On the heels of releasing his new self-titled album, Zach Bryan has revealed his upcoming 2024 North American trek The Quittin Time Tour.
The tour will hit stadiums and arenas across North America, launching with two shows at Chicago’s United Center on March 6-7 before heading to football stadiums in Denver; Foxborough, Mass.; Philadelphia; Atlanta; Tampa, Fla.; Arlington, Texas; and Minneapolis. The tour will wrap in Bryan’s home state of Oklahoma, with two shows at the BOK Center on Dec. 13-14.
Joining Bryan for the tour will be Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, The Middle East, Turnpike Troubadours, Sheryl Crow, Sierra Ferrell, Matt Maeson and Levi Turner.
Fans can register for tour presale access, with presale beginning Sept. 6. General on-sale begins Sept. 8.
To date, Bryan has notched the top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hit “Something in the Orange,” which also spent six weeks atop the Hot Country Songs chart. Zach Bryan, which the singer/songwriter wrote and produced himself, was released via Warner Records on Aug. 25 and marks Bryan’s fourth full-length studio project. The new, 16-track album features collaborations with The War & Treaty (“Hey Driver”), Kacey Musgraves (“I Remember Everything”), The Lumineers (“Spotless”) and Sierra Ferrell (“Holy Roller”).
In announcing the album’s track list, Bryan said he is “really proud to call the writing and production on somethin’ all mine,” and noted that “I didn’t make this album to appease people who will never be happy anyways, I made it for my people, hope everyone has a good weekend.”
The Quittin Time Tour tour will follow the 27-year-old Bryan’s current Burn, Burn, Burn Tour, which wraps in Kansas City at the end of the month.
As Aidan Noell, the keyboardist for New York-based synth-pop band Nation of Language, elaborates on her love of Death Cab for Cutie, her husband (and band frontman) Ian Devaney stealthily removes one of his boots and begins whacking at a spotted lanternfly that has landed near them in the backyard garden of a Brooklyn coffee shop.
“I think he’s dead, Ian,” Noell deadpans as Devaney turns the invasive pest into paste with legs. “Ian is the No. 1 killer of lanternflies,” she says.
Devaney may want to talk to the Orkin people about a side hustle, but at the moment, he and Noell are a bit busy. On Sept. 7 they begin a nearly 50-date tour that will see them headline Rough Trade’s iNDIEPLAZA festival at Rockefeller Center in their hometown (Sept. 9) and perform in the United Kingdom, Europe and North America before the end of the year. The live run will coincide with the Sept. 15 release of the band’s third album, Strange Disciple on the PIAS label.
Nation of Language caught fire near the beginning of the pandemic when their first album, Introduction, Presence, was released in May 2020. At a time when music fans under lockdown were looking for comfort, their debut was an irresistible confection of familiar and new sounds. Devaney, who hails from Westfield, NJ and is the band’s principal songwriter, nimbly builds nostalgic hooks and loops from such synth-pop and post-punk masters as Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, Human League, Flock of Seagulls and Talking Heads — into brand new songs that are as irresistible as their predecessors. In concert, he channels his musical forebears as well, stalking the stage with jagged, jerky moves, an asymmmetric haircut and (more recently) the beginnings of a Midge Ure mustache.
Devaney and Noell, who recently celebrated their fifth year of marriage (and often finish each other’s sentences), have been on the road almost nonstop since touring resumed in 2021, playing to larger and larger audiences such as the Primavera festival in Barcelona. They say they are looking forward to this next leg of shows because, Devaney explains, the band’s second album, A Way Forward, was released just as lockdowns were ending. “So we were essentially touring the first and second albums at the same time.” Their fall itinerary will be “the first time in quite a while where we are performing songs that people haven’t heard before.”
Below, they talk with Billboard about life on the road as a married couple, artists who have influenced them and much more.
How did you two meet?
Noell: Ian was on tour with his previous band, Static Jacks, who were opening for The Wombats in Kansas City. I was there with my mom because we love going to shows together, and I was enamored with him and his performance. My mom was like, “You should go talk to him.” So I did, and that’s how we met.
