Shura: Q&A

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and WFUV has asked Shura and Emma-Jean Thackray to share their stories of perseverance over personal struggles. If you or someone you love is struggling, you can reach out to SAMHSA's hotline, NYC Well, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), or the Sound Mind organization, focused on ending the stigma that surrounds mental health through the power of music.

With her debut 2014 single "Touch" at 40 million streams on Spotify and 37 million streams on YouTube, London-born, Manchester-raised singer, songwriter and producer Shura has sailed through a decade of ardent fans and the full-throttle intensity (and disappointment) of the music industry. She released two critically praised albums over the course of a few years, 2016's Nothing Real and 2019's love-splashed Forevher (with its tour cut short by the pandemic), but it has taken six years for her to write and record a third album — and its title gives away just why she needed a break.

I Got Too Sad for My Friends, released on Friday, May 30, via PIAS, is a wistful, witty, chamber pop odyssey of what it means to deal with an extended bout of depression and anxiety. Shura's melancholia, which was partly precipitated by the Covid-19 lockdown, was artistic paralysis for her. The challenge wasn't about songwriting, but even getting out of bed, stepping out of the house, and not trying the patience of her partner — things she confesses in emotionally blunt, darkly humorous tracks such as "World's Worst Girlfriend" and "Bad Kid," the latter of which features Becca Mancari.

For FUV's ongoing May is Mental Health Awareness Month series, Shura chatted with FUV over email, and thoughtfully touched on what it means to wade through the swamp of a depressive episode. She's come through the other side with I Got Too Sad for My Friends, a tender bear hug of an album. Not only did the making of this album help Shura to heal, but she hopes it can be of comfort for others in a similar struggle.

Your new album, I Got Too Sad for My Friends, is your first in six years — and a first step back into releasing an album following the pandemic and lockdown. How much of that era, and how we all tried to cope, shapes the context of what you needed to say in these songs — and still need to say?

I often wonder to myself if this record would have been different, had the pandemic not happened. I know for certain I was drawn to the textures because of the kind of records I was listening to at the time to soothe myself. It's hard to know. Maybe I would still have found that time to be a difficult period mentally. I had just moved to New York and was no longer close to my friends and family. It's hard to know how much something shaped a thing you do creatively because so much of even my own creativity is a mystery to me!

You deal pretty directly about your mental headspace with the album's title itself (pulled from a lyric in "World's Worst Girlfriend"). Navigating sadness or depression — as an artist who writes, records, tours, and promotes herself  — is a terrible struggle. How were you frozen creatively and what helped thaw that paralysis?

I think that in order for me to write music, I have to be interested in what it is I am saying. That doesn't necessarily mean that what I'm saying has to be particularly exciting or grand in scale. In fact often I'm sort of most interested in the minutiae. It was the first time I experienced writer's block — which was frightening. It's like a creative panic attack, because when it's happening, you really think that's it forever. One of my coping mechanisms was short walks — creating little orbits around my apartment and sort of pondering the mysteries of the universe. I think that's maybe why places are such a big character on the record. "Richardson" was the first song I wrote for the album and it was because of those walks, removing myself from my immediate environment and trying to just absorb as much of the outside as I was able to.

There was a point, you have said, when you wondered if you would be able to record again. When you finally stepped into The Pool in London to record, what was the first song you played or sang on — and how did it feel to hear yourself back where you wanted to be?

Stepping into a studio after so many years was very emotional. I really did wonder if I'd ever get to do it again. So, having wrestled with that, I found I was able to be really present in that moment and savour it. My dad drove me with a bunch of my guitars and my Juno and dropped me off and we both just really shared this lovely moment of here I am, doing this, again, don't forget to enjoy it.

"Recognise" was the first song we recorded, which I had written earlier that year in January. So much of "Recognise" is about acceptance and being present, so it was quite magical to hear that come together. Especially because whilst I always knew there would be drums on the song there were none on the demo. I'd been imagining them for months and here they finally were.

You collaborated with Cassandra Jenkins, Helado Negro, and Becca Mancari on this album. What led you to these three artists and what is it about their perspectives/voices/insights that felt right for "Richardson" (Jenkins), "If You Don't Believe in Love" (Negro), and "Bad Kid" (Mancari)? 

