Empara Mi’s Monsters & Masochists

Empara Mi has never played it small. With 50 million streams, Cannes recognition, syncs across Netflix and blockbuster franchises, and praise from The Independent and BBC Radio 1, she’s already proven her sound doesn’t belong in the background. But her upcoming album Monsters & Masochists (out October 10) feels like the moment she finally stops apologizing for just how big, brutal, and beautiful her world really is.

For Empara, mainstream pop’s three-minute scroll culture has never been the blueprint. “I’m drawn to the grandeur of feeling biblical and diabolical at the same time,” she says. “Everything sounds big in a theatre or a church, and that’s what I’m trying to capture.” This record leans all the way into that scale—songs that feel like operas for broken hearts and battlefields.

Grief, Shadows, and the Pleasure of Pain

At its core, Monsters & Masochists is an album about grief and transformation, but Empara Mi refuses to keep those states neat. “Even the ‘happy’ side of the album isn’t really happy,” she explains. “They’re more like twin sisters that don’t get along.” If the “monster” is the shadow and the “masochist” is the one who embraces it, then the hardest truth was realizing she resonated more with the monster. “The darkness feels very honest and exciting to me. I can stop apologizing for it now and embrace it.”

That tension is the record’s fuel—finding comfort in pain, noticing how sometimes we choose to be the victim, and realizing that even self-indulgence has its poetry. It’s grief, yes, but it’s also survival, theater, and transformation.

Cinematic Soundscapes

Production-wise, Empara Mi is a maximalist who thrives on atmosphere. She starts most songs with chords, layering textures until the world of the track reveals itself. Then she freestyles melodies and lyrics to catch whatever her subconscious drags up. “I need it to be spontaneous,” she says. “It’s never what you expect will come out—which I love. And then I spend fifty-five million years producing it.”

Her music’s cinematic pull is no accident. From Transformers to Ginny & Georgia, she writes with images already flickering in her mind. “‘Masochist and Shotgun’ literally started with a movie scene in my head. That’s where my music makes the most sense—when it’s paired with visuals.” If the album were staged, she says, it would look like a Dilara Findikoglu runway show: dark, romantic, and dripping in operatic drama.

Opera-Pop for the Apocalypse

The internet’s calling her new work “opera-pop for the apocalypse,” and she’s thrilled. “There are moments in songs like ‘Mercy’ and ‘Dragged Me Back to Hell’ where I literally imagine the world opening up and swallowing me whole. That couldn’t be a more perfect description.”

With Monsters & Masochists, Empara Mi isn’t diluting her vision to fit playlists or algorithms. “I spent a lot of time trying to please people early on,” she says. “Now I just feel proud when I do what I love. I’m going to stick to my guns until further notice.”

And when the diary finally opens, the page she’s both terrified and excited for the world to read? She won’t spoil it.

Just know it’s Chapter 7.