For Emma, Forever Ago is the debut studio album by American indie folk band Bon Iver. It was first self-released in July 2007, and later saw wide release on the Jagjaguwar label in February 2008. The album is principally the work of singer-songwriter Justin Vernon. While living in Raleigh, North Carolina, Vernon fell ill with mononucleosis and a liver infection, and grew frustrated with his songwriting and life. He left Raleigh and drove to his father's remote hunting cabin an hour northwest of his hometown, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, hoping to be alone.
The album was recorded at the cabin between late 2006 to early 2007. Vernon abandoned his old songwriting methods and instead focused on wordless melodies that he later set to words, which he felt evoked a more subconscious meaning. The record's lyrical subjects include lost love and mediocrity. His folk-infused songs include heavy choral arrangements, featuring Vernon's falsetto, and horns. He hunted his own food and spent much of his time isolated. Though he did not intend to make an album, he received strong encouragements from friends and decided to self-release For Emma, Forever Ago in July 2007. After several performances and online exposure, he was signed to Jagjaguwar later that year.
For Emma, Forever Ago attracted wide acclaim from music critics, achieving a spot on dozens of end-of-the-year lists, as well as several awards. It became a major commercial success for Jagjaguwar, an independent label, and has been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for combined sales, streaming and track-sales equivalent of over one million units. "Skinny Love" became the album's best-performing single and also went gold. Vernon gathered together several musicians to form a band to tour with. The album's touring cycle lasted two years, ending in late 2009, and visited several countries and music festivals worldwide. In 2020, it was ranked 461 on Rolling Stones list of the greatest albums of all time.
Background
Justin Vernon was born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and grew up pursuing music. He saw the folk duo Indigo Girls in concert in middle school and it proved formative on his life. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire (UW–Eau Claire), where he played in a number of bands. One such group, Mount Vernon, consisted of ten members, including saxophonist Sara Jensen, who became his first love. He and Jensen broke up in the middle of his college years, but would remain friends. He studied music theory for a time, as well as jazz, but ended up with a degree in religious studies. DeYarmond Edison became his next musical project, as he graduated from college and relocated to Raleigh, North Carolina, in August 2005. The group chose Raleigh hoping for an adventure and a more vibrant musical scene.
Over the course of his time in Raleigh, he became frustrated with his songwriting as well as his personal life. He worked at a local sandwich shop that he felt took too much time from him. He started to have health problems: he first contracted pneumonia, then mononucleosis, which developed into a liver infection that kept him bedridden for three months. Members of the band began to fight, and Vernon was kicked out of the group. Many of his bands had held similar members—some he had known since his adolescence—which amplified the pain of breaking apart. Afterwards, he spent time as a band member for The Rosebuds; his contributions feature on their third album, Night of the Furies. Vernon also recorded a solo EP, Hazeltons, which he distributed in 100 self-made CD-Rs. He lost his money playing online poker, which he viewed as a microcosm for his other problems.
Vernon, then 25, felt his life had spiraled into mediocrity, as though he had lost the sense of purpose he had a lustrum prior. He sensed he had compromised with bandmates and in his personal life. His depression was fueled by indifference, and he decided to get away from Raleigh and return to his hometown. He broke up with his then-girlfriend, Christy Smith, and tossed his recording equipment into the trunk of his car. He drove home to Eau Claire over eighteen hours through the night. He first stopped at his parents' home while they were out. He sat on their couch and felt "claustrophobic" and "super-empty." He returned to the road, in search of silence and hoping to be alone.
Recording and production
Vernon drove to his father's hunting cabin, roughly an hour's drive northwest of his hometown. He and his father had often spent weekends at the 80-acre rural property—an area they dubbed "the land"—when he was growing up. In an interview, he described it as "a little Alpine style, timber-frame cabin." The cabin was not necessarily ramshackle; his father had replaced its dirt floor and installed plumbing years before. For roughly three weeks, Vernon sat alone in the shack, drinking beer and watching television. He mulled over thoughts about his relationship with Jensen, a break-up he had struggled to get over. He hunted his food, a practice that he had learned from his father. He killed two deer in his period at the property, which lasted the entire three months "and then some," according to Vernon. At one point, he faced a wild bear that entered the cabin late one night, enticed by his stew. His father would drop by "every 10 days or so," supplying his son with beer, eggs, and cheese. Vernon completed tasks for him, such as stripping wood, clearing brush, and stacking lumber. He did not intend to stay for long, viewing the excursion as "an opportunity to escape the trap of society, to not pay bills, to play music and live really cheaply." Instead, he stayed for three months in the harsh Wisconsin winter.