Devaney: I was terrified because this was a girl that came to the show with her mom. I was like, “Very nice to meet you.” Handshake.
Aidan, you didn’t know how to play an instrument when you joined the band. How did you learn so quickly.
Noell: Determination. All of Ian’s friends who had played in his bands had moved away, and I felt like it was my duty to do whatever I could to keep his project going. I thought, I can do this if I just try hard enough. Please just try teaching me. And he did.
Ian, as Nation of Language has graduated to progressively larger stages, you seem to have no trouble expanding your performance to fit the space. Have you worked with anyone on accomplishing that?
Devaney: I guess it’s instinctual. It’s very much just doing whatever feels natural. There are definitely moments where, because the stages we play can vary so greatly in size, I’m like, “Is what I’m doing right for this environment?”
But the goal is to let the moment take over as much of my decisions as possible. I try not to overthink what I’m doing in each moment. When I was in high school, my performance style was very showy and all over the place. There were more elements of Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison — classic rock frontman things — going on. Then I rejected that and wanted to stand still. Eventually, I found my way back into movement. Ultimately, it’s my form of dancing. The best way I can describe it is it’s like having a hairbrush in your bedroom when you’re playing your favorite songs.
Obsession seems to be one of themes of Strange Disciple. You seem to be a happy couple. Where does the obsession come from?
Devaney: There’s our relationship to each other, but there are past relationships. There’s putting oneself in friends’ shoes and witnessing their relationships. Not all the obsessions that inspire the music are inherently romantic. Whether it’s obsession with…
Noell: An idealized version of yourself.
Devaney: Or with social media and your relationship to it. It’s anything that captures your attention so much that it warps everything else around you.
Would your fans’ idealization of you have anything to do with that?
Devaney: I don’t think so. I never saw myself as an — I definitely don’t want it to seem adversarial towards our audience.
Nation of Language doesn’t sound anything like The War on Drugs, but I feel like you’ve got something in common in that I’m able to hear your musical influences very clearly. Adam Granduciel’s love of Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen is evident in his songs; Depeche Mode, Kraftwerk, Human League, in yours. Did you ever worry that people would consider your music pastiche?
Devaney: Not really. Those sounds are just the palette that captivates me. It’s not me wanting to write a song that sounds like a Human League song. It’s just using some of the same tools.
What are the essential albums in your collection?
Devaney: When it comes to the albums that I would say are in the pantheon of what drives this band, The Man-Machine by Kraftwerk; Remain in Light by Talking Heads, Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. To me, they exist in that kind of rarefied area where the artists were striving to make something that can stand apart. They’re not going to mean everything to everyone but to me they have this mystique, and you can feel the ambition in each of them. I am always striving to be as ambitious as possible, especially now that we are in this third album phase where you start to feel like there’s some things that might be expected of you. I don’t want to find myself curbing my ambition in order to—
Noell: Hit those marks.
Devaney: But you don’t even know what the marks are because you can’t really know what people want from you. If you start trying to hit imaginary marks you could just end up screwing yourself — and feeling really uninspired and bad about it. In terms of what I’ve been listening recently: the New Alvvays album — actually all three because I missed the boat with them until very recently. Weyes Blood is another artist that I listen to a lot. Aldous Harding. Cola.
Noell: I had a very midwestern emo youth, but my first concert was Death Cab for Cutie and that was my very favorite band in high school. I really love their most recent album, and we get to go see them this fall with The Postal Service so I’m very excited about that.
What have been the band’s biggest challenges?
Devaney: The first thing that comes to mind is health. We do a lot of touring, and I get sick on basically every tour. That makes everything so much harder.
Noell: Since the last tour, where we all got sick, we’re like, all right, we’re going to try every possible cure for bad immune systems. We’re all on crazy vitamins and Ian is drinking herbal remedies every day.
Devaney: Thinking larger than that, I struggle a lot with the idea of disappointing people, especially if they’ve invested emotionally in us the way that fans have started to [be]. And the health plays into that when you get onstage, you haven’t been feeling great and you feel like you haven’t given everything. It’s trying to find a balance where not everything feels like the highest stakes in the world every single day.
