Emi Meyer (エミ・マイヤー) is a singer, pianist and songwriter who was born in Kyoto on 15 March 1987 to a Japanese mother, an art-history professor, and an American father. Her family moved to Seattle while she was a toddler and she grew up there, which is why she is usually described as Japanese-born and American-raised. She began classical piano at six. In middle school she tried out for a school jazz band that needed a pianist, which is how she met jazz, and she has described Seattle jazz teachers as the people who guided her. One of them was the drummer John Bishop, who taught at a jazz camp she attended in her school years and later founded Origin Records, the Seattle jazz label that released her American debut. She attended University Prep in Seattle and studied ethnomusicology and international relations at Pomona College, near Los Angeles, with a study-abroad stay in Kyoto that was her first time living in Japan.

In 2007 she won the Seattle-Kobe Jazz Vocalist Competition, a contest run by the two sister cities, and the win opened the door to Japan. Her self-produced first album, Curious Creature, appeared in 2007 and went to number one on the iTunes Japan jazz chart after "Room Blue" was chosen as a Single of the Week. Plankton released it on CD in Japan in 2009 with the bonus track "Kimi ni Tsutaetai", and HMV Record Shop reissued it on vinyl for Record Store Day in 2018.

Passport (2010) was a Japanese-language album written with the rapper and producer Shing02, drawing on bossa nova and reggae, and a 12-inch single of its title song "Yakusoku" came with dub versions. Suitcase of Stones (2011) went back to English and was produced by the engineer S. Husky Höskulds. The 2012 EP LOL included "On the Road", which Toyota used in a Prius commercial in Japan, and Galaxy's Skirt (2013) followed, with a CD-and-DVD edition that Curious Creature Records issued in Japan in October 2013. In 2014 she made an all-Japanese-lyric album with the guitarist Seiichi Nagai, Emi Meyer & Seiichi Nagai. Her Wikipedia biography adds that she opened for Yael Naim in Tokyo, played the Kobe Jazz Festival and toured Korea, and the Seattle press reported appearances at the Sundance Film Festival.

The most clearly jazz chapter is Monochrome. She recorded it in Paris in October 2014 with the Belgian pianist Eric Legnini, who produced it with her, and his French rhythm section of Thomas Bramerie on bass and Franck Agulhon on drums, with the guitarist Rocky Gresset. Legnini had already put her on his 2013 album Sing Twice!, where she sings "Winter Heron", a piece the two co-wrote. Monochrome came out in Japan on 2 September 2015 as an album of standards, including "Fly Me to the Moon", "Moon River", "Cheek to Cheek", "My Funny Valentine" and "What a Wonderful World", and went to number one on iTunes Japan Jazz. Origin Records issued a revised American edition in autumn 2017 that dropped most of the standards and added new originals recorded in Seattle with Dan Balmer, Dawn Clement and others. DownBeat reviewed it in its November 2017 issue and called it a standout that should widen her audience.

Since then her recorded output has moved toward songwriter pop and film and television work. She recorded in Nashville in 2020, including "When I Lose Control" with Keb' Mo', sang a Japanese-language cover of Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" for Netflix's Blue Eye Samurai (2023), and produced and arranged the Start Again EP for the singer Crystal Kay, writing or co-writing songs on it. Wings: The Blackbird Sessions (Remastered) appeared on Curious Creature Records on 5 December 2025, and in 2026 she released the singles "Mirror Mirror" with May J. (Sony Music Japan, 22 May) and "Cowboy Matsuri" with Anna Tsuchiya (24 July). She is based in Seattle and Tokyo and is active today.

Meyer is a borderline case for a jazz catalogue and the plain description is that she is a jazz-trained singer-songwriter whose work sits between vocal jazz and pop. The jazz case is real: Discogs tags nearly every release issued under her own name as jazz, she was a jazz-competition winner, Curious Creature and Monochrome each reached number one on the iTunes Japan jazz chart, Origin Records is a jazz label, DownBeat reviewed Monochrome, and Apple Music files Curious Creature, Passport and Monochrome under jazz. The case against is just as real: a Seattle weekly called her a "jazz pop performer", a Tokyo reviewer placed her between blues, jazz and reggae, Suitcase of Stones is filed under singer-songwriter and Galaxy's Skirt under pop, and her releases of the 2020s are mostly pop, songwriter and J-pop singles. She also appears on hip-hop records (Shing02, Fat Lip and Slim Kid 3, Nappy Roots, Handsome Boy Modeling School) and her songs have been placed in a Prius commercial and in television series.

The voice is what ties it together: husky, close-miked and conversational, often compared with Norah Jones, and DownBeat added Diana Krall to the comparison. She writes in both English and Japanese and says English is her stronger language for songwriting. Her piano is a songwriter's piano more than a soloist's. Monochrome is where she sounds most like a jazz singer, with a rhythm section that swings, a trumpet feature on the title track and a Brazilian-tinged original, "Paraíso".