The UK pop and R&B singer Jorja Smith released her debut album Lost & Found way back in 2018, and in 2021 she released an excellent EP called Be Right Back. Today she’s launching a new era with the DAMEDAME*-produced “Try Me,” an impressive mixture of smooth presence and jagged rhythm that ends by disappearing back into a soulful twilight. As on Smith’s incredible “Addicted,” the bass and drums on this could almost be rock music, but the overall vibe is more like if radio-ready R&B was Bond-theme glamorous, or maybe Adele if she did not have to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Smith says “Try Me” is about “putting yourself out there, in front of a world that has many opinions, as it only ever used to be me really being my own critic.” It’s paired with a video by Amber Grace Johnson; as Smith explains, “The dancer, Andrea Bou Othmane, embodies a bull which represents the world and its opinions out of my control.” Watch below.