Noell: It takes a huge toll on Ian’s mental health. Before our show in London, which was going to be our biggest yet, Ian basically lost his voice and was really afraid of disappointing people on stage. That was one of the lowest mental health points that I’ve seen him in.
Ian, how did you deal with that?
Devaney: I was able to do that show fine — and the show the next night in Glasgow, I gave them the last shred of what I had.
Noell: And of course everyone was like, “That was the greatest show I’ve ever seen.” Meanwhile, Ian is dying on stage.
Devaney: I think what people want is to feel that you are present, and that what they are witnessing is not just the same exact thing you did yesterday. Trying to figure that out helps with fighting the perfectionism that can infiltrate your brain. If you can just roll with punches and erode the barrier between you and the people that are there to share in the moment, that makes everything so much easier and so much more fun. The pressure dials back then.
We’ve reported that indie bands have had a hard time touring because of inflation, expenses and other factors. Nation of Language seems to have avoided this. Can you offer some perspective how to tour successfully?
Devaney: We certainly feel what everyone else has been feeling. Our first several European tours were done with the understanding that we would definitely lose money even if we sold every ticket and everyone bought merch. We had to view those tours as investments for the future.
Still, last year was an especially perfect storm, in that our expenses all went up significantly, but our income went the other direction. We were getting paid the fees we had agreed to months before inflation took off. Add to that a very strong U.S. dollar versus weaker overseas currencies, and it was ugly to look at the budgets. We had a conversation about canceling last fall, but that felt like it’d be letting so many people down who wanted to attend these shows. It felt really special to us that there was a vocal audience in other parts of the world, and that it was growing with each trip we took. So, we just took the hit.
How did you make it work?
Devaney: We were able to use funds we were making from comparatively stable North American touring to offset the losses incurred overseas, and we hoped that doing so would eventually lead to sustainable touring in larger rooms. In June, we finally had a string of European dates where we came out ahead. So, for now we’re telling ourselves it worked out. Even so, our situation isn’t entirely duplicable for other artists. We don’t have to bring drums or amps, so we’re able to travel in much smaller vehicles and we can fly with all of our gear without incurring much in baggage fees. Pro-tip for young bands that we wish we’d been told sooner: Pick an airline and stick with it. As soon as you have status you’re saving significantly on every trip thereafter.
At the end of the day, the live show is just such a big part of this band’s identity. We can’t imagine not making it work so we’ve built everything around the idea that we need to be able to tour effectively and efficiently.
You use a company called Music Glue to sell your concert tickets and merch. Do you use it to avoid the fees and markups that more established companies such as Ticketmaster would charge?
Devaney: Fees are certainly a huge problem right now. It seems like you get punished for trying to keep your ticket prices low. Often, we agree to a ticket price and then somehow there’s 30%-40% arbitrarily added on. From top to bottom, no one is willing to have a real conversation about where that money goes or why this is the system we’re all going along with. On top of that, the ticketing companies then scoop up all the data on those fans who buy tickets and use it as they see fit. Music Glue allows us, in a small way, to step outside of that doom spiral. We can keep the fees low for tickets sold directly through our site, and it seems to net us a ton of signups to our mailing list by fans who want to have a direct relationship with us.
Alex MacKay is your new bassist. Why did Michael Sue-Poi leave?
Devaney: The lineup of the band has changed at least four or five times, and ultimately, as we were starting to tour more and more, the road does not always agree with everyone. It’s the sort of thing that many people idealize, and then once you’re actually there, you realize, oh, most of my time is not my own. I have pretty much no personal space, especially at that point, it was four of us in a hotel room every night. And especially touring in America, where so many of the drives are six to eight hours, you all stay in the same room; you wake up; you all go to breakfast together; you start the drive and you get to sound check and you’re always in the same exact space.
Noell: It’s not that making or playing music isn’t for them. It’s that the road life isn’t for everyone. Luckily, we have found someone, Alex MacKay, who absolutely loves the road life.
Does it help to be married when you are touring so much?
