Em Beihold has spent years learning how to adapt. On her long-awaited debut album, Tales Of A Failed Shapeshifter, she stops adapting and starts accounting for the cost.

The album arrives after a stretch where momentum and doubt collided. When “Numb Little Bug” broke through in 2022, its blunt depiction of antidepressant numbness connected fast and far, pushing Beihold into the pop mainstream and onto late-night stages, major tours, and a schedule that rarely slowed. It also amplified pressure. After years of writing her way through emotions, she hit a wall where the songs stopped coming and so did her sense of self.

That blockage became the starting point for Tales Of A Failed Shapeshifter. Rather than focusing on capitalizing on her initial successes, Beihold turned inward, stepping into outpatient therapy and back toward the artists who first taught her how to write honestly. The question that cracked things open came from an unexpected place, cutting through comparison and expectation: how would it feel if Regina Spektor tried to be Britney Spears? The point landed. The problem was never ambition. It was distortion.

When she returned to the studio, the shift was immediate. Working with James Flannigan and Jason Suwito, collaborators who understood her instincts rather than sanding them down, Beihold found her voice again. “Brutus” came first, written during treatment and shaped by jealousy and comparison without turning either into caricature. It documents a realization rather than a grievance.

From there, the album pulls from years of journals and voice memos. “Scared of the Dark,” a meditation on co-dependency, traces its roots back to something she began writing at thirteen. Elsewhere, Beihold examines the versions of herself she tried on for comfort, approval, or momentum, and the quiet damage that came with staying in the wrong skin too long.

One of the album’s sharpest turns comes with “Hot Goblin,” written after conversations with her A&R rep reframed the material as a snapshot of how quickly confidence can swing, especially for young women moving through public and private expectations at once. The song leans into that instability directly, naming it without flattening it.

Despite its subject matter, Tales Of A Failed Shapeshifter is not weighed down by darkness. Beihold has always balanced heaviness with wit, and that instinct carries through here. The colors are bright, the hooks are playful, and the writing stays pointed. What’s different is the certainty underneath it. This is an artist no longer trying to outrun discomfort or dress it up as something else.