America and New York are big characters on the record, and of course these songs were written about such a specific time in my life that it felt really natural to ask the musicians I loved, who I'd either made friends with or connected with in some way when I lived there. I saw Cassandra support Okay Kaya at a concert in Brooklyn and fell in love with her music. Helado Negro's records were big features in our house and I would occasionally bump into Roberto [Lange] at The Lot Radio.  Becca Mancari is someone I was introduced to on a friend date, and we just got on super well. So they were all people I adored, both creatively and as humans.

They're also people whose music, I think, sounds so effortless. To me, mine always sounds so effortful. Maybe because I am aware of the amount of effort I had to put in to get there. Having them collaborate with me on the record felt like injecting weather and movement.

 "World's Worst Girlfriend" is a deceptively cheery-sounding song — and also brutally honest about the shame that accompanies depression. In your experience, how can a couple best make their way through a rough patch when one partner is struggling with mental health issues? Also, the song revels in a late '70s or '80s style production, squishy synths and all. Aside from the emotional core of "World's Worst Girlfriend," how did its sound evolve?

This song actually sounds quite close to the demo! We added a few extra organic elements given the rest of the album is so rooted in those textures. But it's always been this self-aware, slightly funny take on something that was really quite awful to experience — the guilt that accompanies depression, where you just feel like a really rubbish girlfriend, or human.

"America" is a particularly striking song on this album, one that crosses both personal and political metaphors. I'm curious as to how that song evolved in particular, especially as a queer artist gazing across the ocean at a country where trans and LGBTQ+ rights are being challenged again.

Well. I will say that when I wrote it, I very much imagined that by the time people heard it we would find ourselves in a different America to the one that exists today. So, it's the first time I've written a song where by the time it's released I'm aware that it will land differently. That's been very interesting.

It's one of the most special songs on the record to me and we've actually made a little something for it we have yet to share because I do think we live in such a different world to the one I started releasing music in. I remember my first song, "Touch," had a very queer music video that I made with all my friends. We were in our early twenties and it really felt at the time like not only were things starting to get better, but that it would only ever continue to do so, which of course was naive.

There's a real gentleness to this album, the sax that winds out of "If You Don't Believe in Love," the hazy sigh of "Leonard Street," the spare prettiness of "Bad Kid." It's very much an album, it seems, meant to soothe and comfort. Did the making of it help you heal in that process of gentleness?

People have asked me to describe the album in three words on more than one occasion and I've just been saying, "Gentle, big, sad." I think, ideally, I'd have four words and say, "Gentle, big, slow, sad," because my experience of everything falling apart was that it was over a long period of time, and I was aware of it, but simultaneously not equipped to change course. All I could do was observe.

I think a lot of healing had to happen before I could begin completing the process. But, of course, making it maybe was the full stop. It was completing the circle, and certainly the production. The way we recorded the album and the types of instruments we used were things I was drawn to as a result of needing to soothe myself. I've said before that, in that time, I needed to listen to music that felt like an armchair I could curl up into. I also needed to make music like that, it seems. Or my version of it at least.

How are you feeling today? And what would a blissful Shura day be like, from morning to evening?

The album is nearly a week away and I am a bit sleepy as there is lots to do, but I am very excited for people to listen to it in full.

A blissful day for me? I mean I'd love to be out in the mountains hiking but if I can't do that this would be nice:
Wake up at 10 a.m.
Grab a coffee from my local coffee shop and talk to the baristas.
Exercise (At the moment I'm either doing strength training or Jiu Jitsu)
Relax at home with the windows open so I can feel and smell the breeze. Not higher than 21°C  (69 °F) please!
Put on a record and have it at a volume where I can hear it, but also still hear the birds that are chirping outside my window.
Contemplate the universe.
Conversations.
Cook a delicious meal for people I love.
More conversations.
A bath at the end of the day with salts and nice bath oils.
A clean crisp bed to sleep in.

Are there any mental health organizations that you feel were helpful for you when you were in crisis, or you think are important for musicians?

I really struggled with feeling entitled to ask for help. In many ways I've had so much success, more than I ever dreamed of as a kid, so I felt like using resources that were available to me would be like taking resources away from someone more deserving. Obviously that's not helpful. For me. Or anyone reading this. So if you have any recommendations please let me know.

- Shura
May 2025

You can also read 2024's May is Mental Health Awareness Month Q&As with Victoria Canal and Julia Bailen of Bailen and 2023's interviews with Ruston Kelly, Bully's Alicia Bognanno, and Pom Pom Girls' Mia Berrin.