Noell: Oh yeah. We are spoiled, I would say. Getting to work with each other and see each other every day all the time is amazing and we’re super lucky. And we always have each other to fall back on when our mental health does really —
Devaney: Ultimately being able to effectively communicate is such a crucial part of any touring party whether they’re members who are married or not. So, having that with each other foundationally, and then also with the other people we travel with it just makes life so much easier.
I guess have you started writing the next album? What’s next for you?
Devaney: In these little downtimes we have this summer between festival trips. I’ve been trying to spend as much time as possible creating but in a very…
Noell: No-pressure way.
Devaney: There are some songs that have been around since the second album that, as each album has come up, I’ve been like, “It’s not right for that, but it could be a place we go.” I’m always trying to write without expectations so that I can potentially plant the seeds for future directions. There are a bundle of demos floating around where I’m like, I could lean into this vibe a little more or take things over here.
Noell: It’s hardest for me, who gets to hear all these demos. I become obsessed with these songs. I’m like, “They should be on this album. Come on, let’s put it out.” And he’s like, “No, it’s not right yet.”
Devaney: It is weird that some of my favorite songs I’ve written are not on any album — because I’m like, “No, now is not the time.” Making each record turns into more of a curatorial mindset, where you’re like, [figuring out] which things fit together and complete this puzzle that would be the record. Things get put off to the future, because they don’t seem exactly right, for a reason that you can’t even explain to yourself.
You put out the first single for this album in March and have since released three more. What’s the strategy behind putting out singles so far in advance of the album release?
Noell: It’s half-strategy, half-…. once again, the record printing is so slow. For the last two albums it was difficult to get records printed and pressed and shipped to people who preordered them on the date that the record came out.
Devaney: This time we wanted to make sure that those dates are fully aligned. With the first album we ended up releasing more singles than we anticipated because the release date was pushed back by a month. And we found that with each single, more people were finding the band and more [media] were covering each single. We tried that again for the second album, and it worked really well. So, this time we’re doing it again, with a fifth single dropping on the album release date.
NCT’s new album is a family affair. On Monday (Aug. 28), the K-pop group — which consists of subdivisions NCT 127, NCT DREAM, NCT U, NCT DoJaeJung and WayV — released its fourth studio album, Golden Age, on streaming services.
The album contains 10 tracks, all of which feature different combinations of the members across group subunits. For “Baggy Jeans,” members Taeyong, Ten, Doyoung, Jaehyun and Mark step up to the plate for a high-energy hip-hop song that sees each of them flexing their unique flow, and of course, their stylish clothing. (A music video for the track also arrived with the album’s release on Monday.)
The other songs on the album are “PADO” (Johnny, Taeyong, Jaehyun, Mark, Xiaojun, Hendery and Haechan), “Interlude: Oasis” (Yuta, Jaehyun, Winwin, Jaemin and Chenle), “The BAT” (Taeil, Johnny, Yuta, Jungwoo, Hendery, Jeno and Jisung), “Alley Oop” (Yuta, Winwin, Jaemin, Jeno, Hendery, Yangyang and Jisung), “That’s Not Fair” (Johnny, Taeyong, Ten, Mark, Jeno and Yangyang), “Kangaroo (Taeil, Kun, Renjun, Yangyang, Chenle and Jisung), “Not Your Fault” (Taeil, Kun, Doyoung, Ten, Jungwoo, Xiaojun, Renjun), “Call D” (Ten and Taeyong) and the title track, which includes all 20 members.
Golden Age marks the first album NCT has released since 2021’s Universe – The 3rd Album. That set crowned Billboard‘s World Albums chart, and peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard 200.
Stream Golden Age below, and watch the visual for “Baggy Jeans” in the video above.
A man from Aurora and another from Bolivar are dead, and a woman is hospitalized, following a crash involving two motorcycles in Collins.
Investigators say 59-year-old Jessie Ray and a female passenger were attempting to turn onto Highway 13 from the Pilot gas station in Collins late Sunday morning.
While turning, they failed to yield to another motorcycle, driven by 60-year-old Ronald Wallace, who was riding along Highway 13.
The crash threw all three people off of the bikes. Ray was killed in the crash, while the other two were airlifted to area hospitals.
Wallace was pronounced dead early Monday morning. The woman in the crash is still hospitalized with life-threatening injuries.
