Emily Warren (songwriter)

Early life and education

Warren was raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where she attended Trinity, a prestigious preparatory school, from kindergarten through high school. Out of line with her high school classmates, Warren had a penchant for the creative and performed regularly with her band, Emily Warren & the Betters (members Etienne Bowler and Marc Campbell went on to form part of the pop band MisterWives). A single from The Betters EP, Not at All, was featured on the soundtrack of MTV's short-lived series, Skins. She was accepted into the NYU Tisch School/Clive Davis Institute in 2011 and offered a songwriter's contract with Prescription (Rx) Songs in 2013. In 2015 Warren graduated from the university and began splitting her time between Los Angeles and London.

Music career

After signing with Dr. Luke, Warren disbanded the Betters and spent a year in LA. Soon after her arrival, she co-wrote "Masterpiece", the third single on pop artist Jessie J's album, Sweet Talker. "Masterpiece" debuted at #30 on the US Mainstream Top 40 and #65 on the US Billboard Hot 100 as well as certified gold in Australia and New Zealand. Following the success of that release, Warren eventually teamed up with longtime friend and collaborator Scott Harris to co-write four songs from Shawn Mendes' platinum-selling album, Handwritten: "Strings", "Aftertaste", "Air", and "Lost". September 18, 2015 marked the release of The Chainsmokers' and Tritonal's "Until You Were Gone", which featured Warren's lead vocals. Her performance was immediately praised by Nylon, which wrote, "Her delivery is filled with a longing that packs a strong punch." Additionally, The Chainsmokers hailed Warren as, "one of the best songwriters AND vocalists that they had ever worked with". Shortly after, Warren teamed up again with Scott Harris and together they wrote "Don't Let Me Down" with The Chainsmokers, which reached number 1 on went triple platinum in the United States. It was both The Chainsmokers and Daya's first top 5 on Billboard Hot 100. Don't Let Me Down was also nominated for a Grammy in 2017 for Best Dance Recording which it won for, making it Emily Warren's first Grammy win as a songwriter. Around the same time, Warren co-wrote and featured vocals on viral hit "Capsize" with Los Angeles duo Frenship, which is certified gold and has surpassed 200 million streams on Spotify (115 million of which were acquired prior to its radio impact date).

When interviewed by the online music publication Smashed about her writing process, Warren stated, "I think that sometimes songwriting, especially for pop, is viewed as a factory or an assembly line process, and I have to challenge that... I think that good songwriting has a real art to it, and I don’t just mean the profound or thought-provoking ones. Even most of the light-hearted, straight-up pop ones are masterfully written–sometimes even harder to write." Warren's express mission as a writer and artist is to create pop music that has the conceptual backing to influence positive social change. In a Tisch interview, she states, "What excites me about this field is that pop music can be an incredibly powerful and crucial platform for influence and change." She also has uncredited vocals on The Chainsmokers new song Paris.