When Emma Louise prays, it’s to herself.

There’s still the spiritual element to her chants, words floating out to a mystical being in outer space, but largely, each mantra is dedicated to her inner self, her true self, and her sixth album Sunshine for Happiness, released May 1, 2026 via Future Classic, is the sermon all are gathered to hear.

Sunshine for Happiness - Emma Louise — Sunshine for Happiness – Emma Louise

Following the acclaim of her 2018 album Lilac Everything, the Australian singer/songwriter felt burned out and on the verge of quitting music forever. In Los Angeles, she checked herself into a hospital, where she found solace in a piano and the strength to create this album. Sunshine for Happiness is vulnerable in every sense of the word; a lyrically-focused, sultry album exploring the depths of depression and a journey toward finding hope.

The drastic mood switches between tracks mirror the complexities of deep emotional episodes, where one day could feel significantly different than the day before. “Beggar,” the opening track of the album, utilizes the melody of what should be a love song and yet, with Louise’s lyrics, is an honest glance at yearning to be loved. “I’m a beggar, a penny for your kindness, a penny for your sweet love.” In contrast, the song following it, “Nothing Could Tear Us Apart,” seems to share the opposite message where Louise sings about the innocent notion that love can conquer all through livelier music production.

The same quick temperamental switch-up occurs between “God Between Us” and “Bahia De Banderas.” The first track is an intense piano ballad following two people entering a relationship despite knowing it wouldn’t be healthy for either party. The orchestra ripping through the chorus and Louise’s somber voice stretches the piece far beyond impactful and into gut-wrenching. “People like us should never fall in love,” she warns early on, only to go against her own mind and let the romance blossom. “Now look at us, we have it all. We are a two-headed animal, we’ve lost ourselves but won the war, we are all we’ve been fighting for.”

In contrast, the following song “Bahia De Banderas” is a Mexican-flare infused dance-able experience on leaving regular society to run away to a bay on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. It’s lighthearted and lively brass instruments completely shift the narrative away from soul-crushing actions to more positive ones, to making the choice to take care of oneself by escaping it all.

The juxtaposition between these tracks are message from Louise: human experience is not emotionally linear, especially during moments of profound emotions.

Emma Louise "Sunshine for Happiness" © Sam Kristofski — Emma Louise “Sunshine for Happiness” © Sam Kristofski

Louise invokes a spiritual element separate from religion, instead stemming from her own resilience.

Louise doesn’t need a church or temple to find a higher power. She’s discovered one in herself. In “Holy Holy,” the eighth track on Sunshine for Happiness, a choir of hums join in the background of the chorus, highlighting Louise’s incredible high range, singing notes in an octave so high it’s almost a whisper. It’s a song worshiping her own survival despite hardship, ending with great booms from a cymbal that feel like finally entering the eye of a storm.

“The Absence of You,” in the same contradictory fashion the album carries, serves as the antithesis of “Holy Holy.” It’s Louise realizing she’s lost a spiritual connection and trying to get it back, done in a much darker, deeply synth-ed out sound. “And was it God or the music that moved in me between the silence/ While I was laying, gently weeping, dying in the quiet/ Speak up my innocence, did it insist that I come with it?/ And follow that road to the other side?/ Back to the absence of you in my life.”

There’s a delicate beauty in every song that teaches the lesson on finding loveliness in everyday life.

Louise’s voice, with its epic high notes and breathy quality, is ethereal in its own right. When paired with a slow guitar and a steady tempo, that magic magnifies. On “Dust,” she works through understanding the finite nature of life, and discovers solace in how everyone returns to the earth they emerged from. “All we’ve loved, all we’ve learned, to dust, we return.” This idea continues in “All Beautiful Things,” a song about getting past her fears to push herself toward accomplishing her greatest desires. “I want to swim in the ocean, to conquer all my fears, to tame my emotion, to make you proud of me.”

Louise knows that life isn’t always sunshine and roses, but she doesn’t need it to be because she can find wonders in any aspect of being human. In “Through Love We See The World,” she sings about how love connects everyone in the world, the song ending in a climactic crescendo of instruments that enforce this message.

She’s not naive to the truth, using songs like “Medicine” to reflect on underlying toxicities in people and relationships, but she reinforces that that’s not the point of Sunshine for Happiness. The final track “It’s Hard To Say Goodbye,” was inspired by the burning of Notre-Dame in Paris and how, despite the tragedy, people came together and leaned on each other to say goodbye. It’s a bittersweet ending revealing a bittersweet truth, with almost 30 seconds of distant drum pounding soundscapes allowing listeners to internalize that there will always be good and bad moments, and the choice on whether to move past them or not has to come from within.

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