[ARCHIVED] Fantastic Music: Behind the Song Blind Pig
written by Tudor • December 14 2016 • Last Updated July 23 2025
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a musician on holiday, enjoying time at home with your family in Perth Australia. Suddenly you get contacted by a world-famous recording studio, are given lyrics to a song, and asked to record it secretly while not showing anyone. When you look at the lyrics, you notice some familiar words, creatures from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
Well that is exactly what happened to Emily Green, who goes by the stage name of Emmi. In her interview with Pottermore, Emmi states that she recorded the song “Blind Pig” in her bedroom, completely unaware that the words she was singing were actually written by J.K. Rowling (with Mario Grigorov). Her instructions at this point were to “be jazzy and magical.” The song, which can be found on YouTube or bought off Amazon or iTunes, is exactly that.
Keeping her recording of the song a secret was difficult. Emmi claims that the reason she recorded the song in her bedroom was that she had friends visiting for supper. The recording was done on a relatively cheap microphone ($60 U.S.) and Emmi did not hear anything more about the song except for working out the permissions for it to be used in Fantastic Beasts. Emmi states that “When I got my tickets to the premiere I was still thinking, ‘Is this real? I’m not going to turn up and they tell me it’s all a joke?’ I’ve been keeping this job a secret for so long, and I’ve never wanted to tell a secret or keep a secret more.”
Emmi has been known to stay humble, following her Taylor Swift tweeted about her single “Sleep On It” and now after being personally selected by director David Yates to record for Fantastic Beasts. In a conversation with Mark Savage at BBC, she says “I wanted to make some mistakes on my own, and create something that was wholly me before I got a whole team on board.” Her efforts to be her own musician have certainly paid off. Emmi’s creativity and “jazzy, magical” voice combined staying true to herself has certainly brought her musical career to fantastic heights.
