Biography
Dean Emerson — known as Dead Emerson by his listeners — graduated from the University of Maryland in 2018. The stage name originated from experiences of when he would type his name into his phone, and it would autocorrect to “dead” instead of Dean. Emerson said he decided to keep the name as a joke.
Emerson is reluctant to associate his music with a genre. Although he said it could be considered indie or alternative, he would rather just call himself a songwriter and producer than categorize his songs in a specific genre.
“It’s more like these are songs that are about my life and about things that I’ve experienced,” Emerson said. “And I just kind of go with the production that I think fits the words.”
Emerson said his music was made possible due to a lot of self reflection. He was involved with bands when he was younger and did gigs at Columbia Station in Washington, D.C., while attending high school. Things changed when Emerson started going to this university, he said — he lost the sense of wanting to be an artist.
“There’s a lot of anxiety and fear surrounding going into art and music full-time after college,” Emerson said. “You really have to want to do this full-time. The only plan A is to not have a plan B for this kind of work.”
His experience in college had become so discouraging that Emerson decided to get a desk job instead of pursuing a musical career after graduating. The job was located in Los Angeles, so he still had access to an active music scene. It was after he received an offer to tour with an artist he collaborated with that he decided to quit his desk job and start releasing his own music.
Emerson had noticed how a lot of students who went to private schools became different once they attended a public university and tried to adopt more grungy personalities. “It’s just really funny because it’s not authentic in terms of who they are or their background,” he said.
He said he’s in his “shifting-focus zone” right now and doesn’t have any exact plans for the future at the moment.
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