Everyone has an album that got them through lockdown. For emie nathan, it was Justin Bieber’s Justice. “It was exactly what I needed, and ever since, I have been bumping those songs in the car, on walks, in the studio, while I paint, drink, dance,” the New York-born, London-raised singer-songwriter tells Apple Music. “Name the scenario and I have probably played his album across it.” Recording this Apple Music Home Session presented nathan with the perfect opportunity to cover one of Bieber’s tracks: “STAY”, Bieber’s 2021 smash with The Kid LAROI. “I knew I could do it justice with a cover arrangement—no pun intended,” she adds. “It just felt like the right time and place to bring this obsession into new space and have the best time working on a song by an artist I love.” Alongside it is an intimate new version of “blue jays”, a track—taken from 2021 EP white light—on which the pop talent nostalgically explores a time where she lived with four family-like female friends in a flat in New York. “It was the first song I wrote during the pandemic that I felt truly excited about,” nathan says. “The lockdowns made it very difficult to gauge whether or not I even liked what I was creating, and very much skewed how I felt as a songwriter. I wanted to give a little moment to this song, strip it back and reinvent that bubbling, restorative feeling of excitement around something I was able to create joyfully.”