Name: Caroline Van Der Leeuw fka Caro Emerald mka Caro
Nationality: Dutch
Occupation: Singer, songwriter
Current release: Caro's new album Returning to Innocence is out via Big Mouse.  
Hometown Recommendation: In Amsterdam, take a bike, just please don't ride like a tourist. Watch where you're going. In summer, take the ferry to Amsterdam Noord. Bring a chilled six-pack and a towel, jump into the IJ at Hotel de Goudfazant, and have an ice-cold beer at the waterside afterwards. It costs next to nothing and it's everything. Then find somewhere to eat at one of the restaurants around there.
Things that I am passionate about but rarely get to talk about: Books that zoom all the way out on who we are as humans. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, Humankind by Rutger Bregman, and above all The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow, which gave me a completely new perspective on how we look at humanity. I'm endlessly fascinated by that kind of philosophical zooming out, where everything suddenly becomes relative. And Consciousness Beyond Life by Pim van Lommel is basically my bible when it comes to how I experience spirituality.
It connects to how I see feminism, too. We can talk forever about whether or not to get botox, about how women relate to their looks. But as long as we do nothing about economic inequality, about what femininity is actually worth, women don't really have a free choice at all. 

If you enjoyed this Caro interview and would like to know more about her music and upcoming concerts, visit her official homepage. She is also on Instagram, tiktok, and Facebook. 



Do you think that some of your earliest musical experiences planted a seed for your interest in writing lyrics or poetry? How and when did you start writing?

I think my interest in lyrics comes from a very personal urge to be verbal and vocal about what I feel. But I didn't start writing songs until I began working on the Caro Emerald repertoire with my partners there. They really encouraged me to co-write, and that's where I found out I actually loved it. 

Still, it took me a long time to dare to write on my own. I felt like a beginner, and with lyrics especially I was really insecure. English isn't my native language, and some part of me was always waiting for someone to notice. 

That insecurity never fully left. I just stopped letting it decide whether I write.

Entering new worlds and escapism through music and literature have always exerted a very strong pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to writing?

Escapism is definitely a big one. You can hear it in the arrangements and production of my albums, they're all very cinematic, each one comes with its own feeling, its own world. 

At the same time I've always had the urge to speak my truth, especially about the things I feel embarrassed or guilty about. As a public person I never really dared to be as outspoken as I am in daily life. Songwriting turned out to be the place where I could. 

"Goddess" is basically a confession: "Surrendered to my greed, took the money and I went for fame." 



I'd say that at a dinner table, where I can explain what I mean. In public, everything you say turns into a statement, and those get flattened so fast. 

In a song, nuance gets to exist. A feeling is just a feeling.

What were some of the artists and albums which inspired you early on purely on the strength of their lyrics? What moves you in the lyrics of other artists?

Lana Del Rey is my absolute queen when it comes to lyrics. I love how she brings such a stylised world together, pop culture references, American nostalgia, and then puts intimacy and rebellion right in the middle of it. And somehow it still feels so relatable. I think that's art. 

What moves me most in other people's lyrics is when someone admits something they probably shouldn't. The unflattering line. That's usually the one that stays with me for years.

Have there been song lyrics which actually made you change (aspects of) your life? If so, what do you think, leant them that power?

The lyrics that changed the most in my life were probably my own. Not because they're better than anyone else's, but because they caught me. 

When I wrote "I can't win cause you won't like me, and when you don't like me I am sad," it was almost embarrassing how simple it was. Like a child's sentence. But there it was, a feeling I'd been living with for as long as I can remember, in black and white. You can't unsee that. 



I think lyrics get that kind of power when they say the thing you've been carefully avoiding saying to yourself.

It is sometimes said that "music begins where words end." What do you make of that?

To me that's obvious. When words fall short, music communicates on a deeper level. If you want someone to really understand you, to feel what you're going through, music is the best way I know. 

But the words are still the door. "Already Lost" ends on "Can you hear the silence, I always get so silent." That's the moment where the words literally run out, and the music has to carry whatever is left.

I have always considered many forms of music to be a form of poetry as well. Where do you personally see similarities? What can music express which may be out of reach for poetry?

So much of how we communicate is body language, and that's where music comes in. Tone of voice, a tremble, the way you articulate a word, it can carry suppressed anger, a whisper, a shout, all of it at once. 

A poem on paper has to do that with words alone. A song has a body. It shows so much more of what's living inside of us, sometimes more than we meant to show.

The relationship between words and music has always intrigued me. How do you see it? In how far can music take you to places with your writing you would possibly not have visited without it?

