Shura dives deep into despair, disconnection, and rediscovery on her gorgeous third album ‘I Obtained Too Unhappy for My Buddies,’ a file that transforms isolation into connection via a few of her most intimate, emotionally fearless songwriting but. In dialog with Atwood Journal, the British artist opens up about making peace with vulnerability, honoring her internal youngster, and studying to let go.
Stream: “World’s Worst Girlfriend” – Shura
Tright here’s a quiet type of devastation working via I Obtained Too Unhappy for My Buddies.
Shura’s third album just isn’t a file of grand gestures, however of small ruptures – of relationships fraying in sluggish movement, of retreat turning into silence, of grief exhibiting up uninvited in bedrooms, taxis, and texts that go unanswered. Written after a chronic interval of isolation and inventive burnout, these songs really feel like dispatches from the sting of recognition: Deeply introspective, emotionally pushed storytelling wearing heat melodies and candy indie pop soundscapes. However the coronary heart – and the humanity – of Shura’s lived experiences shines via. I Obtained Too Unhappy for My Buddies is a delicate, unflinching reckoning with despair, identification, and disconnection: A file that doesn’t chase catharsis, a lot because it sits with the burden of being human, letting the damage communicate in gentle, unguarded tones.
Launched Might 30th, 2024 through Play It Once more Sam, I Obtained Too Unhappy for My Buddies finds Shura charting a brand new course via acquainted terrain. The place 2016’s critically acclaimed debut album Nothing’s Actual pulsed with brooding synth-pop and 2019’s sophomore effort Forevher glowed with soulful romanticism, the British singer/songwriter and producer’s third album trades polish for presence: Earthy textures, stay recordings, and the quiet intimacy of “chamber pop, sixties folks, and campfire Americana,” as she calls it. A lot of the album was recorded stay in-studio along with her band, with vocals tracked individually – besides on “Ringpull,” which preserves her authentic stay take. “It’s not excellent,” she says, “but it surely captures a second.” That need, to honor feeling over perfection, turns into the album’s compass. Songs bloom gently, usually carried by delicate keys, murmuring drums, and a voice that by no means forces its ache, however somewhat tells it plainly.
At its core, I Obtained Too Unhappy for My Buddies is about what occurs once we cease reaching out – when the burden we’re carrying makes us really feel like a burden to the very individuals we love most. That pressure surfaces time and again, each lyrically and within the album’s origin story.
This file took me a very very long time, for starters,” Shura – née Alexandra Lilah Denton – tells Atwood Journal, chuckling to herself as she goes again to the start. “It paperwork a interval of my life, when I used to be residing in New York, having fallen in love with somebody who lived there. Falling in love in America and type of with America, however that being a very bizarre time to be in love there and with it. After which of course having to go away, kind of with out realising I used to be leaving after I left – if that is sensible. I wrestled a bit with not having the ability to write, not feeling impressed when the pandemic lower brief the tour for the second file. It took a second to discover my voice, and discover issues I discovered attention-grabbing to discover. The concept that as an alternative of reaching out for assist, I discovered myself more and more remoted.”
“After I was struggling, I made the choice to make myself as small as doable, when what I wanted to do was write SOS within the sand and set off a flare.” As a substitute, she pulled away. She stopped speaking. The songs that emerged within the aftermath don’t ask for pity – they simply inform the reality of what it felt wish to disappear.
That sense of disappearance additionally formed how Shura approached the file’s creation. After months of stasis, even beginning once more felt unbelievable.
“There was a time period the place I wasn’t positive I’d ever have the ability to write one other album, not to mention have the ability to file one,” she admits. “So when it was lastly clear to me that I had written an album and that I used to be going to have the ability to file it I actually wished to strategy it in a manner that was new for me. I had this fairly fatalistic concept that if I by no means bought to do that once more, I wished to verify I didn’t simply do the identical factor the identical manner 3 times. I needed to go on an journey that was thrilling and possibly additionally a bit scary generally. I wished to push myself and expertise each the enjoyment and discomfort that comes with that.”
