Album Review: Leap!

At 19 years old, Tamaki Makaurau songwriter Emerson – Emma Wagner to her whānau – turns the confusion and intensity of love and life for wahine taitamariki into polished, memorable pop that goes far above and beyond your standard radio-friendly hum-alongs. Her choruses may land clean but underneath sit crossed wires, second guesses and the microscopic humiliations of being young and painfully alert. She began writing at 14, cut her teeth in local indie bands on bass, rhythm guitar and vocals, then went solo in late 2024. As a result her songs feel lived, not manufactured.

The résumé arrived at warp speed: the 2024 Smokefree Rockquest Solo-Duo Award, eight releases on the Aotearoa Hot 20 Singles Chart, two national support tours in 2025, IMNZ’s Going Global, NZ On Air showcases and Rhythm & Vines. Head spinning? Mine is too. That ascent could reduce a teenage songwriter to a marketing premise. Leap! refuses the flattening.

She has worked or written with Ladyhawke, Gin Wigmore, Frankie Venter, Teo Glacier, Keenan Te, MACEY, Rosetta, Liberty and Lucy Ward. The roll call matters less than her ease moving between guitar scuff, digital sheen and diaristic pop, as if genre were a corridor of open doors.

‘Alt-pop’ is accurate but bloodless. On Leap!, lacquered hooks snag on indie-rock guitars, programmed beats skew off-centre and R&B shadows flicker through. I expected some big-name ultra-polished production: the skater-boi image of her publicity flashes Avril Lavigne to these eyes. Happily, I was wrong. So wrong. Sure, the musicianship is radio-friendly, but distortion and rough grain split the seams. Emerson’s voice binds the contradictions: poised, not bulletproof; conversational, never casual.

I last saw her opening for Dani Josie, firing hooks through movement, nerve and live-wire energy that refused to wait politely for the headliner. She was a crowd favourite then and is likely to win over many more fans on her upcoming tour. And for good reason. Leap! delivers on that glimpse: the personality is bigger, the fissures deeper. Made across three countries and four cities with shifting producers and collaborators, the eight-song offering could have become an airport-lounge mood board. Instead, its restless geography is the point. Emerson began the project in a leap year, but the title cuts deeper: every jump promises grace and risks a brutal landing.

Emerson calls the EP “the tip of the iceberg” of her teenage thoughts: self-doubt versus self-motivation; love offered, mishandled or received in the wrong shape. That volatility is the connective tissue. Beneath every stylistic shift pulses one question: how do you perform confidence without mistaking the act for certainty?

From The Jump opens as if confidence were a switch Emerson can flick: bubblegum with a K-pop tang, a club banger and bedroom-floor motivator. The hook becomes launch command, pep talk and self-hypnosis, fighting the gravity of becoming ‘another them’. “You think you know how to get the best of me / I wanna dance in a trance / That’s my recipe / From the jump jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump.” What a mantra: dancing as escape route and identity.

Tell Me What I Want to Hear compresses romantic denial into two sugar-coated minutes. It’s a razor-smart overthinker’s anthem: missed voicemails and blurred expectations orbit one compromised plea – spare me the truth; give me the edit that survives another night. Tell me what I want to hear, not what is true – if you even know, boy!

Into the friend-zone, we’re snapped shut in Just Not Into You. Emerson holds the blade while apologising for the cut: no spark, pal; perhaps you are “just a little bit boring” – ouch! The offer of friendship only leaves the social discomfort dangling, denied the mercy of a quick fade.

Then comes the bad-boy rush of Want Him Bad!, the EP’s pulse spike, powered by crush logic and zero brakes. The exclamation mark practically pants in exuberance. These lines feel overheard on a bus: personal, blunt, gloriously free of poetic camouflage. “His name tastes good in my mouth / But Amy keeps saying / That I should spit it out / But I like this game that I’m playing / And I really like the smell of him on my shirt / God, I love it / God, it’s the worst.” Yeah, teen heartthrob stuff for sure – it’s either ironic or honest – maybe both. Emerson quits dissecting desire and dives in. The lack of emotional safety gear is the charm: pure crowd-shout fuel, consequences postponed.

Save Me, co-written and produced by Melbourne’s Pip Norman, slows the pulse and buckles the façade. Emerson calls it the song version of “it’s not you, it’s me,” but the truth is dirtier: caring for someone does not mean you can treat them right. The admission is savage – I will damage you, so leave. “Let down, I’ll let you down / And I’ll never stay, I’ll never change / You know your way out / I’m not to save now / Don’t re- don’t rely on me / I’ll never be your family / I’ll pave your way out / Don’t try to save me now.” Syncopated drums miss solid ground while distortion, feedback and stacked textures blur the edges. The production does not decorate the feeling; it catches it red-handed.

Residue studies the stain after the spill is wiped away. Habits and half-memories cling like fingerprints to glass. Emerson distrusts tidy closure; cooling the EP’s temperature without draining its tension, she makes aftermath feel like an event.

Breathe clears floor amid the wreckage. This is not peace, but someone breathing deliberately, trying to convince their body the crisis has passed. The arrangement gives Emerson air; every empty corner hums.

When Will I ends not with arrival but an ellipsis. After the leaps, reversals and rehearsed declarations, Emerson leaves the central question open – a sharp rejection of the debut victory pose. Adolescence does not resolve on cue; it changes key and keeps moving. This is an unrequited search for acceptance. Whoever she is addressing, someone needs to tell her she is already enough. “My eyes are sinking in my skull / My bedroom carpets getting frayed / My eyes are sinking in my skull / My bed is messy and unmade / When will I learn? / When will I grow? / When will I be the person that I show? / When will I learn? / When will I grow? / When will I love the person that you know?”

These are great songs, they need to be heard by everyone. Leap! works because it treats confidence as renewable theatre, not a permanent state. Its hooks are glossy enough to travel, but Emerson scratches hard truths into the shine: desire is ridiculous, honesty cruel, withdrawal disguised as kindness, self-doubt always circling back. At times the EP names a feeling before complicating it, yet its restlessness convinces. This is not the immaculate sound of arrival, it’s not a spit out from the Disney hit machine. It’s the braver noise of becoming. Crucially, Emerson speaks to teenage listeners – especially wahine taitamariki – as one of them: never from above, never patronising or sensationalising their lives. She’s the real deal. She’s riding beside them, naming the mess with clarity and empathy. And there’s plenty of fun to be had along the way, too. Sometimes an audience needs a champion who truly gets it. Emerson does. That is Leap!’s real triumph.