Malika's R&B Burrows into Love's Awkward, Painful Grey Areas

When R&B-soul artist Malika was about six years old, she wrote her first song. Now, I know you might be thinking, oh ffs not another ‘music was just like in my blood!!’ story. Granted, they are more often re-told by some ex-primary school teacher, on a talking-heads Channel 5 show. No, Malika’s song was… not quite the rainbows and gumdrops content you might imagine. The 28-year-old’s parents had just split, and she remembers channelling her feelings about their breakup into her first piece of music.

“It was about these two parents who get mugged and killed,” she begins, over the phone. I mutter a “damn,” as she goes on: “And at that point my mum was really really concerned – She always tells me this.” Malika can laugh about it now, and does. “Luckily, the song went in a positive way, and not a violent one, but I remember the melody of the song.” Written on piano, at an age when she was mostly mucking about on the piano at home, she still counts it as “genuinely the first one”.

Now, though, she’s pouring ruminations on other relationships into her work. Malika’s one of those artists who mines her personal life for stories. And on new track “Stranger Things,” which we’re premiering here, she unravels the mess of heartstrings that you can be left with when a romantic relationship starts to… to mutate into something you don’t recognise. The track is a brutal reality check about a relationship on wobbly ground – and all underpinned with emotive, satin vocals soft enough to collapse into. Over a Jay Eaux-produced beat, she sings about how she and a lover end up “ obsessed with mistrust and mistakes we’ve made”. As one of many UK artists moving between 90s and 00-inspired R&B, soul and pop, Malika’s got a bit of a near-breakup anthem on her hands here. And, yes, the person she wrote “Stranger Things” about might recognise themselves in it when they hear it.

“The song is from personal experience, definitely. It’s… it’s just one of those moments,” and her voice trails off a bit, as she says she’s almost thinking aloud about how to describe the track, to a journalist, “without going into too much…” She pauses, starts again. “Well, the person who I wrote it about is definitely fully aware. When I write songs about people, I write in current time, it’s what I’m currently going through. And I’ll always share my work with the people I’m writing about. So they very much know. I’m a very open person, and I have no problem saying ‘I know we’re not together anymore, or we’re not getting on, but I wrote this song about you.’ Even when I was doing Songs About C, my ex, we weren’t together. And I let him know I was writing about him.”

She’s referring to the EP she released last October, which introduced listeners to her vocals-focused, intimate songwriting. By the time she put the EP out, she’d scattered a few of its singles online, from 2016’s “Put It On Me” to breakout track “Run” and full-on 90s throwback “I Live.” So she says that “Stranger Things” follows on from Songs About C, in that she wrote it after trying to really spend some time figuring herself out. “I wanted to write about what I wanted to, sing about what I wanted to without hurting anybody’s feelings. But just to tell my truth.” She struggled to do that a bit, at the start of the year when she was writing the track. That’s because her voice had started to falter somewhat. For a while, she felt she might not be able to sing, or hit the high notes she always had. “I went to see the doctor, and had the camera down my throat; I had tablets and all. And now my voice is… even when I was recording ‘Stranger Things,’ it was really really hard for me. It was hard for me to do the notes I used to be able to do in my sleep.”

You’d struggle to tell that, though – I know I did. Hearing her talk about not only the vulnerability of the song’s content but the process behind it adds an extra layer of meaning. “I hope that people relate to it, and listen to it without needing to relate just to my story. I hope they go, ‘I know what she’s talking about’ – not that I hope they have heartbreak or struggles – and feel connected.” I don’t want to pry, I say, but wonder if she’s able to talk more about the specifics behind the song. “I had this situation,” with an intimate partner, “where I just looked over and was like, ‘ahh yeah – sigh. This is really bad. Things really aren’t the same anymore’ I genuinely had that feeling.” Now she repeats the opening lyrics to me, where she sings about lying in bed, where “ the distance is clear / your hands all over my body, but your spirit's not here / he’s been gone for too long.” And, she remembers thinking, “‘as much as you might be attractive or not, I’m here because of your spirit – and if he’s gone, then what do we have? That’s what the songs about: if the essence of a person leaves the relationship, what do we actually have?”

I say that the song might stir up familiar feelings for anyone who’s watched the cracks suddenly appear in their relationship. You might be in bed, or eating, and look at the person you’re with before thinking, ‘oh wow, this just… ain’t it. I don’t know how that happened.’ As a chemical connection, love is frankly ridiculous. And as anyone who’s been in a long-term relationship will know – particularly when you chuck in the mundanity of living together – where there used to be sparks, you could fall into a gaping void instead. “And you’re right,” Malika begins, “it’s about the end of a relationship, it’s about working things out. Either you’ll work your way back to each other, or you fall apart. Love is so difficult. It’s the one thing everybody strives to find, but we all struggle to find it.”

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