That spirit of rediscovery programs via the album’s sonic palette. Although it might sound like a departure, I Obtained Too Unhappy for My Buddies really marks a return to the best way Shura first started making music. “I’m undoubtedly very grateful to my previous self that forevher wasn’t nothing’s actual 2,” she displays. “I don’t know if my followers would agree, however I do suppose it bolstered early that I most likely would simply make no matter me, somewhat than what individuals anticipated. I don’t know if that might have occurred if I’d stayed signed to a serious label for the second file. So there was a blessing in there someplace.”
She continues, “Individuals gained’t know this as a result of the very first thing they ever heard me do was synth pop, however in some ways this seems like a return to how I used to jot down, how I started: With a guitar in my bed room. Quietly whispering right into a microphone so nobody may hear what I used to be singing. Secret attic songs,” she laughs. If her earlier albums charted new territory, this one is a homecoming of types; a self-reintroduction that honors her inventive origins. “Possibly this captures a facet of my artistry that’s new for followers, however very acquainted to me. Quite a lot of this file seems like honoring my internal youngster. Writing songs on a guitar, dressing up as a tiny superhero. Happening an journey.”
That sense of play, vulnerability, and emotional weight all coexist within the music itself – which Shura distills into three deceptively easy phrases: “light, massive, and unhappy.”
The phrase holds the album’s emotional duality in sharp reduction – the tenderness, the melancholy, the sense of scale and softness all of sudden.
Those self same sentiments – the retreat inward, the quiet collapse, the impulse to show ache into one thing playful – are echoed within the album’s title as properly. As she explains, ‘I Obtained Too Unhappy for My Buddies’ began because the identify for a SoundCloud demos playlist – the songs that might later turn into this album – typed in a second of brutally uncooked honesty.
“After I make demo playlists, I hate simply calling them ‘demos’ or ‘possibly album 3’ since you simply don’t know what they are going to turn into, and I didn’t need to add any strain to myself,” Shura says. “At the time I used to be unhappy and I discovered myself leaning much less and fewer on the individuals I beloved as a result of I kind of noticed myself as an emotional burden. I used to be form of simply retreating… From the world. I made a decision to simply kind this out, and I loved the indisputable fact that it was only a direct sentence delivered straight from my unhappy mind, and it additionally had a way of humour to it. It’s unhappy and it’s brutal… but it surely’s additionally form of humorous?! It’s the first time I’ve had an album title earlier than the album even exists.” The title, just like the songs themselves, is intimate, unfiltered, and deeply human – a gentle confession masquerading as a punchline.
That very same spirit carries via the album’s music. It’s expressive and susceptible, wealthy with feeling and sound alike. Highlights abound on the journey from album opener “Tokyo” to nearer “Unhealthy Child,” every observe capturing a special shade of Shura’s being – disappointment, pleasure, reflection, launch.
“Richardson,” that includes Cassandra Jenkins, stands because the album’s heartbeat – the primary tune Shura wrote for the challenge, and a crystallization of its central theme. Constructed on light guitar strums, flurries of keys, and breathtaking vocal harmonies, the observe carries the burden of emotional withdrawal with out ever elevating its voice. “I bought too down round my associates, it was sluggish however they stopped answering, so I ended speaking,” Shura sings, tracing the invisible drift between connection and isolation. “It’s form of gently devastating,” Shura says, calling out that inversion of the album title as a private spotlight. “As an grownup I’ve discovered issues disintegrate so slowly. You possibly can sense it. And it’s much less instantaneous however no much less catastrophic. And I beloved form of capturing that. After which after all, having it return on the finish of ‘Richardson,’ however by no means ending the road. So it simply ends with ‘So I ended.’” That sluggish unraveling is rendered with aching precision, and by the tune’s finish, the sentence trails off mid-thought – unfinished, unresolved, as if to reflect how these breakages usually go unstated in actual life, too.
Additional standouts embrace the gut-wrenching indie pop anthem “World’s Worst Girlfriend” and the shimmering, emotionally fraught “Recognise,” each of which dig into the messiness of self-perception and longing. “I Wanna Be Liked By You” is likely one of the album’s most soul-soaked moments – a sparse and hopeful piano tune that begins to let the sunshine in. Shura’s voice hovers simply above a hush as she sings of damage, forgiveness, and craving, accompanied by a loose-knit gospel choir of household, associates, and her accomplice. It’s intimate and unguarded, luminous and gorgeous:
Don’t know why I’m mad at you however I’m mad.
