Listening to Her Heart

U.K. singer Jorja Smith had to leave London and move back home to reach her full potential

- LARISHA PAUL

Jorja smith isn’t one to blindly follow her intuition. Sure, her gut has led her to some very good decisions, like the one she made in 2015 to move to London and pursue a career in music shortly after graduating high school. Within just a few years, the British singer and songwriter had star-making guest appearances with Drake and Kendrick Lamar, a coveted spot on the short list for the Mercury Prize, and a Best New Artist nomination at the 2019 Grammy Awards, next to acts like Dua Lipa and Luke Combs. Everything was lining up for her as one of the fastest-rising artists in R&B and pop.

Still, she says, she doubted herself, especially as she began to feel lonely in her new life. “When I put out my first album and then I went on tour, I was never around,” Smith, 26, recalls. “I wasn’t around family much, I wasn’t really around my friends much.” She longed for the familiar faces and places of Walsall, England, where she’d grown up. Back in London, Smith would often ask herself: “Why the hell am I here?”

For six years, she pushed that voice away — until 2021, when she finally listened to her gut, headed home to Walsall, and began working on her long-awaited second album, Falling or Flying, out now. It’s an album that sees her taking a confident leap from a promising new artist to one who’s in full command of her sound. “Really, I should just go off how I feel, because my gut feeling is actually always correct and I’ll just be ignoring it,” she says. “At the end of it, who does it all come down to? Me. And if I’m not happy, then what happens?”