Originally, hailing from a small town in Florida, young, up-and-coming electro pop artist Emily Vaughn first caught the attention of the blogosphere with the release of her debut single “Hollow” which paired her incredibly self-assured and soulful vocals with a contemporary and minimalist electro pop sound of skittering percussion and trembling synths, while the song lyrically speaking focused on crippling self-doubt, lust and obsessive desire — and in some way, the song gives the impression of Vaughn possessing a wisdom far beyond her years.
Vaughn’s latest single “Better Off” reveals a young artist, who is poised to become a star, as the the slinky and glitchy single pairs skittering percussion, dense layers of synths and chiming electronics with Vaughn’s soulful vocals to create a pop confection with an incredibly catchy hook. So far in each of Vaughn’s two singles, Vaughn’s narrators possesses a calmly self-assured, subtly swaggering confidence that bubbles underneath a superficial naivety. And from the song’s lyrics, the narrator falls for someone, who turns out to be too good to be true, which turns the song from a sweet love song to a calmly told kiss-off that says “hey, I’ll be good because I can easily find someone far better than you!” despite being heartbroken.
The official video alternates between a naive, almost mousy-seeming Vaughn, who’s a barista at a local coffee shop, frothing lattes and a dark, sinister alter-ego, who enjoys fucking things up. And as Vaughn explained to the folks at Pop Crush, the deviation represents a relationship unravelling in installments. “I wanted to look a little bit crazy towards the end in all of the scenes, because that’s what the kind of love I wrote does to you,”Vaughn explained to Pop Crush. “By the end of the video, when all the scenes tie in with one another and I break the TV with the silhouette of my implied lost lover, I wanted that to symbolize the end of the confusion and brokenness, and moving on to find something better.” Also smashing TVs are a pretty fucking awesome way to get over someone who’s done you wrong.
