FINDING YOURSELF
Very few film-makers are granted final cut, and with it the chance to present their unfiltered creative vision to an audience. In truth, as commercial considerations and competing tastes tighten their respective grips, most art lives and dies in the hands of others. The music world is no different. But, on her new record, Lianne La Havas has wrangled something close to that ideal. Here, any triumphs or failures will be hers alone. “I needed to make something that was really mine this time,” she says.
La Havas decided that her third LP would be self-titled immediately following the release of her second album Blood, back in 2015. After breaking through with Is Your Love Big Enough? three years earlier, her name quickly gathered recognition. Album two was supposed to confirm her arrival in the major leagues but, while it achieved positive reviews and had a solid chart performance, she felt deflated by production compromises and having to perform songs that she didn’t write, including single What You Don’t Do, a surefire hit on paper that ended up going nowhere.
“It’s not that I have negative relationships with the other albums,” says La Havas. “I love them but I