V‘s solo album, Layover, is almost here! And to celebrate, three of the BTS member’s previous tracks — “Scenery,” “Winter Bear” and “Snow Flower” — were released to streaming on Monday (Aug. 28).
BTS’ management company, Big Hit Music, tweeted the announcement along with links to YouTube. “Taehyung’s comfort songs finally on Spotify,” one fan excitedly shared in the comments section of the post, while another user simply wrote, “HIS MASTERPIECES ARE FINALLY RELEASE[D].”
“Scenery” originally arrived in January of 2019, and marked the BTS vocalist’s first self-composed track. “Winter Bear” followed with a surprise drop in August of that year, while “Snow Flower” — which also features rapper and V’s close friend Peakboy — arrived in December 2020.
Prior to the tracks’ formal release, the three songs were available only via YouTube or SoundCloud. In addition to now being available on U.S. streamers such as Apple Music and Spotify, the songs have also made it to South Korean streaming platforms, including Melon, Genie, VIBE, FLO and Bugs.
The song trio’s arrival comes ahead of the release of V’s upcoming solo album, Layover, which is scheduled for Sept. 8. The set was preceded by singles “Rainy Days” and “Love Me Again,” with tracks “Blue,” “Love Me Again,” “Slow Dancing,” “For Us” and a bonus piano version of “Slow Dancing” also set to appear on the album.
Listen to “Scenery,” “Winter Bear” and “Snow Flower” below.
“I’m not going to release any more collaborations. I’m going to put out my next solo single. Right now, I’m working on the cover art and ideas for the next record because it’s definitely coming up,” she revealed. “Everyone always tells me I should put the record out now. They did when I released ‘WAP’ [with Megan Thee Stallion] and when I released ‘Up,’ but I always let them know I’m not going to wait long after all these singles. So stay tuned because it’s coming out very soon.”
Cardi connected with her husband, Offset, for his new single “Jealousy,” released at the end of July. The Bronx firecracker remains a stalwart on the features front after her torrid run this year with verses for Latto (“Put It On the Floor Again”) and FendiDa Rappa (“Point Me 2”). A new Cardi album would mark her first since 2018’s Invasion of Privacy. The album spawned two No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 singles, the diamond-certified “Bodak Yellow” and “I Like It.” She also won the Grammy for best rap album for Invasion of Privacy, topping Pusha T, Mac Miller, Travis Scott and Nipsey Hussle.
Elsewhere, in her interview with Vogue México y Latinoamérica, Cardi also spoke on her entrepreneurial spirit and willingness to conquer every market, including movies. In recent years, Cardi has had cameos in Hustlers and Fast and Furious 9. “I also have plans in the world of cinema,” she said. “In fact, I have plans to do everything I can: fashion, branding — I want to do it all, honey.”
See her cover for Vogue México y Latinoamérica below:
The rapid police deployment has now been cleared. Details are still emerging at this time.
ORIGINAL STORY:
A large police presence is gathering near the location of a bank in northeast Springfield.
Reports say multiple polices vehicles and numerous police officers were seen at the Guaranty Bank along North Glenstone at around 11:30 a.m. this morning.
The situation is still developing, and KWTO will update this story with all of the updates as they come in.
Things are looking up for your Labor Day weekend. After months of teasing, on Monday morning (Aug. 28) Timbaland finally revealed the title of his upcoming single with longtime collaborators Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado. The song, “Keep Going Up!,” is due out on Friday (Sept. 1), just in time to get fans hyped for the three-day holiday weekend.
Tim revealed what looked like the cover art as well, which consists of the blue-fading-to-pink title in balloon letters under the three stars’ names.
The single is the long-awaited follow-up to the trio’s first collab, 2007’s “Give It to Me,” which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 16 years ago. Last week, Tim posted a teaser video for “Keep Going Up!,” which he captioned “WE BACK,” alongside peeking eyes and exploding head emojis. “Da king has returned!” The tease came a month after his Instagram post in which he and Timberlake hopped on a FaceTime call with Furtado while the pair worked on Tim’s upcoming sixth studio album.
