When Tems surprise-dropped “Love Is A Kingdom” last November, one first-listen review called it arguably the most upbeat project she had put out, then picked “What You Need,” one of its downtempo cuts, as the song most likely to last.
Nearly a year on, that pick has held up, and it may also have been a preview. Tems is in the studio on her second album, she told EE72 in a cover interview published yesterday, and the way she describes it sits much nearer “What You Need” than the rest of the EP: “It’s definitely more R&B leaning. It’s more melancholic. It’s like a river, it’s very smooth. It’s very mellow, lo-fi.”
She has been between albums for a while without going quiet. “What You Need” was at 154 million streams when the magazine went to print, and “Raindance,” her song with Dave from his album “The Boy Who Played the Harp,” gave her a first UK No. 1. One of those is a breakup song. The other began as half an hour of Tems freestyling into her phone, with Dave, producer Kyle, guitarist Jo and engineer Jonny in the room, before they pieced it together afterwards. Her last full album, “Born in the Wild,” ran 18 songs in 2024, and its single “Love Me JeJe” won her a Grammy.
The sadder register has been in her drafts for years. She wrote “What You Need” seven years ago, in the middle of a rough breakup, and she still doesn’t write on paper; songs start as freestyled melodies, sometimes with words attached. “Writing music helps me release pain and it helps me to heal,” she said. “By the time I’m done, everything I felt, it’s gone.”
In July, all she gave British Vogue was that she had “been writing some songs” and that she sees herself as “more of a project kind of person.” Now she can tell you what the project feels like.
There is no title, date or first single yet, and she ended the EE72 conversation sounding in no hurry to name one. “I want to wake up at 50 and decide I’m doing an album and not for reasons of relevancy, or because I need to get ‘back in the game,’” she said.