Emma Anderson

Emma Anderson
Anderson at the Markthalle, Hamburg in 1994
Background information
Birth name	Emma Victoria Jane Anderson
Born	(1967-06-10) 10 June 1967 (age 49) Wimbledon, London, England
Genres	Alternative rock, shoegazing
Instruments	Guitar, vocals
Labels	4AD, Aerial
Associated acts	Lush, Sing-Sing
Notable instruments
1972 Fender Telecaster Thinline

Emma Anderson (born 10 June 1967) is an English musician. She is best known for being a songwriter, guitarist and singer in the shoegazing/Britpop band, Lush.

Born in Wimbledon, London, the daughter of a former army officer who ran a gentleman's club in Piccadilly, Anderson attended several private schools before taking her O-Levels at Queen's College, where she met Miki Berenyi. As keen music fans, they wrote a fanzine called Alphabet Soup. Her first band, which she joined in 1986, was The Rover Girls (which featured Chris P Mowforth and Stuart Watson, who were both later in Silverfish) as a bass player.

In 1987 she formed Lush with fellow songwriter Berenyi. On 6 March 1988, Lush played their very first performance at the Camden Falcon in London. They went on to reasonable success, having a number of Top 40 hits over an eight-year career. Anderson told Everett True in Melody Maker, "I remember when I couldn't play, I wasn't in a band, didn't know anyone else who could play, and now we've got a record out on 4AD. I sometimes find it impossible to come to terms with what's happening." Anderson and Berenyi were the only women to take part in the 1992 Lollapalooza tour of the United States.

Both Anderson and Berenyi became major music press celebrities as part of The Scene That Celebrates Itself. Music magazines the NME and Melody Maker gleefully reported their social activities on a regular basis, which could be said to overshadow their increasingly strong songwriting. As drummer Chris Acland states, "people seem to want to talk about Lush's relationship to the press more than they want to talk about Lush."

Of the sound of Lush, Emma says, ""We were kind of punk rock in one way. We did think 'Well, if they can do it, why the fuck can't we?' Basically, our idea was to have extremely loud guitars with much weaker vocals. And, really the vocals were weaker due to nervousness – we'd always be going 'Turn them down! Turn them down!'.""