Shura dives deep into despair, disconnection, and rediscovery on her gorgeous third album ‘I Bought Too Unhappy for My Buddies,’ a document that transforms isolation into connection by 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 inside baby, and studying to let go.
Stream: “World’s Worst Girlfriend” – Shura
Tright here’s a quiet sort of devastation working by I Bought Too Unhappy for My Buddies.
Shura’s third album will not be a document 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 protracted 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 by. I Bought Too Unhappy for My Buddies is a mild, unflinching reckoning with despair, identification, and disconnection: A document that doesn’t chase catharsis, a lot because it sits with the load of being human, letting the harm converse in tender, unguarded tones.
Launched Might 30th, 2024 by way of Play It Once more Sam, I Bought Too Unhappy for My Buddies finds Shura charting a brand new course by 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, reside recordings, and the quiet intimacy of “chamber pop, sixties folks, and campfire Americana,” as she calls it. A lot of the album was recorded reside in-studio together with her band, with vocals tracked individually – besides on “Ringpull,” which preserves her authentic reside take. “It’s not good,” she says, “nevertheless it 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 relatively tells it plainly.
At its core, I Bought Too Unhappy for My Buddies is about what occurs once we cease reaching out – when the load we’re carrying makes us really feel like a burden to the very folks we love most. That stress surfaces repeatedly, each lyrically and within the album’s origin story.
This document 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 depart, type of with out realising I used to be leaving after I left – if that is sensible. I wrestled just a little with not having the ability to write, not feeling impressed when the pandemic reduce quick the tour for the second document. 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 potential, when what I wanted to do was write SOS within the sand and set off a flare.” As an alternative, she pulled away. She stopped speaking. The songs that emerged within the aftermath don’t ask for pity – they only inform the reality of what it felt wish to disappear.
That sense of disappearance additionally formed how Shura approached the document’s creation. After months of stasis, even beginning once more felt unbelievable.
“There was a time period the place I wasn’t certain I’d ever be capable of write one other album, not to mention be capable of document 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 document it I actually needed to strategy it in a approach that was new for me. I had this fairly fatalistic concept that if I by no means obtained to do that once more, I needed to verify I didn’t simply do the identical factor the identical approach 3 times. I needed to go on an journey that was thrilling and perhaps additionally a bit scary generally. I needed to push myself and expertise each the enjoyment and discomfort that comes with that.”
That spirit of rediscovery programs by the album’s sonic palette. Although it might sound like a departure, I Bought Too Unhappy for My Buddies really marks a return to the way in which Shura first started making music. “I’m positively 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 assume it strengthened early that I in all probability would simply make no matter me, relatively than what folks anticipated. I don’t know if that might have occurred if I’d stayed signed to a serious label for the second document. So there was a blessing in there someplace.”
She continues, “Folks 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 write 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 kinds; a self-reintroduction that honors her inventive origins. “Perhaps this captures a aspect of my artistry that’s new for followers, however very acquainted to me. Numerous this document seems like honoring my inside baby. Writing songs on a guitar, dressing up as a tiny superhero. Occurring an journey.”
That sense of play, vulnerability, and emotional weight all coexist within the music itself – which Shura distills into three deceptively easy phrases: “mild, massive, and unhappy.”
The phrase holds the album’s emotional duality in sharp reduction – the tenderness, the melancholy, the sense of scale and softness .
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 Bought Too Unhappy for My Buddies’ began because the title for a SoundCloud demos playlist – the songs that might later turn out to be this album – typed in a second of brutally uncooked honesty.
“After I make demo playlists, I hate simply calling them ‘demos’ or ‘perhaps album 3’ since you simply don’t know what they’ll turn out to be, 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 folks I cherished as a result of I type of noticed myself as an emotional burden. I used to be sort of simply retreating… From the world. I made a decision to simply kind this out, and I loved the incontrovertible 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… nevertheless it’s additionally sort 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 tender confession masquerading as a punchline.
That very same spirit carries by the album’s music. It’s expressive and weak, wealthy with feeling and sound alike. Highlights abound on the journey from album opener “Tokyo” to nearer “Dangerous Child,” every monitor capturing a unique shade of Shura’s being – disappointment, pleasure, reflection, launch.
“Richardson,” that includes Cassandra Jenkins, stands because the album’s heartbeat – the primary track Shura wrote for the undertaking, and a crystallization of its central theme. Constructed on mild guitar strums, flurries of keys, and breathtaking vocal harmonies, the monitor carries the load of emotional withdrawal with out ever elevating its voice. “I obtained too down round my buddies, it was sluggish however they stopped answering, so I ended speaking,” Shura sings, tracing the invisible drift between connection and isolation. “It’s type of gently devastating,” Shura says, calling out that inversion of the album title as a private spotlight. “As an grownup I’ve discovered issues collapse so slowly. You’ll be able to sense it. And it’s much less instantaneous however no much less catastrophic. And I cherished type of capturing that. After which in fact, 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 track’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 track that begins to let the sunshine in. Shura’s voice hovers simply above a hush as she sings of harm, forgiveness, and craving, accompanied by a loose-knit gospel choir of household, buddies, 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 instructed me Jesus cherished me.
And I suppose the one factor that’s true,
I wanna be cherished by you.
The ultimate two tracks – “If You Don’t Imagine in Love” (that includes Helado Negro) and “Dangerous 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 luxurious finale confronting mortality, identification, and disgrace with brutal honesty and stunning levity. Each carry the document to a detailed not with decision, however with acceptance – a sort of emotional, musical exhale.
It’s all momentary,
Make consider.
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 consider in love,
You don’t consider in a lot.
Shura herself gravitates towards the album’s quieter moments – the deep cuts that will not get the highlight, however maintain probably the most that means. “I usually discover my favourites are the deep cuts that perhaps nobody else cares about – shout out ‘princess leia’ from album 2,” she laughs. “So a number of mine find yourself being the songs that aren’t singles. I’m actually happy with ‘Leonard Road’ and might’t wait to play reside. 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 totally different America sooner or later, and in order that type of hits and lands in another way now. It’s attention-grabbing how a lot time having handed modifications your relationship to songs by yourself document.”
An early second on the document, “Leonard Road” seems like a ultimate goodbye to New York, a metropolis as soon as full of hope and love, now layered with absence. Over glowing textures and hushed vocals, Shura remembers the vacancy of bars, parking tons, 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 elements grief and detachment. Each songs faucet into the ache of getting as soon as believed in one thing that now 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 yr?
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 Road.
After I left you,
Didn’t get to.
Say goodbye to you.
We’ll be alright.
I Bought Too Unhappy for My Buddies will not be a document to hurry by – it’s one to take a seat with, to return to, to let bloom over time.
These songs ache and shimmer, whisper and unfold. They carry sorrow and humor, grit and style. Shura doesn’t simply write about emotions – she interprets them into sound, making area 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 excited by drawing the map. “What folks take from one thing is commonly wildly totally 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 should type of hope that it has a full and blissful life,” she smiles. “It’s the closest I’ve come to having youngsters. So I’m identical 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 realizing whether or not she’d ever write one other album, to creating probably the most genuine and emotionally resonant document of her profession, Shura has loads to be happy with nowadays. Six years after forevher, the British songstress has returned with considered one of 2025’s most stunning 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 brazenly on this planet – a young, highly effective reminder that even our quietest truths need to be heard.
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© Charlotte Croft
