Emilia Ali poses on the set of her 2023 music video “Snow.” PHOTO/CALLUM WALKER-HUTCHINSON

It’s hard for Emilia Ali to pin down her genre of music.

“Maybe the easiest thing to say is that my genre is ‘weird pop,’ ” the Hopkinton High School graduate said. “It’s a blend of influences I’ve collected over the years.”

Ali — a singer and songwriter signed to the Ultra Music label — says her genre shifts from electronic dance music (EDM) to folk and other styles. 

The results of her stylistic range are impressive. Ali’s monthly Spotify listeners exceed 894,000, with her top performing solo song “Loved the Ocean” streamed over 5 million times. Her 2017 EP “Dreamland” debuted at No. 24 on the iTunes pop chart and reached the Spotify viral chart in multiple countries.

Even with her early career success, the 27-year-old expresses disbelief.

“I feel grateful and silly about my current life and music landscape,” she said. “I [still] have imposter syndrome about it.”

Although Ali says that the path to a music career was a long process for her, its seeds were sown from a young age.

Ali is the daughter of Hopkinton residents and musicians Barbara Kessler and Phil Antoniades. Kessler is a fellow singer/songwriter, and Antoniades is a drummer.

“I was born into a family that was doing music for a career, actively,” Ali said.

From the time she was very young until about 4 years old, Ali was on and off the road with her parents while they toured. 

Said Ali: “My mom was at the peak of her folk career when she had me.”

In her time, Kessler shared the stage with artists like the Indigo Girls, Dar Williams, Arlo Guthrie and Livingston Taylor. She paused her career in 2000 to focus on raising her children when Ali’s younger sister was born.

From Hopkinton to Berklee

Growing up surrounded by music, Ali was encouraged to explore her skills and talents early on. She joined the school chorus in fifth grade and continued to participate throughout high school. 

In addition, Ali took part in school plays and musicals, along with programs through Exit Stage Left at the Hopkinton Center for the Arts. Her mother would accompany her at occasional talent shows and local Hopkinton gigs.

Despite the encouragement her parents gave her to engage with music, Ali started to push away from it as she entered high school.

“I avoided practicing because my parents wanted me to,” she recalled.

Music’s gravity, however, proved to be too strong. After she graduated from HHS in 2015, Ali enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston, the same school at which her father studied.

“I was like, ‘I need to do something with [music] because this is what I am, this is what I do,’ ” said Ali. 

Ali initially enrolled in Berklee’s music therapy program, but her path shifted in her early college years. After performing in a student showcase, she made a connection with a producer who invited her to work on music with him.

That producer — who goes by VALNTN — collaborated with Ali to produce an EDM track in 2017 titled “Don’t Let Go.” Ali lent her vocals to the song.

The song quickly became a hit, garnering thousands of downloads and streams. Today, “Don’t Let Go” has over 16 million streams on Spotify alone.

Things moved quickly after that. She released her first EP later that year and started working with a manager. After signing her first deal with a subsidiary of Capitol Records, she was approached to perform at 2018’s Lollapalooza music festival.

Ali’s chance to play the four-day music festival held at Grant Park in Chicago came through the Berklee Popular Music Institute. Their BPMI Live program “provides practical access to high levels of the music industry with a focus on the thriving concert festival circuit,” according to the institute’s website.

Emilia Ali (right) performs with her mother, Barbara Kessler, at a reunion festival in Hopkinton for the Old Vienna Kaffeehaus in August. PHOTO/MONICA MANSFIELD

Switching managers, readjusting focus

For others, this whirlwind of good fortune might instill a grand sense of confidence. However, Ali said that she continued to struggle with finding direction.

“When I was younger, after meeting producers, I really wanted someone to tell me what they wanted me to be and then be it,” she said.

“But I had to come to terms with the fact that’s not fulfilling,” she went on, “and it’s not showing me what to do.”

That realization allowed Ali to readjust her focus — a process that was influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic.

After graduating from Berklee in 2019, Ali had the opportunity to follow fellow graduates and friends to Los Angeles and start focusing on her music career. However, she hesitated.

“I had a gut feeling not to go to LA with everyone else,” Ali recalled.

As a result, Ali spent most of lockdown home in Hopkinton, where she could be with family and nearby other high school and college acquaintances. 

During that time, Ali switched managers, signed both artist and publishing deals with Ultra Records and worked on her songwriting.

“It was incredibly healing,” Ali said of the time spent writing music during the pandemic.

Ali credits her community for the support it’s given her to get this far. With opportunities to engage in creative pursuits in school and at community events, she feels she has had space to “do more than just survive.”

“In a community that was, for the most part, really good to each other, it was cool to be able to have those creative opportunities,” said Ali.

She also thanks educators like her former chorus teacher, Isaac Brody, who provided safe spaces and good influences to grow her early music career.

What’s next for Emilia Ali

Ali since moved to LA, and she wrapped up her artist deal with Ultra Records. She still works on songs for Ultra Music’s publishing business, but she is an independent artist. And although she’s had many of her own songs and collaborations see success, she still feels fairly anonymous out in LA.

“It’s funny and very humbling,” Ali admitted. “You can have one song do very well, but no one knows who you are.”

“I think I’m OK with it, though,” she added.

In between pitching and writing songs for other artists, she continues to plug away at her own music. 

“I have hundreds of songs I’m sitting on,” Ali said when asked about what’s next for her. “Maybe five will come out in the next 12 months, and I can’t wait to share those.”

Ali says her songwriting is driven by a desire to make art that explores her feelings about the world and helps her better understand herself. 

For her, expressing her feelings as she experiences something is difficult, and music makes it easier to process. She appreciates that she can put those feelings into something she gets to share with others.

When Ali started out in college, her drive was to do something that helped people.

“My parents told me that I could help a lot of people by writing things that were true to me,” she recalled.