Want I may forgive you however I can’t.
Tried to place the telephone down on me,
Then you definitely informed me Jesus beloved me.
And I suppose the one factor that’s true,
I wanna be beloved by you.
The ultimate two tracks – “If You Don’t Imagine in Love” (that includes Helado Negro) and “Unhealthy Child” (that includes Becca Mancari) – are equally entrancing. The previous is meditative and glowing, providing a hushed reminder to remain current in love and time. The latter is uncooked and cathartic, a dreamy and plush finale confronting mortality, identification, and disgrace with brutal honesty and shocking levity. Each convey the file to an in depth not with decision, however with acceptance – a type of emotional, musical exhale.
It’s all non permanent,
Make imagine.
Like a stepping stone,
Child the place’s this river gonna stream?
So lord don’t you inform me.
Child Please.
The place does this story go?
It’s higher if we by no means ever know.
In case you don’t imagine in love,
You don’t imagine in a lot.
Shura herself gravitates towards the album’s quieter moments – the deep cuts that won’t get the highlight, however maintain essentially the most which means. “I usually discover my favourites are the deep cuts that possibly nobody else cares about – shout out ‘princess leia’ from album 2,” she laughs. “So a variety of mine find yourself being the songs that aren’t singles. I’m actually happy with ‘Leonard Avenue’ and may’t wait to play stay. I feel ‘America’ too. It’s unusual as a result of I feel that after I wrote ‘America’ I had hoped or imagined a really completely different America sooner or later, and in order that form of hits and lands in another way now. It’s attention-grabbing how a lot time having handed adjustments your relationship to songs by yourself file.”
An early second on the file, “Leonard Avenue” seems like a last goodbye to New York, a metropolis as soon as crammed with hope and love, now layered with absence. Over glowing textures and hushed vocals, Shura recollects the vacancy of bars, parking heaps, and flats she’ll by no means return to. “America,” in the meantime, takes on a broader, extra disillusioned gaze – observing violence, apathy, and sweetness with equal components grief and detachment. Each songs faucet into the ache of getting as soon as believed in one thing that not exists – and the unusual readability that point brings.
The place’d you go, My Pricey?
Three summers and I by no means took the time to swim.
The place’d you go this 12 months?
You left me with a espresso in McCarren and,
I may see contained in the car parking zone,
It’s empty just like the bars on Leonard Avenue.
After I left you,
Didn’t get to.
Say goodbye to you.
We’ll be alright.
I Obtained Too Unhappy for My Buddies just isn’t a file to hurry via – it’s one to sit down with, to return to, to let bloom over time.
These songs ache and shimmer, whisper and unfold. They carry sorrow and humor, grit and charm. Shura doesn’t simply write about emotions – she interprets them into sound, making house for contradiction and readability, stillness and motion. The result’s totally spellbinding: An album that reveals extra the longer you reside inside it.
As for what listeners will take from it, Shura isn’t serious about drawing the map. “What individuals take from one thing is commonly wildly completely different, and that’s a part of the album’s different life. It has a wealthy existence with you while you’re making it, after which it’s within the wild and you may no management and also you simply need to form of hope that it has a full and completely satisfied life,” she smiles. “It’s the closest I’ve come to having children. So I’m similar to, GO BE FREE HAVE FUN TAKE CARE I LOVE YOU! What have I taken away from it? You are able to do it. Even when it seems like you don’t have any concept how.”
From not figuring out whether or not she’d ever write one other album, to creating essentially the most genuine and emotionally resonant file of her profession, Shura has loads to be happy with as of late. Six years after forevher, the British songstress has returned with one in all 2025’s most lovely data – one which cuts to the core of our shared humanity with grace and gusto, vulnerability and verve. What started in silence and isolation now lives overtly on the earth – a young, highly effective reminder that even our quietest truths should be heard.
— —
:: stream/buy I Obtained Too Unhappy for My Buddies right here ::
:: join with Shura right here ::
— —
— — — —
Connect with Shura on
Fb, 𝕏, TikTok, Instagram
Uncover new music on Atwood Journal
© Charlotte Croft