I’ve dated people who made me feel like I could conquer the fucking world. You know the feeling—where you’re so wrapped up in them that reality blurs and suddenly you’re plotting world domination together at 2am over wine. That’s what Eliza Prymak taps into with ‘EMPIRE,’ and holy shit, she makes you believe it could actually work.
This electro pop track is dripping with ambition and desire. Eliza takes the risk-and-reward game of love and turns it into a goddamn conquest narrative. “Game of risk and taking chances / Set on being the winner of your heart” she opens with, and you’re immediately in it. This is that rush when you meet someone and your brain just goes offline. You know they’re probably trouble. You’re doing it anyway.
The production here is sleek and seductive. The synths build and build, that slow burn that keeps you waiting. Eliza studied classical voice and jazz at Interlochen Arts Academy, which you can hear—she’s got technical chops. But she’s not showing off with them. She grew up listening to Lana Del Rey, Amy Winehouse, Ariana Grande, and you can tell she learned how to make precision sound effortless. Her voice here has that same hunger, that electricity.
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“Emotional and physical dances / Climb to the top of the hill with me / And we’ll be kings again.” There’s the seduction. Physical AND emotional—Eliza knows what she’s doing here. This is about bodies and minds tangled together, about ambition that’s as much about power as it is about passion. She’s inviting someone into a kingdom they’ll build together. And then comes the challenge: “Aren’t you thrilled for the kill? / Bonnie and Clyde type deal.”
Here’s where it gets interesting. She’s referencing the ultimate doomed romance, Bonnie and Clyde, who went down in flames. Everyone knows this. “But we won’t fall like they did.” That’s the whole thesis. She’s acknowledging that yeah, empires crumble. Relationships blow up. We all know the stories. She’s saying fuck it, we’re the exception.
That chorus hits hard. “All the other empires: collapsed and broken / You could manifest it, if it was spoken / Linger on your lips now, and we won’t fall down.” Sexy and defiant. She’s manifesting this whole thing—if you say it out loud, if you claim it, maybe you can make it real. And that line about lingering on lips? That’s the physical heat threading through all this grand empire talk. We’re in bedrooms as much as we’re on battlefields.
“Looking like my god at your second come now.” Stop. Did she just— Yeah, she did. Eliza’s layering religious ecstasy with sexual climax and I’m here for it. This is what I mean about heat. She’s making this person divine, making sex sacred, making the whole relationship feel like worship and conquest rolled into one.
Then she pushes further. “You’re romantic, you’re to die for, stand and cry for / You’re building up these walls, / You act like I can’t fight toward.” She’s calling out defensiveness. This person is worth the battle, worth breaking through whatever barriers they’ve constructed. “Another Persian Empire / Baby, time is not lord.” Even ancient civilizations couldn’t withstand time’s erosion, but fuck it—we’re betting on ourselves anyway.
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What makes this work is Eliza’s conviction. Eliza grew up in rural northern Virginia, now she’s studying songwriting at Belmont in Nashville. She’s done national tours—opened for The Voice finalist Joshua Davis, played with Dust Box Band after Interlochen. She came from somewhere small and decided to go big with it. She knows empires fall. She’s betting on herself and whoever this song is about anyway.
The defiance in “But we won’t, we won’t, we won’t, fall like they did” feels earned. She’s not naive—she’s naming all the failures that came before. She’s choosing the risk anyway. Climbing that hill, claiming the kingdom, all of it.
Play this when you’re falling for someone your friends have concerns about. When everyone’s got opinions and you’re ignoring all of them. When you want to feel powerful and desired and dangerous all at once.
Stream this immediately. This goes on when you’re getting ready to go out and need that confidence boost. When you’re driving at night with the windows down processing something. When you need to remember that sometimes the reckless choice is the right one. Eliza Prymak is stacking her own wins here, blending pop with hip-hop and jazz into something that feels entirely hers. She’s making her move, and this track makes you want to make yours too.
