Empress Of at Roadrunner, 9/26/22
Take a second to picture me in eighth grade: quiet, nerdy, permanent retainers cemented to my top and bottom teeth, scrolling through my suggested Apple Music in search of something to listen to. My thumb lands on this playlist whose title escapes me, but all I remember is that it had Years and Years on it (a band I had just started listening to), so I decided to hit play on the playlist and see what happened. I’m not sure exactly when Empress Of’s “How Do You Do It” started playing, but I do remember being entranced by the song. What on Earth was this opening synth line? This thumping bass, these pounding drums: how did she make them gel so well together? And what was she the empress of, exactly?
I had to do more research. I went to Google and discovered that Empress Of was the project of then-25 year old Lorely Rodriguez: Honduran-American, sole songwriter and producer of her 2015 debut album Me, citing Björk and the Cocteau Twins alongside Mariah Carey and Britney Spears as her influences. I had never read about anyone like her at that point in my life, and I remember feeling an instant kinship: my Puerto Rican mom listened to mainly top 40 hits and my white dad listened to a lot of indie music from his childhood and the present day, and up until that point I had considered each world as separate. And yet here was this woman, meshing these two spheres of my life into danceable, RnB-tinged electropop that still wore its weirdness on its sleeve. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she reminded me of myself, or rather what I could become.
Becoming a fan of hers wasn’t hard after that. I started listening to Me alongside her earlier projects, and as she released new albums over the years to come (2018’s Us and 2020’s I’m Your Empress Of) I listened to those too. So when she announced that she was opening for Canadian pop princess Carly Rae Jepsen at the Roadrunner this past Monday, in support of her new EP Save Me, I knew that I had to be there.
Thankfully, Empress Of’s set was everything I could ask for as a fan for and more. After being introduced by her DJ, Juli Ronderos of Salt Cathedral, as the “queen of slay”, Empress Of bounded out and launched right into my favorite track from her recent EP, the titular Save Me, an electropop banger with stabs of dramatic violins throughout. After this, she immediately segued into Give Me Another Chance, the powerful, thumping lead single from her 2020 project.
What I didn’t realize about Empress Of’s performing style at the time was just how high-energy she was on stage, but that night there was no way I could have missed this fact. Rodriguez pulled out dance move after dance move for each song; whipping her long curly hair around at every chance she got and giving the crowd exactly what they came to see. I’m glad that I didn’t have to worry about whether or not Empress Of was getting her cardio in while on tour, because the rest of the crowd and I could tell she left her all on the stage that night. In fact, other audience members were catching her infectious energy and dancing along, among them the millennial couple standing right in front of me after I exited the press pit.
Thankfully, Empress Of didn’t skip out on her older material, and tracks such as Water Water, When I’m With Him, and Woman Is A Word, a B-side feminist anthem from 2015 were revistited. Otherwise, the set was mostly music from her latest EP and her last album from 2020, Dance For You, Wild Girl, and Love Is A Drug being particular standouts from her set. She also performed a cover of MARINA’S Man’s World at the beginning of her set, which was a welcome surprise for the Carly-MARINA fans in the crowd.
Rodriguez closed the set with Note To Self, a collaboration between her and producer Jim-E Stack for his 2020 album Ephemera, a short yet smooth and focused track about not letting life throw its worst at you. It also opens Jim-E Stack’s album, and in a way is the perfect metaphor of what Empress Of brought to the table as Carly’s opener: just as Note To Self energized the listener for the rest of the music to come, so did Empress Of (and quite successfully, I might add). As she left the stage to peals of applause, I could tell she had made her mark on more than a few Carly fans, as well as got them hyped for what was to come.
