From Tawa to the tour van: Emma Kate’s season of growth
Monday, 6 April 2026
When Emma Kate talks about Autumn, she talks about it the way some people talk about fate — inconvenient, insistent, and strangely perfect. The Wellington singer‑songwriter was living alone in Christchurch last year when the song arrived, uninvited, on her morning walk to work.
“I was walking past the Avon River and through Cashel St when I started getting lyrics and a melody in my head,” the 24-year-old says. “It was stuck there all morning, and I knew it was good.” At lunchtime she retraced her steps, sat on a park bench, and finished the song in her notes app.
She was navigating a long‑distance relationship at the time, and the song became a kind of emotional shorthand. “Every time I got to see my partner, it felt like I got to live life to the fullest,” she says. That sense of fleeting warmth — the kind that glows brighter because it’s temporary — runs through the track, and through the new EP it anchors.
Music has always been her compass. Growing up in Tawa, she taught herself guitar, busked in Wellington, and wrote songs from a young age. “Music has — and always will be — the most important thing in my life,” she says. “I still busk around town and at local markets, but now I also play headline shows. It’s pretty exciting to be living out the dream little me had always dreamed of.”
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That dream sharpened during her year in Christchurch, where she completed the Artist Development Course at SOLE Music Academy. It was a leap — leaving Wellington, her partner, and her support network — but one she felt she needed to take.
“I learnt so much about things in the music industry no one tells you,” she says. “Last year was a big challenge … but the space allowed me to grow as a person, as well as challenge myself in ways I hadn’t before.” She wrote more than 100 songs, collaborated widely, and found a new creative rhythm. “So many things I couldn’t have done without SOLE.”
That growth is audible in her new work, which leans into a poppier, more intentional sound. She cites Taylor Swift’s Red era as a touchstone — “it has those autumnal themes throughout that I was trying to express” — but the influence is more emotional than imitative.
“As a songwriter, my way of processing my emotions is through writing,” she says. “Sometimes the best songs come out of the darkest moments, and I choose to be pretty vulnerable in my writing because of that.” Co‑writing has helped her push deeper, too. “Writing with other artists allows for a more in‑depth look into the emotions, stories or situations we’re writing about.”
Her EP explores seasons — of love, loneliness, distance, and return. It’s a project built on the idea that feelings shift like weather, and that art can hold those shifts in place long enough to understand them.
Now she’s taking that work on the road, opening for Jenni Smith’s upcoming tour — a milestone she’s buzzing about. “I have a bunch of new songs to play for people, to audiences that may have never heard of me,” she says. “I love playing live because it gives people a chance to connect with the songs in a different way.”
She wants audiences to leave her shows “feeling satisfied, and ready for the next one”.
Her bio describes her as “hopelessly romantic, slightly delusional, yet full of passion to create the best pop songs the world has ever heard.” It’s tongue‑in‑cheek, but also not. Emma Kate is shooting for the stars — commercial radio, touring, a fanbase that grows with her — and she’s doing it with the same sincerity that sent her back to a Christchurch park bench to finish a song that wouldn’t leave her alone.
Jenni Smith’s The Girl Next Door Tour plays in Christchurch on April 19 at Wunderbar and at Moon, in Wellington, on April 26.