Songs Rhino loves, #76: Emily King - “Remind Me”

Lighter than air, golden as the sunshine.

This one is from 2019, and came to me via my old friend Anthony “Illvibe” Craparotta. Emily King is mixed-race and got her start singing a hook for the legendary East Coast rapper Nas (who will appear in this column before long); I’ve been resisting writing about this song for many weeks now, even though I love it so much that I’ve listened to it almost every single day since it was introduced to my life in 2020, because something about King‘s voice is so ineffably beautiful that I almost feel like I don’t have the language available to me to do it justice. Her upper register, in particular, is so goddamn gorgeous that I feel genuinely and unironically privileged to be able to listen to this song, every single fuckin’ time. If you’ll forgive the degree to which the phrase I’m about to use is a pure cliché, this song makes me feel like I’m walking on sunshine. It expresses a very lovely sentiment – she is singing about being made to feel as though she has a new lease on life because someone has wandered into it who is so special that their love is connecting her with the aspects of the human condition and experience that she loves most – but frankly, I only really register the song’s message about half the time. Most of the time, I’m just lost in the purely effervescent production and in this woman’s extraordinarily gorgeous, unadorned, achingly lovely voice. Highest possible recommendation!