Being recognised by the Brits, Grammys and Drake made the singer one of British music’s most famous names – and also left her exhausted. Now, after decompressing in her home town she returns with a record made for raving
It is a sticky, sweltering July afternoon, and I have accidentally found myself at a wake with Jorja Smith. I’m told that the pub where we have met, in the leafiest part of leafy south-west London, is usually a safe bet for an inconspicuous table. But today, sweaty black suits carrying pints drift between tables, and long queues snake round the bar.
Dressed in a simple tank top, bare-faced with her hair scraped back, Smith is waiting for me when I arrive. “I’ve been waiting for my drink for ages,” she says. “But I feel bad saying anything because, you know …”
The sombre mood doesn’t last long – in large part because Smith is effortlessly funny. When her alcohol-free sparkling wine finally arrives, she takes one sip, pauses for the waitress to disappear, then winces theatrically. “Oh,” she says. “That’s not good.” Every time we dissolve into laughter, I glance around guiltily, like we’re schoolgirls trying not to get caught talking at the back of assembly.
It’s hard to imagine a less appropriate setting in which to discuss an album made for sunburnt block parties and 2am raves. What Are the Odds, the 29-year-old’s third album, released this week, is a certified, old-fashioned ass-shaker. Made with Richard Isong – the London producer better known as P2J, whose credits include Beyoncé, Burna Boy and Tems – and featuring the likes of Wizkid and Devlin, it is a vibrant collage of Black British dance music, weaving together UK garage, funky house, 2-step and Afrobeats, into a 12-track collection that pulsates from top to bottom.
While dance music has always been threaded through Smith’s catalogue, usually in the form of a summer single – On My Mind in 2017, Little Things in 2023 – she is better known for her introspective, soulful R&B, as epitomised by her 2016 breakout single Blue Lights (which NME praised as “a fantastically introspective and clever piece of songwriting”, and had critics declaring her Amy Winehouse’s successor). This is the first time she has committed fully to the dancefloor.
“I just love dancing,” Smith shrugs. “I like going out to listen to music, a lot of my friends are DJs. It’d be nice to hear more of my stuff when I’m outside.”
The genesis of this album was different to her previous records. Her Mercury prize-nominated debut album, Lost & Found, emerged because she felt it was time to make an album. Its successor, Falling Or Flying, arrived because she felt she “needed” a second one. What Are the Odds was made almost accidentally, which is perhaps why it feels so light on its feet.
After making the effervescent club single Little Things with P2J, the pair initially planned to write a dance EP. But the songs kept coming, and the project outgrew itself. “We went through nine songs in the first two days,” Smith says, her eyes widening again at the memory. “I turned up to the studio and he’d made all this music from our conversations. I left and went straight to my label and said: ‘I think this is an album, not an EP. This is serious.’ I’m so excited about it.”
The album may be created for the dancefloor, but its emotional resonance remains unmistakably Smith. For Life mourns losing a friend to addiction; Young Heart is a love letter to Smith’s younger self; The Way It Was meditates on the end of a friendship. “If you just sang the songs with keys or piano,” she says, “they’d all probably be quite sad.”
It is tempting to read What Are the Odds as a comeback album. In the weeks before its release, various headlines have announced Smith’s “return”. When I begin to ask her about this supposed break, she cuts in incredulously. “People keep saying, ‘Oh, you’re back!’ What do you mean, back? I’ve been on tour since 2017. When people say that, I’m like … [you should] check my calendar! People are likely talking about a ‘comeback’,” she says, “because I’m back on social media. I take breaks, and I’m not always out at events and things.”
It’s an astute observation, and one that cuts to the heart of Smith’s unconventional relationship with celebrity. Since Blue Lights announced her arrival as an 18-year-old in 2016, she has become one of British music’s defining voices: a Mercury and Grammy nominee, double Brit award winner, and a featured artist capable of surfacing everywhere from Drake’s More Life to Burna Boy’s African Giant. Yet, she has never cultivated the kind of omnipresent celebrity that feels almost compulsory in the social media age, where visibility seems synonymous with existence. There are no carefully choreographed glimpses into her morning routine, no sense that her life exists to be consumed. Smith has clearly never been especially interested in that side of the bargain.
“I never wanted to be famous,” she says. “I’ve always been quite private. I just wanted to put music out as a teenager and see what happened. I feel really lucky that I’ve got such an amazing fanbase and people really show me love, but fame was never the goal.”
The tension, of course, is that success increasingly lives or dies by the algorithm. The defining British stars of recent years – PinkPantheress, Raye, Lola Young – have all been, in some part, forged in the fires of TikTok. Does Smith ever feel pressure to play that game? “Yeah definitely,” she says. “But, luckily, I’ve got a sick team, and we come up with ideas that we can do that are still me. I don’t want to be here doing trends – you’re not going to catch me doing TikTok dances or any of that stuff.”
Her inclination to privacy also stems from growing up under an unusually unforgiving spotlight. Smith first found an audience by uploading covers to YouTube, recorded from her bedroom in Walsall. Aged 15, she signed with a manager, and began making regular trips to London for songwriting sessions. After finishing her A-levels, she moved to the capital full-time, working shifts in a cafe while trying to carve out a career in music.
