Photo by Will Shaw
On sharing a stage with Bright Eyes, working with Dominic Fike, and her excellent debut album.
November 12, 2026
Emma Ogier wrote the title track to her debut album as a cry to confirm that she was moving in the right direction. She ends the song singing, “I open the door,” her voice hopeful, not knowing what will find her on the other side. It’s a good thing she walked through.
At just 23, a few years after she was caught in a contract that left her without the rights to her own music, Ogier is releasing her debut album on Lost Highway Records, the label home to stars like Kacey Musgraves and legends like Lucinda Williams. The twelve songs on Fly 1111 reveal how her songwriting prowess and deft ability to churn out sticky indie-folk hooks have made fans of everyone from Gracie Abrams to Ethel Cain.
Over a Zoom call in her new apartment in L.A., Ogier glitters with piercings all along the helix of her ears, and a big cross amid layered chains hangs around her neck. She has a splattering of freckles across the center of her face, and her pin-straight brown hair is parted, falling down her slight frame. She speaks with a charming youthfulness, somewhat self-effacing while still assured, not hesitating when she says, “I want to make a million albums.”
She lives with her older brother and close collaborator Aidan Ogier, moving to L.A. just recently after spending the past few years in Nashville together. The pair had just returned home the previous day after two months of intermittent touring with a revered indie-trinity—Bright Eyes, Whitney, and Hovvdy—and were about to begin rehearsals for an upcoming show at Red Rocks. Prior to this year, Ogier hadn’t toured much, but she’s already announced runs opening for Remi Wolf and Zach Bryan in 2027. “I think we are gonna be busy for a long time,” she says, which might be an understatement.
Photo by Will Shaw
Ogier hails from Houston, where she and her two brothers, 24-year-old Aidan and 19-year-old Coen, grew up playing music together. While their parents aren’t formal musicians, Ogier’s father played in a band in college, and their living room was home to a grand piano and acoustic guitar. The oldest of the three, Aidan, began writing songs first, catching the ears of his younger siblings. He’d buy records to give to his sister; two that stick out are a Bob Dylan’s greatest hits compilation, and Cheap Thrills by Big Brother and the Holding Company. She was also influenced by the Indigo Girls, the rap she grew up around (like Travis Scott’s Astroworld), and the songwriting of Lori McKenna. “It was the first time I started understanding that music could really speak for someone,” she says, learning through McKenna’s lyrics of motherhood and family what she was failing to understand when in conversation with her own mom.
After high school, Ogier followed her brother to Nashville, where she attended Belmont’s music business program and found a writing community outside her family for the first time. Ogier had been writing songs since the pandemic, and through the traction of her TikTok videos began working with a few managers, one of whom she found to have the wrong priorities. “I stopped doing the TikTok thing, because [my managers] were like, ‘Post four times a day,’ and I was like, ‘I’m not fucking doing that,’” she says. As a result, their deal terminated, with, as she puts it, “their reasoning being that I had no focus and no drive.” Despite having released a few singles in preparation for an EP, she no longer had the legal rights to her own music, causing her, at 20, to begin anew.
“It brought me to a place where I had to learn to be a better writer and change my whole plan, which was to have no plan,” she says. “That was a crazy year, but I just played a bunch of shows in Nashville and started writing all the time.” Ogier says she really learned how to be a songwriter during this period, and was pushed to get a firm handle on what matters most to her as an artist early on. “I never cared about getting seen on the internet. I’d rather grow one fan at a time and have real people who are gonna listen to the music and show up to a concert.”
Ogier’s career has undoubtedly benefitted from social media—with shortform clips of her breakout single “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” gaining significant traction—however, this momentum snowballed into Instagram story shout-outs from popstars like Clairo, and her inclusion as a character in Dominic Fike’s online universe. Fike featured Ogier on two of the songs on his new album, HOW TO QUIT SMOKING, and uploaded a Kevin Abstract-directed video titled “This is Emma Ogier” to his YouTube channel in September, recalling how fellow-Texans BROCKHAMPTON introduced Fike as an artist to watch to their audience in 2019. Similarly, when Ogier joined Bright Eyes on the road to sing Emmylou Harris’ parts on “We are Nowhere and It’s Now,” there were Reddit threads dedicated to determining who this mystery backup singer was—resulting in hype for Ogier’s music coming from a variety of worlds.
The first single released off Fly 1111 was “Baby Don’t Hurt Me,” an instantly addictive indie-twang triumph with a simple but persuasive rhythm section, and layers of bubbling synths. In the chorus, Ogier’s Texas drawl curls around “reckoned,” “wrecking,” and “walking,” a melody with superglue-strength that rolls around in one’s head long after listening. She followed up “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” with “Believing,” a tender acoustic song about shaky faith set to a weeping pedal steel.
“Believing,” like several songs on her debut, explores the delicate nature of loving people while living as a traveling musician. She worries about losing whole seasons to tour, making a partner feel small from the size of her spotlight, and losing interest after she’s written all she can about their relationship. On “Land,” an aching lament about the turbulent lifestyle she’s found herself in, she writes of what she has sacrificed in pursuit of her dreams, remembering her grandmother, in particular: “When I was out on the road/and I missed her funeral/Wish I would’ve known/Heard she looked so beautiful,” she sings, her fatigue evident.
At the same time, there are plenty of songs on Fly 1111 that disrupt this country-infused sorrow. The tension-filled “W2F” and “Hands Tied” display an unexpected grit and jolt of energy that is uninterested in modesty or maintaining expectations. On one track she’s beaten down and hoping for a sign; on the next she’s full of swagger, her aspirations a fruit she’s reaching up to pick. The title track falls somewhere in the middle, a maximally-produced pop song that recalls the zeal of Christian rock or something off Taylor Swift’s Speak Now, while finding the singer in a place of prayer.
Photo by Will Shaw
Ogier recorded the album with Aidan and their Nashville friends alongside David Baron at Sun Mountain Sounds in Woodstock, New York, melding the rich musical contexts of both places. “I feel like a really key aspect of how the record came to be,” Aidan says, “is that natural community of friends who, you know, work for free a lot, and really just respect and love Emma’s music.” Ogier’s ex-boyfriend Eden Joel even makes an appearance, featured on the anthemic “Rocksteady/ Heavy Metal,” a youthful ode to the way love changes, but can still remain after a breakup.
The group ended up cutting 22 tracks during their sessions with Baron, which were whittled down to the 12 that make up Fly 1111. Aidan, often in addition to his sister, played guitar on every song on the album, as well as synths, piano, and bass when needed, and had a role as a secondary producer. He’s only 16 months older than Ogier, but still tried to impart some elderly wisdom about avoiding the pressure to be boxed into one sound.
The nurturing relationship Ogier and Aidan have has not only strengthened Ogier’s songwriting, but has helped act as a control to the dizzying effects of increased touring and notoriety. When Emma is asked about what it’s like for her brother to be part of the operation, she simply says, “I mean, it’s everything to me.” Aidan feels the same, with full faith in the curious ways his sister is able to progress in the music world.
“It's almost mysterious how all this has happened,” Aidan says. “But knowing Emma and how driven, dedicated, and confident she is, when things just keep coming true I'm starting to trust that there's some guiding hand here, and it's amazing.”
Photo by Will Shaw