The super producer also announced that his first full-length since 2009’s Shock Value II is due out in November; at press time a title and track list had not yet been announced. All three artists have released new music so far this year, with Timbaland teaming up with BIA in March on “I’m That Bitch,” Furtado dropping the Dom Dolla-assissted “Eat Your Man” in June and Timberlake guesting on a remix of Coco Jones’ “ICU” in July.
This week’s batch of new country music includes songs from Zach Bryan (with The War and Treaty), Morgan Wade, Scotty McCreery, East Nash Grass, Grant Gilbert and more.
Zach Bryanand The War and Treaty, “Hey Driver”
One of three collaborations featured on Bryan’s 16-track, self-titled album (the others being collabs with Kacey Musgraves and The Lumineers), this gritty track pairs Bryan with married duo (and superb vocalists) The War and Treaty. Lyrically, the song conveys a road-weary musician in need of a respite, one who has spent his heart on his music and wisely perceives tourmates who are “gambling with more than just their cards/ With their bottles and their drugs and their bibles and their hearts.” The one-two vocal punch of Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter’s otherworldly harmonies would push any artist to give their best, and this piano-based song finds Bryan offering some of his most affecting vocals on the album.
Scotty McCreery, “Cab in a Solo”
As an artist and a songwriter, McCreery has been on a hot streak of well-crafted, notably performed songs over the past few years, notching five No. 1 hits on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart. With his latest, which he wrote with Brent Anderson and Frank Rogers, McCreery continues to slake music listeners’ ongoing affinity for ’90s country, thanks to a neo-traditional sound connected to vivid lyricism. The song’s hook sums the protagonist’s reaction to a lover who’s moved on, with the nimble wordplay “drinking cab in a Solo/ solo in the cab of my truck.”
Morgan Wade, “27 Club”
A standout from her new album Psychopath (which released Friday, Aug. 25), this solo write from Wade references the “27 Club” — a catalog of musicians who died at age 27, including Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse — as she exquisitely details surviving and rising above the strains of mental health afflictions, addictions, suicidal thoughts, media obsessions and Hollywood “romances,” to find moments of peace within oneself. Wade’s signature husky, worldly vocals drive home the scrappiness and the disappointment of a superficial relationship with someone who “only knows me ’cause I wrote the song about the hotel lobby,” referring to Wade’s breakthrough hit “Wilder Days.”
Chayce Beckham, “Little Less Lonely”
The “23” hitmaker and American Idol alum returns with this radio-friendly track about assuaging heartbreak by inundating oneself in neon lights, music, libations and the arms of a potential new lover. Beckham wrote “Little Less Lonely” with Lindsay Rimes and Matt Rogers.
East Nash Grass, Last Chance to Win
A collection of some of the bluegrass genre’s towering younger talents, East Nash Grass is nominated for the 2023 International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA)’s new artist of the year honor. Their 11-track album Last Chance to Win, offers ample evidence as to why they’ve earned such accolades. Each member of the group — guitarist James Kee, banjo player Cory Walker, mandolin player Harry Clark, dobro player Gaven Largent, fiddle player Maddie Denton and bassist Jeff Picker — has a sterling resumé, but their collaborative efforts further esteem their musical potency ranging from traditional bluegrass sounds to more progressive fare. Whether the fleet-fingered picking displayed on the Uncle Dave Macon mainstay “Railroadin’ and Gamblin’” or their superb takes on Bill Anderson’s “Slippin’ Away” and Johnny Rodriguez’s “How Could I Love Her So Much,” this collective offers distinguished musicianship as one of the most exciting new groups in the genre.
Margo Price, “Strays”
Price continues unspooling her previous album Strays, with the upcoming double project Strays II (out Oct. 13). The album is spearheaded by this psychedelic, rutilant roots-rock groove she and her husband, fellow musician Jeremy Ivey, wrote about the boundless experience of falling in love more than two decades ago, a time with little money but plenty of will and determination. Price further cements her position as a keen-eyed, poetic lyricist and an inimitable artist.
