Songfacts®:

• This is an emotional ballad dedicated to the daughter James Arthur might have one day. He sings the heartfelt lyrics directly to the imaginary Emily, picturing how she will inspire his songs and make him a "better man."
• During the first verse, Arthur hopes his well-publicized dark past won't hinder their relationship.
  
  And if you ever read the things they wrote
  I hope that you can let them go
  I was living in a different world
  Before I had my little girl
  
  After winning the UK version of X Factor in 2012, James Arthur struggled to adjust to his new fame. He struggled with drugs, anxiety, and depression, and made several contentious remarks on social media.
• Arthur released "Emily" on September 24, 2021 as the fourth single from his fourth album, It'll All Make Sense In The End.
• James Arthur wrote the song with the production duo Red Triangle and singer-songwriter James "Yami" Bell. The same quartet penned It'll All Make Sense in the End's lead single, "Medicine."
• Arthur said the song arose from conversations about having children. "Would I even be a good dad? What if they read about all the s--t I've been through? It doesn't matter because ultimately I'm the guy who's going to be there for you all your life."
• During lockdown, James Arthur wrote "Emily" amid an intense three-month period of writing songs. Making music was a form of therapy for him.
  
  "Like everyone, I was forced to reflect and that made my mental health go a bit sideways," he told Officialcharts.com.
• James Arthur later revealed he wrote "Emily" while his partner, Jessica Grist, was pregnant. The lyrics were meant to tell the child that the singer had been "living in a different world" until she came along. Sadly, Jessica had a miscarriage and lost the baby. Asked on Andy Jaye's An Hour With podcast if Arthur wrote "Emily" for a future daughter, he replied: "To be honest, when it first came out I sort of billed it as that, but I spoke to my partner, and at the time it was a realistic prospect."
  
  "Sadly it didn't work out," he continued. "It wasn't far, it was a couple of months and she had an ectopic pregnancy. So she lost the child, and I didn't really want to talk about it."
  
  "But she actually said, 'I think it's really important that you do,'" he added, "just because there's so little information, and I would echo that actually."