After three weeks, Vernon grew tired of his "self-indulgent, lazy behavior" and began forming song ideas. He had an idea for a song and brought inside his musical equipment, which consisted of several guitars, microphones, and a Power Mac G4 with Pro Tools LE. Shortly before exiting Raleigh, he had developed song ideas but ceased working on them in his depression. He began recording songs and layering his vocals atop more vocals, imitating a choir. He sang in falsetto, which he had first tried with his previous band. He gained freedom in singing in a higher register, feeling he accessed "painful melodies" unattainable in his previous work. He further manipulated his recorded vocals using the software Auto-Tune. Soon, he began developing more songs, which were worked on in 12-hour "bursts" of productivity. "I would work for 14 hours a day and start to feel a little insane," he later commented. The work was "labor-intensive," as he often merged eight or more tracks of vocals on each song. He likened the singularity of the process to his teenage years, where he worked alone with an eight-track. According to Vernon, days were hazy and began to run together for him. He would wake each morning at sunrise, due to the light reflecting from the snow. To help repair his 1964 Sears Silvertone guitar, he traded venison in the nearby town. By February, with winter drawing to a close, Vernon emerged from the cabin with nine songs. He left still feeling physically sick from the infection, and did not feel "renewed" from his creative catharsis. Before heading back to Raleigh, he broke out some whiskey with a couple friends and put the finishing touches on the record, recording brass on "For Emma."
While stories of the "cabin" would become oft-repeated and mythologized, Vernon never viewed it that way: "It's sort of odd to look back and see it as magical, because it felt like a lonely few months at the cabin, where I plugged in the laptop and fucked around." Rolling Stone Josh Eells later summarized its romanticized story as "part Into the Wild, part Basement Tapes, part Walden, part Unabomber." Vernon later viewed the album as a victory for his mental health, a metaphor for taking "personal steps" to improve his life. He characterized his growth as a "small internal dialogue between me and the microphone." The album's title comes from Jensen's middle name, though he refrained from confirming that she was the central inspiration behind the album. He felt the titular "Emma" was evocative of "a statement, a sentiment and a closing of my own history." He went more in-depth in a later remark: "Emma isn't a person. Emma is a place that you get stuck in. Emma's a pain that you can't erase."
Composition and music
For Emma, Forever Ago is a summation of Vernon's life events at the time, ranging from "lost love and longing" to mediocrity. His lyrics on the album aspire to tell stories, which was inspired by musician Bruce Springsteen, and the song structures are unorthodox. He discarded his old method of songwriting, both metaphorically and literally: on one occasion, an old PowerBook crashed, losing dozens of unfinished old songs. Vernon buried the laptop in the snow, later remarking, "They were taken from me but it was good that they were, as it really gave me a new face." Music came first, after which he would create wordless vocal lines. He felt this process brought forth "weird, subconscious melodies and sounds." He considered this method a "back-door way," as they fit more to his unintelligible syllables than words.
He expanded upon this process in a 2008 interview:
Vernon listened to little music while creating the album, but was inspired by myriad sources. He had listened to Vienna Boys' Choir recordings months prior, which inspired him to incorporate choral arrangements into his work. He also felt inspired by Appalachian folk singers who employed the falsetto register, which inspired him to use his. As a result, he felt more comfortable singing certain complicated phrases, as though he could express pain or joy more clearly. He suggested in one interview it could have been a reaction to his favorite black singers, such as the Staple Singers, Mahalia Jackson, and Sam Cooke. "Flume" was written at his girlfriend Christy Smith's house in Raleigh, preceding his trip to the cabin. He later dubbed "Flume" as the "catalyst" for his move to the cabin and creation of Bon Iver: "that was the song that made me leave." While "Skinny Love" has been considered a reference to his relationship with Smith, Vernon countered this as "not entirely accurate [...] it's about that time in a relationship that I was going through; you're in a relationship because you need help, but that's not necessarily why you should be in a relationship. And that's skinny." "re: Stacks", meanwhile, concerns a period of problem gambling Vernon underwent.
Release After completing the recordings, Vernon returned to North Carolina to play guitar on tour with The Rosebuds, who toured through that spring. It took several months for him to have thoughts on his recordings, which he viewed as potential demos that he would later re-record. However, Ivan Howard of The Rosebuds convinced him to leave them as is, commenting "This is your record." He consulted friends to listen first before deciding to self-release it. He mixed his recordings himself and with Nick Peterson of Track & Field studios in Chapel Hill, NC then hoping to send them out to labels who would give him an advance to record a "real" album. While at the cabin, Vernon had written to Kelly Crisp of The Rosebuds, concluding his letter with "bon iver," a misspelling of "bon hiver," which is French for "good winter." Its origins lie in an episode of Northern Exposure, wherein two characters greet one another. Crisp encouraged him to name the project Bon Iver. While on tour with the Rosebuds, he asked to play a small solo set, his first, prior to a performance at that year's South by Southwest (SXSW). Encouraged, more performances followed in New York and in Wisconsin.