A kid in a bedroom writing songs in journals grew up and started using the songwriting for a purpose. Millaze's name is a play on the word "malaise" because she's trying to solve the mystery of a malaise in a human life, her life.
Millaze's name comes from the middles of her legal name, Emily Plazek, and she discovered it hungover one day in her hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, in the middle of an era spending years putting off her own music goals to work on others'. After graduating from business school, she founded a music business research company, MIC: Music Industry Connected, to help her lead teams of international student interns through research experiments on the promotion & production strategies of local rappers & musicians she was managing. In 2022, she completed her goal of creating a 6-step “
Mountain” music career process manual for how to launch a front-line music career.
But then Millaze sat at her dad's bedside as he took his last breath after she promised him she'd "figure out how to be okay." Now forced to face the fact that she was not "okay", she made herself do the one thing she'd never done: put herself and her music first. Specifically, she got intensively trained in social media and began the content creation journey.
Millaze's croissant & tea “Lunch Desserts" from her kitchen table in Bloomington, IN have gone viral for storytelling her goodbye to her dad, her recovery from 3 eating disorders, her reactions to getting trolled for her DIY creation of a fast "panic-attack" song called Override, her playful piggybacking off music critics like Duncanyounot and Anthony Fantano, and more.
Yes, sharing her music & connecting with fans were the primary drivers for her social media work - but since she lived in a non-music-hub city, she also needed to find some key players to add to her team, and social media gave her that opportunity. In response to a post she shared asking for advice on mixing/mastering, she teamed up with producer Connor Jobes from Sunderland, UK. Through him, she also began working with Sunderland producer Brandon Stewart. Then, LA producer Brian Robert Jones was added to the team, too.
Although the virtual world helped Millaze connect internationally, she also grew deeper roots in Bloomington, IN by developing her live show exclusively at its local venues, and using the town's famous locations as the settings for filming the music videos that add up to her "Music Video Movie".
In Spring 2026, a 13-week Album Season launched the "And She Can't Put it Down" album. This completed the "She Picks it Up and She Can't Put it Down" double album + music video movie about clawing through denial to grasp reality. Now her social media content shares her efforts to "solve the malaise mystery of her life" in real time as she digests the double album herself, too.
