London singer-songwriter Emma-Lee Moss records under the name of Emmy the Great. She was born in Hong Kong to an English father and a Chinese mother and was into music from a young age. Emmy was initially a member of the indie folk group Lightspeed Champion, performing as their vocalist for a brief period in 2007 alongside Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine. Her debut album First Love was released in February 2009 and was ranked by The New York Times at #7 in their list of "Best Albums of the Year 2009."

Emmy's sophomore album, Virtue, was released on June 13, 2011. It started out as a third person project, however, the religious conversion of her fiancé and their subsequent break-up inspired her to take a personal approach towards her song-writing. She told NME: "After I wrote the last album, I felt terrible about having to sing songs about someone I knew so blatantly. So I tried to write this record based entirely on imaginary situations. Unfortunately it didn't end up being imaginary in the end because most of the songs are about me."

This is the only song where Emmy succeeded in writing about an actual imaginary situation. She explained to NME: "It is sang from the point of view of someone reading Romeo And Juliet at a window and a page disappears. Then Juliet comes back for the page and for her life."

Emmy explained her stage name in an interview with Stereogum: "When I was a University, we all made demos. I made mine because I wanted to be a backing singer and I wanted to have something to hand to people. I never thought I would end up as a solo artist, so I took my gmail address and wrote it on the cover. People got hold of that first demo and I kept playing the gigs I got offered and then here I am. 'Emmy' is a name they called me at university, which I hated, and 'the Great' I added on because I hated 'Emmy' so much."