Some artists talk about wanting to help people feel less alone. Others take over a roadside rooftop, erect a giant billboard, put a stage in front of it, and perform for an hour-plus to festival goers on the road to Coachella.
Emilee Moore is decidedly in the latter camp. On April 12, day one of weekend one of the music festival in Indio, Calif., Moore performed her new single “Hanging On” multiple times from a custom billboard located along the route from Los Angeles to Indio.
The activation was the culmination of a lot of planning and a hefty dose of good will. And it was in keeping with the indie singer/songwriter’s sole mission through music: To help those struggling with heartbreak, love lost and desperation know they are not alone.
“Any time I think about what I want to release or bring to the stage, I think back to my most heartbroken and what I really needed in those moments, and how I can create a space where people feel safe and understood, and that it’s OK to be sad. I was longing to be understood and to know that I wasn’t alone in feeling the way I did,” Moore says.
“I was trying to think of the most grand thing I could do to help people feel less alone and the first thing that popped into my head was a billboard on the way to Coachella.” Aside from the obvious pack the activation would punch—the smattering of signage en route to the fest is a phenomenon in itself—Moore says the activation was a literal manifestation of her own lived experience.
“Most importantly, when I experienced my biggest heartbreaks I would always look for a sign, something to make me fee less alone, so I was trying to incorporate that sentiment into what I was doing,” she notes. “A billboard is a very large sign—it just made sense.”
Beyond the perch where Moore performed, the billboard packed another distinct feature: a huge broken heart created from fan-sent objects that keep them “hanging on” to a past relationship. As she was envisioning what it would look like, she asked fans to submit photos of items they are still “Hanging On” to from previous relationships (similar to how she included fan submissions in her hot air balloon performance last year) and says she received hundreds of items, from photos to jewelry to articles of clothing.
“It was special to build it and make it a little DIY; it felt a little more powerful to me,” she says.
While Moore reports many passersby grabbed photos and video—the song has reached 150,000 streams across platforms, thousands have shared her performance and the sound charted on Instagram’s trending sounds with 6,000-plus usages since release—she and her label Th3rd Brain captured drone footage they’ll use for a new music video.
Back on the ground, she left tiny billboards with messages of encouragement around the Coachella grounds, and she’s continuing to build community across her social channels.
“I really want to create a space on my socials where it’s OK to feel your feelings and people are really open and vulnerable on my page,” Moore says. “I try to be as real as possible, and it’s created a special connection where people feel safe to come and talk to me about things, and dm me. It’s a real social connection with my fans, and it helps them feel less alone.”
Mind Reading (formerly Hollywood & Mind) is a recurring column that lives at the intersection of entertainment and wellbeing, and features interviews with musicians, actors and other culture influencers who are elevating the conversation around mental health.
