By: Staff Writer
July 13, 2021
Bahamian recording artist and music icon Sweet Emily returns to the music game after sitting out for an extended period and back with a cover song to Phil Collins’s “Find a way to my heart.”
Emily Williams, aka “Sweet Emily,” is back heavy in the music game having released a Bahamian style cover of a Phil Collins classic “Find a way to my heart” with the help of Bahamian/Turks Islander, Herbert Swann Jnr playing the guitar.
Emily said about pairing up with Herbert Swann, “The cover song came out of the vision of Herbert. He always wanted to do this song and make it a Bahamian version. But he never found the right person to do it and then when he found out I came back, he asked me if I’d be willing to do it.
“So we did it and then he has a large network and did a lot of networking friends and people he met through networking in Africa and America and different places.”
Why decide to do such a low-key and lesser known song of Collins? Emily said “Herbert just loved to do it on the guitar” and always loved the song, regardless if it is one of Collins’s lesser known songs.
Emily also said: “Herbert’s vision is to have it done in Spanish for the Latin market, and then in English with a video with all the different states in Africa.
“This is a really big thing he is undertaking and when he approached me first he wasn’t sure how he was going to execute it, but here we are now.”
Dillion “D-Mac” McKenzie also helped to produce the music, which also has an African choir “Mzansi African Singers” singing along with the Junkanoo rhythms.”Junkanoo is really rooted in Africa, in Ghana particularly, so it was an easy collaboration. The Saxons (Junkanoo Group) dancers were also featured in the music video,” said Emily.
The proclaimed Queen of Bahamian music also said: “We collaborated on this and we decided we will split the royalties 50/50 because we decided to as a partnership, so that if it does make money to the point where both of us will benefit, but we have some other stuff we’re going to be working on.”
New music from Sweet Emily is always welcomed. Even though she was an entertainer for many years in the club scene in The Bahamas, she came to notable fame with her song with “Look Wha ya Do” with legendary, world reknown Bahamian musical icon Ronnie Butler.
Now that she is back for good now after a hiatus from performing, Emily said, “The world has changed. Now you have technology playing a part.
“So everyone now is really at your fingertips right on your phone. You can find somebody you want to collaborate with or meet, it might be difficult because a lot of them use their Facebook pages or follow page. So you can’t hit up international artists directly, but you may get to meet them through the people that are connected with them and that’s when you find success.
“Or now with YouTube where your music can be international and you get to push your own brand, so for me I’m trying to push more.”
Between recording new music Emily spends her time in the church, have placed spirituality as a cornerstone that keeps her together.
She said: “So for me, I am fighting the battle of bridging the gap. Bringing together all artists with the new artists, I’m trying to help the new artists to navigate some of them through the processes that we’ve gone through, so they can avoid making some of the mistakes that I’ve made, or some of the things that happened to me and trying to help them to avoid falling in some of the holes that I fell in.
“I see myself as a mentor in this thing now as somebody who is here as a voice to stand up with you. But at the same time, not to be caught up in all the negativity and not on the show people you could be the queen, serve God, leave, come back and still be the queen.”