Chris Lane, “Find Another Bar”
She’s broken his heart, and now she’s deadset on taking over the space he’s staked out for his own emotional refuge. Written by Lane with Josh Thompson and Justin Ebach, Lane’s new release finds him veering slightly from hip-hop infused, polished pop-country to a sound with a ragged rock edge, while still residing squarely in his musical wheelhouse. “Find Another Bar” marks Lane’s first release on his new label home at Red Street Records/Voyager Records.
Grant Gilbert, “Turn It Down”
Gilbert is currently aloft the Texas Regional Radio Chart with his “Six Pack State of Mind,” featuring Josh Abbott. While the Santo, Texas native’s sleek twangy vocal remains intact on his followup, “Turn It Down,” this outing veers into sultry, soulful, rock-tinged territory, as it hinges on the nexus between fiery tensions and romance as salve. A bluesy, grainy guitar groove only heightens the song’s sensual storyline. “Turn It Down” was written by Lainey Wilson, Driver Williams and Arkady Gilman.
All that Jorja Smith likes to do is write and sing — which makes separating herself from her career “a bit tricky” sometimes. “I’ll have days where I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, I wish I gave myself a different name because I need to switch Jorja Smith off,’ ” she says. “I don’t want to be Jorja Smith all of the time.”
Struggling to find balance not only speaks to her Gemini zodiac sign, says the 26-year-old artist, but is also at the core of her highly anticipated second album, Falling or Flying, out Sept. 29 on her longtime independent label, FAMM. “I don’t really have an in between. I’m either happy or sad, obsessed or completely unfocused, up or down,” she says. “I feel like I’m flying in my career, and then other times, I feel like I’m falling because the pressure can feel [like] too much.”
At 18, Smith left her hometown of Walsall, England, and traveled two-and-a-half hours south to London in order to pursue music full time. Her secondary school yearbook named her most likely to become famous — and she quickly ascended to become one of the United Kingdom’s brightest stars. In 2016, Smith uploaded her socially conscious debut single, “Blue Lights,” to SoundCloud, and it garnered nearly half a million plays in one month. The song eventually appeared on her 2018 critically acclaimed debut album, Lost & Found, which boasted slow-burning songs that blended R&B, reggae, hip-hop, jazz and neo-soul production with a songwriting approach inspired by Amy Winehouse. All the while, Smith earned co-signs from Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Stormzy, as well as acclaim in the form of a 2018 BRITs Critics’ Choice Award and a 2019 Grammy nod for best new artist.
But fulfilling her yearbook prophecy had a disorienting effect on Smith, who became famous in her early 20s. After tiding fans over with the 2021 EP Be Right Back, she moved home to Walsall at the beginning of 2023. “I went back when I finally decided I’ve had enough of London … It’s a bit overwhelming sometimes,” she says with a sigh. “I moved back and I feel a lot more balanced. I feel more myself now.”
On Falling or Flying, Smith soars over sprightly tracks that experiment with acoustic indie-rock production, syncopated basslines and retro synth chords. She enlisted U.K. jungle DJ-producer Nia Archives to remix the album’s second single, “Little Things,” which captured a flirty, feverish energy quintessential for clubbing in its original form. But some songs demand the coziness of a jazz club, where Smith’s lithe, velvety vocals can fill the space on their own — and quiet those around her. While Lost & Found comprised teenage love songs Smith had written when she was 16, Falling or Flying finds the singer stepping “into womanhood” and being more sure of herself than ever before. As she sings on “Backwards,” “I stand here and I look down on myself and I am so proud.” Meanwhile, on tracks like “Broken Is the Man” and “Try Me,” she challenges past lovers and harsh critics.
Walsall production duo DameDame* — Smith has known one of its members since she was 15 — was responsible for most of Falling or Flying, another sign that returning to her roots better served her music. “We laughed, ate food, sang, cried, jammed some more,” she says. “It wasn’t like, ‘I need to make the album uptempo.’ It was just, ‘Let’s mess around, have fun and see what happens.’ ”
Smith teases that she’ll take Falling or Flying on the road for her first headlining run in five years. “That’s all I want to do,” she says, beaming. “That’s where I feel at home. In Walsall and onstage is where I feel like, ‘OK, I can just be me.’ ”
