Matilde Heckler challenges emo stereotypes with a feminist approach and an electric violin.
In February, a clip showed up on my TikTok For You Page. The front person was wearing a poofy dress, wailing on an electric violin and screaming, “Emo needs more fucking girls,” into the mic. I remember liking the video before continuing to scroll through my feed for another hour.
A few months later, I stumbled upon the same account—this time, the girl was performing a violin cover of American Football’s “Never Meant.” Appreciating the tribute to Midwest Emo, I decided to explore this page, discovering Matilde Heckler in the process. Scrolling through Heckler’s feed was an adventure of song covers, original lyrics, and snippets from her life.
I spoke with Heckler a few days after her twentieth birthday (she’s an Aries), and right before the release of her newest single, “Emo Needs More Fucking Girls,” which she described as her pièce de résistance. According to her, this song encapsulates how emo as a genre tends to be exclusive and what being a woman in a band is like. Drawing sonic inspiration from ‘90s riot grrrl-esque punk, Heckler implores her audience to view them as more than just a body on stage. She can remain a badass hyper-feminine girl while still taking up space in the music scene. Heckler told me that she wishes that her younger self could have listened to this kind of music. “It’s so much fun, you can jump around and scream along and be a girl, be a boy, be anything you want to be.”
Heckler is currently pursuing a dual degree in violin performance and business management at Berklee College of Music. Throughout her childhood, she was classically trained in violin performance, never straying too much from prescribed styles. With strict classical playing, daily practice began to feel like a chore. As she began exploring other genres, “departing from the cutthroat classical world entailed a steep learning curve.” When she began songwriting in high school, she decided to experiment and fuse their interests into a pop/jazz/rock amalgamation.
Heckler shared an anecdote of how she came to hone her lyrical capabilities. “I dated a guy in high school who wrote songs,” she said, laughing. “He was really big into emo music, even though I didn’t listen to much back then. And I, of course, said, ‘Oh, yeah. I do that too!’ And then I started writing down my thoughts along to music and it became a sort of sonic journaling for me.”
As soon as Heckler began her foray into emo as a genre, she was sucked in. She pinpoints fredo disco and Mom Jeans. as some of her quintessential emo inspirations. Emo music’s style of poetic lyricism became an outlet for her stream of consciousness. Although her new release focuses on how emo should be more inclusive, Heckler mentioned that she is also currently trying to brand herself outside of just one genre to avoid putting herself in a box. In her own words, outside of any genre labels, Matilde Heckler describes herself and her music as “feminist funky fun, all tied up in a glittery electric violin bow.”
Heckler is currently working on an EP that will display her unique sound. She hopes to continue performing live shows here and there in the upcoming months but wishes to focus more on the creative aspect of music rather than the marketing. She recently hit ten thousand followers on TikTok, and the growth of her fan base shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. At just twenty years old, Heckler has already established herself as a force to be reckoned with, and whatever she does next is sure to keep us on our toes. After all, just like Matilde, aren’t we all just striving to live up to the dreams of our younger selves?