Five years after the release of her debut, Me (a generic title, but no more so than someone like Ariana Grande’s, with Yours Truly), her third record, I’m Your Empress Of, showcases the seamlessness of the Empress Of sound. For those unfamiliar, it’s a decided cross between Pet Shop Boys and Björk, with the latter being the musical comparison most similar. At the same time, it’s easy to believe the girl born as Lorely Rodriguez was raised on a steady diet of Pet Shop Boys tapes (with fellow British legends The Beatles thrown in for good measure). For no one could be this fond of synths and electropop without having been exposed to them on the regular from an early age. They were surely her gateway musical drug to Björk. Ironically, Björk’s association with the steely, impenetrable ice queen vibes that can only come from being stereotyped for her homeland of Iceland, are in direct contrast to Empress Of’s own Honduran origins. For Latin blood, it can’t be helped, always runs hotter than most.
Which is perhaps why I’m Your Empress Of is an impassioned effusion that speaks to her roots (with her mother Reina’s aphorisms peppered throughout the many songs on the thirty-three minute opus), as well as a breakup she finally had the time to process after two years of nonstop devotion to promoting her music via touring. And, in accordance with that catharsis, the prospect of meeting someone new. But before that usual trope in pop music appears, Empress Of commences with the declarative statement that is “I’m Your Empress Of,” a phrase that she repeats until allowing a pause for her mother to speak.
In the sort of parlance that only an immigrant whose first language is not English could achieve, there is a distinct poetry to the words Reina offers throughout the record, including, “I only have one girl. But the only girl is like having thousands of girls. Because look at how many times she reproduce herself in each bunch of you.” Speaking to that phenomenon that Madonna pioneered as the first modern pop star on The Virgin Tour, when all the wannabes showed up to the concerts dressed just like her to sing along, there is an undeniable high a female singer gets from touching a nerve inside other women who experience a kind of religiosity in the music. Hence, part of the reason for Empress Of’s imperial moniker and opening track. As Rodriguez explained, “[The record is] called I’m Your Empress Of because I’ve always felt that once a song is done, and the emotion is there and it’s not inside me anymore, it belongs to the world.”
Maybe Ace of Base felt the same about “The Sign”–and yes, the influence of the Swedish quartet is all over “Bit of Rain,” the chords of which were written by Empress Of on a plane (thus the especial tinge of yearning and longing?). Like Shakespeare before her, Empress Of wields the weather as metaphor, singing, “A bit of rain/A bit of thunder/I love the exchange/I want you under me.” Case in point, the benefit of moving on from an old flame–for one is able to recapture the jubilant, carnal reaction to meeting someone new, locking eyes with them in a room and knowing that something is going to happen between you. That excitement and giddiness radiates in the beat.
With yet another seamless transition that makes the album feel like one unending song, the intro to “Void” offers more 90s dance flavor with notes that vaguely recall Crystal Waters’ “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)”. But don’t let the rhythmic pace fool you, “Void”–the title of which is a tipoff that it’s of the post-breakup variety–is a lament. Not so much for the end of the relationship, but for the way she let herself be treated during it. Opening with the poetical, “Every apology got worse/An anthology of empty words/You never listen when I said, ‘It hurts’/I talk big, but don’t know my worth,” Empress Of makes it clear that despite her attempts at communication, the object of her affection didn’t want to hear what she had to say. Like so many women who foolishly give their love to someone undeserving, Empress Of is left as a husk by the final act, rueing, “I feel void of every feeling that I had/You took them all and left me with an empty bag.” In between, her mother’s voice consoles, “You wanna make yourself the woman/That nobody is gonna mistreat.” Easier said than done, madre.
From here, the segue into “Love Is A Drug” (a name bordering on Kesha territory) proves more noticeably jarring, with its sharp, anxious beats hurled at you, a sonic manifestation of needing to fill an emptiness that can’t be when trying to distract ourselves. With the same freneticism as something like “Big Time Sensuality,” Empress Of sings, “I know love is a drug, I know money is a drug/I know sex can be a drug, but I just wanna be touched.” And this is why “dating” apps thrive (even now, in quarantine mode). People don’t care if the connection is ersatz, they just want one–particularly in their darkest hour. Not realizing, perhaps, that this can only make one end up feeling hollower than before.
The record then delves imperceptibly into “U Give It Up,” one of the most pop-influenced, dance-friendly tracks (and again, easily mistakable for something 90s-era Björk might have released). Again addressing the ex that left her bereft and devoid of emotion, Empress Of sings as though confronting him, accusing, “It’s shocking to tell you how much I still notice/I can’t be the poison in all this/There’s something about how it ended in nothing/You give, you give, you give, you give it up.” The latter line feels rife with double meaning. On the one hand, it’s as though she’s using “you” in a general sense to say, after a while, you give up on a relationship that clearly can’t work. On the other, it’s as though she’s saying he’s the one who gave up on it while she might have still been willing to work at it. Either way, the torment reverberates throughout.
