Jorja Smith Is Ten Years In, Back Home and Moving Forward 🎶✨
Ten years after Blue Lights introduced one of Britain’s most distinctive voices, Jorja Smith has a new album, an arena tour and a clearer idea of where she wants to build her life.
When Jorja Smith uploaded Blue Lights to SoundCloud in 2016, it did not sound like somebody cautiously testing the waters. She was 18 and recently out of sixth form, yet the song arrived with a clear point of view.
Built around a sample of Dizzee Rascal’s Sirens, Blue Lights examined policing, racial profiling and the choices facing young Black men. Jorja’s delivery was calm, but the world she was writing about was anything but. It was an assured introduction to an artist who understood that a soft voice could still carry difficult questions.
Ten years later, that first song now sits within a catalogue substantial enough to fill an arena. Jorja has announced the 10 Years of Jorja Smith - All the Hits tour, including her first headline performance at London’s O2 on 17th July 2027. It will be her only UK arena show of the year, with tickets now on sale from £50.80.
The announcement comes one week after the release of her third album, What Are The Odds, so this anniversary is not only concerned with where she has been. Jorja is celebrating her first decade while introducing a record that moves her music forward again.
Produced by her longstanding collaborator P2J, What Are The Odds brings UK garage, funky house, 2-step and Afrobeats into the centre of the album. Wizkid appears on Alive, while Devlin joins her on This City, which draws from his 2010 grime track London City. There is plenty here intended to make people move, but the writing underneath it still deals with loss, loneliness, friendship and the difficulty of knowing who is genuine when fame changes the relationships around you.
Dance music has always moved through Jorja’s work. On My Mind with Preditah arrived in 2017, and Little Things became one of the standout moments from falling or flying in 2023. The difference now is that dance is no longer contained within a summer single or one section of an album. What Are The Odds allows that energy to shape a complete body of work.
Each of Jorja’s three albums belongs to a distinct period of her life. Lost & Found, released in 2018, brought together songs written during her teenage years and early twenties. It reached number three on the UK Albums Chart and earned a Mercury Prize nomination, confirming that the attention around Blue Lights was not resting on one exceptional debut.
Five years later, falling or flying was looser and less predictable. Made with Walsall production duo DAMEDAME*, it moved between R&B, soul, alternative rock and Afrobeats without trying to preserve the exact sound with which audiences first encountered her. What Are The Odds continues that progression, but feels lighter on its feet. The music has changed as Jorja has, which is surely healthier than spending a decade recreating the person she was at 18.
She has, after all, spent virtually her entire adult life being watched. Jorja began travelling from Walsall to London for writing sessions after signing with a manager at 15. Once she had completed her A-levels, she moved to the capital and worked in a café while establishing herself as an artist. International recognition, major collaborations and public scrutiny followed before she had much opportunity to experience adulthood outside the industry.
Not all of that attention remained focused on her music. Jorja has spoken about the relentless commentary surrounding her appearance, including the body-shaming she experienced around the release of falling or flying. She has described finding the experience of “being Jorja Smith” difficult, particularly when strangers felt entitled to make judgements about her body.
It is a part of her story because she has chosen to discuss it, but it should not be allowed to eclipse the work. Jorja stepped back from social media, stopped managing her own accounts and created more distance between her public career and private life. That was sometimes mistaken for an absence from music, despite the fact that she has continued releasing and performing. As she recently reminded people, she has been touring since 2017.
By 2023, she had also moved back to Walsall after years of living in London. Jorja has spoken about needing a reset and wanting to place her feet somewhere familiar after becoming worn down by the travelling and pressures attached to her career.
Her return home should not be interpreted as a retreat from ambition. British creative success is still too often imagined as a one-way journey towards London, as though leaving is evidence of progress and returning must mean stepping backwards. Jorja’s career tells a more interesting story.
Walsall is where she first wrote and uploaded music, where she later worked with DAMEDAME* and where she chose to rebuild some separation between her career and the rest of her life. She now divides her time between the West Midlands and London, remaining connected to the capital without making it the permanent centre of everything. Her audience, meanwhile, has never been confined by either place.
The business behind her music has followed a similarly independent path. Jorja has released her work through FAMM since the beginning of her recording career and describes it as her own independent label, established alongside her when she was 18. She has remained close to its creative and business decisions while FAMM has developed a wider catalogue that includes music from artists such as ENNY, Mychelle, Konyikeh, Demae and Bricknasty.
Jorja speaks about independence without trying to turn it into a slogan. It is simply how she has always worked. Her hope for FAMM, she has said, is to develop and care for artists, recognising that people are more likely to produce their best work when they feel supported.
None of this means her first decade has unfolded without uncertainty. She has spoken about burnout, the pressure surrounding a second album and the difficulty of growing up while the public forms its own version of you. What stands out is not a perfectly controlled career, but an artist who has gradually learnt which parts of herself she wants to share and which she is entitled to keep.
The O2 show will bring together Blue Lights, Teenage Fantasy, Be Honest, On My Mind, Try Me, Little Things and the music she has only just released. An arena anniversary concert needs more than nostalgia for one breakthrough moment. It needs songs that have accompanied people through different parts of their own lives too.
At 29, Jorja is a major British artist with an international audience, three studio albums and an independent structure behind her work. Leaving Walsall helped take her music into the world. Choosing to return did not make that world any smaller.
What Are The Odds is out now. Tickets for Jorja Smith’s 10 Years of Jorja Smith - All the Hits show at The O2 on 17th July 2027 are on sale through official ticket sellers, with standard tickets available from £50.80.
