Sophie Jamieson Shares new single/video “How do you want to be loved?”

“’Enthralling… a remarkable match of intimacy and intensity… consistently startling and affecting.” – Uncut: 9/10

“A raw, intimate, brilliant debut, falling somewhere between Sharon Van Etten, Lisa Germano and PJ Harvey… Her torch-song voice is often exposed by spare arrangements, but songs also burst into euphoric life, like exorcisms… every second is disarming and beautiful.” – MOJO: 4*

“A stunning debut album… an enveloping soundscape of guitar and piano, over which Jamieson documents and confronts her demons. Heavy subject matter, for sure, but Choosing’s lasting impression is one of beauty, warmth and redemption.” – Sunday Times (Breaking Act feature)

“Impressive… the arrangements are sparse and full of reverb, which gives the music a woozy yet intense feel.” – Financial Times: 4*

London-based songwriter Sophie Jamieson today releases the new single “How do you want to be loved?”, the third track from her highly anticipated second album, I still want to share, out 17 January 2025 via Bella Union.

“How do you want to be loved?” is one of the album’s most spirited instrumental backdrops, all bubbling synths and fidgety percussion, that set a colourful atmosphere for the record’s emotional peak. A deep battle of trying to open up the heart, the song documents a draining attempt to see the layers in those we love the most, when all we are able to summon is confusion and hurt.

Speaking of the new single, Sophie said: “I wrote this song after a particularly upsetting fight with a close family member. I wanted to write a song that would help me forgive and understand them – to write my way into being able to love them in the way I felt I should. But I couldn’t keep my anger and frustration out of the song. It kept bubbling through my attempts to embrace their humanity and complexity. In the end, the song seemed to become a battle between the wounded children in both of us. Their voice and pain came through somehow in a way that broke my heart. The song had to hold the very depths of my hurt, and the depths of theirs all in one.”

“How do you want to be loved?” follows the release of the album’s first two singles, “I don’t know what to save”, a heartfelt yearn for release through Sophie’s endlessly emotive lyricism, building toward an exhilarating peak as it tumbles forwards, and “Camera”, a song birthed out of themes of unanchored love and heartbreak.

Listen to “How do you want to be loved?” here, and watch the accompanying video below.

Sophie Jamieson will play a run of instores across the UK to tie in with the album release in January, with dates at London’s Rough Trade West as well as in Gosport, Oxford, Leeds, and Brighton. Sophie will then follow up with a UK headline tour in February, including a London show at The Lexington on 12 February 2025. See below for a full list of upcoming tour dates, with tickets available here.

Instores:
January 15th – London – Rough Trade West
January 21st – Gosport – Slice of Vinyl
January 22nd – Oxford – Truck
January 23rd – Leeds – Jumbo Records
January 25th – Brighton – Bella Union Record Shop

Live dates:
Feb 7th – Manchester – Low Four
Feb 8th – Belfast – The Duncairn
Feb 11th – Brighton – Folklore Rooms
Feb 12th – London – The Lexington
Feb 16th – Nottingham – Peggy’s Skylight
Feb 20th – Frome – HydeAway

If Sophie’s debut LP Choosing explored the self-destructive urge that swells from running away from one’s whole self, I still want to share muscles through, song by song, doing its best to face it. It lifts the lid on the roots of how we love and digs in even deeper, leaning into our deficiencies but doing so from a stronger, healthier place that is much less afraid of the pain that inevitably comes with feeling everything.

Co-produced in London by Sophie Jamieson with the Grammy Award-winning Guy Massey (known for his work with Spiritualized, Manic Street Preachers, as well as remastering The Beatles’ back-catalogue), I still want to share also feels more exploratory, playful, and detailed with a richer palette. All the raw emotion of Sophie’s songwriting and vocal delivery is joined by some new characters: twinkly, toy-like omnichord, brooding layers of harmonium and sub-bass, as well as rich string arrangements – courtesy of Josephine Stephenson (Daughter, Ex:Re, Lisa Hannigan) – that weave a yearning connection through the beating heart of the record. “There’s a lot of warm autumnal colours, and then more glittery, dark, starry skies. Something about it all has really come together to illustrate some things that I didn’t know I needed to articulate in this way”, Sophie explains.

Throughout I still want to share, Sophie takes the enormity of the word ‘love’ and peels back its layers. Underneath, she finds a number of the themes that return across these songs: that loving so often feels like control and need, that being loved can be excruciating when it means having to face yourself. That simple, pure, unanxious love looks like sharing, generosity and space, and that this love is so elusive in adult life. “I think what holds this record together is the idea of attachment rather than love,” she explains. “The clinical, less romantic nature, the ugly nature, but also the very human nature of that.”

I still want to share sits now, as a reckoning with the futile desire of perfection and solid answers, in terms of what we ask of ourselves, and what we ask of those we love. The questions asked throughout are painful at root level, the answers only ever swept away with the wind. After all, as the closing track croons, “time pulls you over backwards, deep beneath your age” and thus at the end we find ourselves back at the beginning, young, old, all at once, ready to try again. Despite it all, we still look for love and we still want to share.

I still want to share
Tracklisting:

Camera
Vista
I don’t know what to save
Baby
Welcome
Highway
I still want to share
How do you want to be loved?
Your love is a mirror
I’d take you
Time pulls you over backwards