A torment that persists on “Should’ve,” another lamentation for all that went wrong in her rapport with a person she should not have given so much time to. To that end, she chants, “Should’ve never let you close,” after speaking from the perspective of the self that did let him close: “I’ve got sun in my eyes/I can’t see our demise/’Cause this should’ve been one night.” With Empress Of herself admitting that the sound of the song comes across as something that might have fit in more easily on her first record, it serves as the perfect dichotomous bleed into “Give Me Another Chance,” the title and content of which is in direct opposition to the previous two tracks. And yet, the heart is an often annoying winner in the battle against the brain and its logic, informing you time and time again that he treated you like shit. With backing percussions that enhance the sense of urgency and earnestness, Empress Of asks something many of us have been too ashamed to as she demands, “I don’t wanna lose you/I know I’ll still live/Somebody told me you’ve got another/I’m asking you, baby/Choose me over her.”
“What’s The Point” marks a slightly less frenzied tone and pace on I’m Your Empress Of, with rehashings of moments in the relationship where the fighting and bickering is so constant, one has to wonder if it’s still a dynamic worth clinging to. As such, Empress Of describes, “What’s the point of loving like this?/Yeah, I see that you clenched your fist/And you called me ‘another bitch’/I love you, I know you’re pissed.” Abruptly cutting off in the midst of the eponymous question, it then goes into the more hopeful “Maybe This Time.” Well, at least more hopeful in terms of the beat. But as a companion piece to “Should’ve,” this song, too, is an exploration to the fine line between fighting for love and just plain constantly fighting. As Empress Of inquires, “Where’s the edge when the fire spreads?/Where’s the love when we lost our heads?” The reply, it would seem, is nowhere. Thus, the inevitable demise.
Like Sky Ferreira with “You’re Not the One” before her, Empress Of also brings us a giddy track called “Not The One.” Except it is a giddiness that Empress Of recognizes as false, using this new person as a buffer from her lingering feelings for the one she’s still not over. So it is that she wields the all too real lyrics, “I wanna forget how much it hurts to miss his body/You’re both the same height, but you’re not a carbon copy/Put your hands on my neck/Push your lips close to my lips/I gotta tell myself, ‘You’re not the one, but it helps.’” Of course, it doesn’t. Because once the diversion of a warm body is gone, one experiences the waves of loneliness and despair even more strongly, forced to reconcile that the pain over the loss they’re experiencing can’t be mitigated. It just has to be felt.
But eventually, you’ll get to the “Hold Me Like Water” point, a slow jam that echoes the joyous sentiment of “Bit Of Rain,” when you first meet someone new, and the hope (or naivety) of possibility pervades you. Hence, the simile about holding onto that emotion like water, for it can only really be “captured” for a few moments at best. Still, there is no better instant in a post-major relationship period than to be able to say, “Have all of me/I can feel my body changing/We’re two figures rearranging/Nondescript inside a painting.” Until the two entities form more clearly, when they finally get used to this new environment with one another.
Although “Awful” as a closing song’s title might connote that Empress Of has not triumphed over her sadness, contrarily, in that semi-cautious “All Is Full of Love” voice (a song–also the closing track–that appeared on Björk’s 1997 record, Homogenic), she takes the first step toward recovery in acknowledging, “I get off on being awful to myself/I need some help, I need help/I need myself, I need myself.” Perhaps then she can stop being haunted and tortured by the person that could never and would never be able to love her as she needed to be. Which is why she’s trying to get out of the mode: “I’m sick of seeing your face everywhere/I’d love to move on, but you’re always there/Tell me, love, what do I do now after you?/I have to reinvent myself some way/And catch myself when I say things you say.”
That reinvention, undoubtedly, has arrived with this record, one that was created at the corybantic stride of someone trying to exorcise their demons (Empress Of churned it out in two months, which, alas, still can’t outpace Grimes’ expulsion of 2012’s Visions in a three-week period thanks to amphetamines, though surely Susan Sontag would approve of this method). Dare one say it’s much easier to do that in Los Angeles than Brooklyn? For as Empress Of said of her early recording days spent in the latter milieu, “I hate the rats, I hate the rent, I hate all these shitty guys, I hate capitalism.” So yes, it seems like escaping from New York accounts for at least some component of the musical freedom and experimentation she’s more comfortable with unleashing in Highland Park.
