Grammy® and Emmy® award-winning singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist prodigy Emily Bear makes her highly anticipated return as a recording artist with her brand-new single ‘God Forbid a Girl Gets Used To This’, out today. A musical prodigy who was taken under the wing of Quincy Jones at the age of eight, she has performed with everyone from Beyoncé to Meghan Trainor. Finding her own voice and marking her first solo release in almost a decade, the song signals an exciting new chapter for the 25 year-old.
‘God Forbid a Girl Gets Used to This’ blends upbeat jazz and soul sounds with raw, honest songwriting. Anchored by the poignant refrain “I got trouble with happiness”, the song confronts the paradox of finding genuine love and the lingering anxiety of expecting it all to go wrong.
Emily says “We hear all these stories about how love makes you fearless, love conquers all, and repeat stories of people doing these wildly heroic things in the name of it.
“But no one really talks about what happens when you finally experience that fated feeling. Suddenly, there’s something you’re terrified to lose. And instead of becoming fearless, there’s a large part of you that becomes the most cowardly version of yourself, bracing for it to disappear simply because you don’t believe you deserve something this beautiful.
“This song lives somewhere in that fear, and in the vulnerability of letting yourself start to believe that maybe a good thing can just be a good thing. I’m equal parts thrilled and terrified to start putting these songs out into the world, play them live, and let them belong to people other than me. So, very appropriately and painfully on the nose, God Forbid A Girl Gets Used To This :)”
Emily Bear’s musical vocabulary is impressively broad and ‘God Forbid a Girl Gets Used to This’ epitomises that. Trained in classical piano from the age of four, she studied jazz at the same time and was mentored and managed by Quincy Jones from an early age. His first recommendations to her were Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, and touring with his circle shaped how she plays and writes. Her heart lies in the 1970s: Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Minnie Riperton and the wider world of soul and jazz, while she voices the concerns of her generation.
She also loves an orchestra and the lyrical directness of great songwriters like Carole King. Stevie Wonder is her north star: sophisticated enough to thrill jazz obsessives but warm enough to win over anyone. Emily composes for film and musicals, further enhancing her palette. Now, she is finding her own voice.
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