Emei

New Jersey, Shanghai, New Haven

Emei is Emily Li, born on 3 October 1999 in New Jersey to Chinese immigrant parents. The stage name is a splice of her Chinese name, An Mei, and the English nickname Emmy. She started singing at nine on a diet of Amy Winehouse, Ella Fitzgerald, the Jackson 5, Sara Bareilles and Taylor Swift — a mix that explains both the big-lunged vocal and the conversational writing.

The unusual part of the biography is what happened next. As a teenager she competed on the Chinese edition of Dancing with the Stars, and at fifteen she took a year out of school to place third on Chinese Idol. That is an early, televised apprenticeship in performing under pressure, and she has credited it since with preparing her for the industry.

She then did the opposite of what a reality-show finalist is supposed to do, and went to Yale, singing in the a cappella group Mixed Company and graduating in 2022 with a degree in cognitive science. The music career started in parallel rather than afterwards: her single "Late to the Party" went viral in 2022, reaching 5.5 million streams and 9.5 million views across TikTok and Instagram Reels, and the debut EP End of an Era followed the same year.

Four EPs and no album

Emei has built everything so far on short releases. End of an Era in 2022 was followed by Scatterbrain in October 2023, a deluxe edition of it in July 2024, and RABBITHOLE on 15 November 2024. The earlier records came out through Amuse, which kept her operating independently while the streaming numbers grew; Melodic Magazine reported Scatterbrain past 70 million Spotify streams by late 2024.

RABBITHOLE was the first time she wrote to a concept. Loosely hung on Alice in Wonderland, it dealt with anxiety and insecurity in deliberately plain language, and she described it at the time as a project she had to get through — a reset of the sound and the visuals rather than another batch of singles. The accompanying RABBITHOLE Tour ran from 4 February to 5 April 2025 across 37 cities in Europe and North America, opening in Cologne on 4 February, hitting Paris on 18 February, Dublin on 21 February and London on 26 February before the North American leg took in Seattle on 8 March, Chicago on 16 March, Boston on 21 March, New York on 22 March and Los Angeles on 5 April. Haiden Henderson and Ashley Mehta opened.

There were collaborations alongside it: "Hold On Me" with NOTD in November 2023, "SUNNYD" with Whethan in October 2024, and a Los Angeles Clippers halftime slot in January 2023.

Night at the Opera

The record that changed her standing is Night at the Opera, released on 12 June 2026 through Atlantic Records in partnership with Ricky Reed's Nice Life Recording Company. It was made with Reed producing and Justin Tranter writing, and it is openly a grief record: her grandmother died in 2024, several close friendships ended around the same time, and she has called it the product of one of the toughest years of her life.

The theatrical frame is not an affectation. She grew up going to Broadway annually and was shaped by West Side Story, and she has described the EP as a homecoming to that. The title track came from seeing an opera on her birthday and wanting a production as dramatic as what she had just watched — organ, sweeping strings, no restraint. "Ginger Tea" is written for her grandmother. "Bloom", written in the darkest stretch of that year, is her own favourite.

Two things seem to have unlocked the performances. Reed kept asking her a blunt question — she can sing, so why was she not singing — and her manager kept testing whether the songs sounded like Emily rather than a constructed Emei persona. The result is less curated than RABBITHOLE and considerably louder vocally. She has also drawn a line around how much of it she will explain, telling The AU Review that she does not think she owes everything to the world.

Critical reaction has been warm without being unanimous. Schön! read it as a voyage into her emotional interior; Ones To Watch framed it around adulthood and grieving. Among listeners the title track and "Bloom" are the consensus peaks, with some arguing the rest of the EP does not quite match them and others calling it her most mature work.

Where she is in October 2026

She is mid-campaign rather than between campaigns. "Molly" arrived on 6 October 2026 via Atlantic and Nice Life — a galloping guitar figure under a vocal that moves from flutter to a held crescendo, built out of a backstage pep talk given to someone else and to herself. It is the first of a two-track release, Night at the Opera: Intermission, due on 23 October 2026, which lands while she is still on the road.

The tour is an 18-date North American headline run that opened on 30 September 2026 at Bimbo's 365 Club in San Francisco and finishes on 30 October at The Novo in Los Angeles. Between those points: Wonder Ballroom in Portland on 2 October, the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver on 3 October, the Showbox in Seattle on 4 October, The Complex in Salt Lake City on 6 October, Summit in Denver on 8 October, the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis on 10 October, Thalia Hall in Chicago on 11 October, the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto on 13 October, two nights at Sony Hall in New York on 16 and 17 October, Paradise Rock Club in Boston on 19 October, Theatre of Living Arts in Philadelphia on 21 October, the Lincoln Theatre in Washington on 22 October, Buckhead Theatre in Atlanta on 24 October, Scoot Inn in Austin on 26 October and The Echo Lounge & Music Hall in Dallas on 27 October.

Support rotates: googly eyes on the earlier dates including Vancouver, Minneapolis, Chicago and Toronto, Madelline on the New York run and Salt Lake City. The venue sizes are the clearest measure of movement — 2025 put her in rooms like the Academy Greenroom in Dublin, where a reviewer predicted she would outgrow them; 2026 has her doing two nights in one New York venue.

What the show is doing now

The current set is sequenced like the record it is named after. It opens cold on "Night at the Opera" and closes on a reprise of the same song, which gives the night an actual shape rather than a running order. In between it is weighted towards the new material but does not hide from the back catalogue: "That Girl", "Irresponsible", "Late to the Party", "Noah", "You Are Bad", "Crazy Stupid Love", "Backtrack", "Human Being", "Dear Emily", "Ginger Tea" and "9 Lives" ran in that order in Portland on 2 October and Vancouver on 3 October, with "Bloom", "Love Me Not", "711", "Scatterbrain" and "Cynical" among the later stretch.

One detail says most about the state of the campaign: "Molly" was already in the Vancouver set on 3 October, three days before it was released.