Oh my God, around the universe and back, I'd say. 

Music is spiritual and eternal. Every living being on this planet relates to music, to vibration. Words are the bridge to us humans specifically. Together they're an exquisite and incredibly powerful combination. 

And in practice, music takes me places I wouldn't dare go on my own. A melody can make a sentence feel inevitable, and then suddenly I'm singing things I would have crossed out on paper.

What are areas/themes/topics that you keep returning to in your lyrics?

Wanting to be disobedient. Escapism. And feeling bad about myself, which is probably the thread that holds the other two together. 

I write a lot about the rules I grew up with as a woman, that you should be quiet, humble, pleasing. "Woman," the intro to "Goddess," is exactly that list, "she is to remain quiet, to only open her mouth with wisdom and support," and then "Goddess" does the opposite. 

But the disobedience never comes without guilt. The cross shows up twice on this album, "bear my own cross" in "Call the Shots" and "I'm bearing my cross without you" in "Already Lost." 

I didn't plan that. Apparently I'm still carrying it.

On the basis of a piece off your most recent release, tell me about how the lyrics grew into their final form and what points of consideration were.

"I Can't Win" started as a small poem, probably just the first four lines. I was irritated with myself, with this fear I always had of other people's jealousy, and I kept asking myself where it came from. The realisation was that I've had that feeling for as long as I can remember. 

Maybe that's why those lines sound like a child's logic: I can't be great, cause you'll be broken. I can't shine, cause you will suffer. That became the form for the whole song. 

I took the poem into a session and a complete song came out of it, including the rest of the verses. But it didn't land for me yet. I loved those verses too much to let them go, so I took them into another session, and that's where we wrote the chorus as it is now. That's where the song opens up, from I to us, "when all I want is for us to connect, finding our home again." 

And its last line, "returning to innocence" ended up giving the album its name.

Do you tend to start writing with what will be the first line of the finished lyrics? The chorus? At a random point? What are the words that set the process in motion?

I have this online document where I scribble my thoughts down. Usually just a sentence, sometimes something that looks like a poem. 

But most of the time the words simply come out of my mouth while I'm improvising in the studio. "I don't wanna be your superstar, I don't wanna be your friend" was one of those. I didn't think it, it just arrived, and then I had to deal with the fact that I meant it. 

So I rarely start at the beginning. I start wherever the truth slips out first, and build the song around it.

I'd love to know how you think the meaning or effect of an individual song is enhanced, clarified or possibly contradicted by the EPs, or albums it is part of. Does the song, for example, need to be consistent with the larger whole?

I firmly believe in albums, because they give a song the context it should be heard in. I love how songs become part of a bigger story, and the order alone can hugely change how you hear a lyric. 

On its own, "The Guy Bangs" can be heard as a rebellious, danceable indie summer track about a guy you fancy. 



On the album it sits right after "Goddess," a confession of greed and vanity, and right before "Superstar," which is about not wanting any of it anymore. 



In that company it becomes something else: being painfully honest about lust, about wanting, about greed.

When you're writing song lyrics, do you sense or see a connection between your voice and the text? Does it need to feel and sound "good" or "right" to sing certain words? What's your perspective in this regard of singing someone else's songs versus your own?

Ooh, that's an interesting one, because a big part of my career was built on lyrics written by someone else. 

Bringing someone else's song takes a specific skill, and I learned it at the Conservatory, training as a jazz singer. In the end it's up to the singer to make it sound right and natural. But something really interesting happens when the performer writes the lyrics too. They sound more natural, because you choose different vowels, different sounds, the way you do when you improvise and look for what works in your mouth. 

I'm sure there's a difference, but I'm not convinced one is better than the other. Lyrics written by someone else can create a tension in the performance that's very interesting to listen to.

I would love to know a little about the feedback you've received from listeners or critics about what they thought some of your songs are about -- have there been "misunderstandings" or did you perhaps even gain new "insights?"

People almost always assume my songs are about a romantic relationship. They almost never are. I sing about all the relationships in my life, friends, colleagues, family. 

Take "I Can't Win." The "you" in that song isn't a lover. It's anyone I've ever been afraid to outshine, and that list starts very early. 

I don't mind if someone hears their own love story in it, then the song works for them. But it does say something, that a woman singing about longing is so quickly assumed to be singing about a man.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing song lyrics or poetry is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Haha, of course it is. 

As passionate as I can be about coffee, a cup of coffee doesn't ask anything of me. Writing a song means telling a story, and usually one I'd rather not tell. 

I've never cried over a cappuccino. I did cry writing "Already Lost."