but with a project like this, where I have emotionally deep songs, I want people to sit down and dissect the lyrics.”
Emma Gabriel. Photo provided.
“Crushed, as a project, is all about me getting into my 20s,” says Gabriel. “I started writing when I was freshly 18, up until the last song on the album, “Whiplash,” which I wrote a few months ago. Each song encapsulates some of the stuff I was going through and how I was navigating that.”
Here, Emma takes us through each track on the EP.
“Crushed”
“It’s about me discovering that I had obsessive compulsive disorder. I really didn’t know what I was going through but I knew that I was pushing people away. The vocals are specifically pitched down my vocals to mimic a monster sound because the lyrics are pleading for somebody to not run away, but you’re presenting a monster voice which is scaring them away.”
“Toxic”
“‘Toxic’ isn’t based off my personality. It’s basically an alter ego to be so stark of a contrast between ‘Crushed’ and ‘Toxic.'”
“Nasty”
“When I write music, I listen to the sounds and the melodies that I create sound like words. So, the melody sounds like the word “nasty” so I put “nasty” there. It’s the only word that sounds exactly like the melody. I guess I have to write a song about being nasty, I guess it’s what I have to do.”
“Should Have Been Us”
“It was kind of an exercise at first. I was essentially recording these little ideas for the beat while I was on the street working as a fundraiser. So in between pitching people, I was recording voice memos. I battled with myself about putting the song on the project, because I wanted every song to be produced from the ground up and I wanted to be in the room with each track. But this one, I just loved it so much.”
“Sunrise”
“I wrote this at a bar at 1am. I had just finished recording “Should Have Been Us.” My boyfriend worked at a bar at the time, and my car was broken down, so he would drive me home every night. “Sunrise” was a beat I’d worked on the week before. I wrote the entire verse and hook in 10 minutes at the bar.”
“Lifeline”
“‘Lifeline’ for me is definitely a favourite for me because it felt very vulnerable for me. And yes, the melody kind of dictated where the lyrics went, but by the time I was finished writing, I realized this was really how I was feeling. It encapsulated some of the issues that I had dealt with growing up and through my teenage years.”
“Whiplash”
“This is my secret track. I want to give listeners whiplash. That song is about some of the struggles I’ve had as I started developing OCD. I started having these outbursts and I didn’t know how to describe them, and so with ‘Whiplash’ it’s kind of all the stages of those outbursts.”
Crushed is out today on all streaming platforms.
