Jorja Smith has been relatively quiet since the release of her debut album Lost & Found in 2018. She collaborated with Burna Boy in 2019 for “Be Honest” and Popcaan on last year’s “Come Over.” There was the great remix of Enny’s “Peng Black Girls,” the one-off track “By Any Means,” and most recently, she was featured on Sonder’s “Nothing But You.” Now three years later, the British singer has announced her anticipated follow-up project Be Right Back. We’ve already heard the lead single “Addicted,” which came out last month, and with today’s announcement of the 8-song project we get to hear the new song “Gone.”
The new single tries to make sense of unfathomable loss. “There’s something about being able to write about one thing and for it to mean so many different things to others. I love that this song, well any of my songs really, will be interpreted in different ways, depending on the experiences of the people listening. This one is just me asking why people have to be taken from us,” she shared in a press statement. “Gone” stays in Smith’s signature lane of minimal instrumentation—in this case a concerned, pearly piano riff and a hip-hop beat that teeters on drum and bass at times—for her empathetic lyricism and strong vocals.
Smith also shared in the same press release her thinking behind the project’s title: “It’s just something I want my fans to have right now, this isn’t an album and these songs wouldn’t have made it. If I needed to make these songs, then someone needs to hear them too.”
Listen to “Gone” below and pre-order Be Right Back here.
