Digital Cover: Mabel is Breaking Free

I’m listening to Mabel’s latest track, ‘January 19th’, then ‘Benz’ featuring Clavish, and her velvety voice instantly transports me to some of the fondest memories from my adolescence. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, fellow twenty-somethings probably have that reaction to her vocals, too. A nostalgic feeling that chimes with a different time – when those camo cargos were trending, Oxford Street’s Topshop and Missguided were still alive and kicking, and Snapchat was everyone’s main form of communication.

This comes as no surprise when you reflect upon Mabel’s influence as one of the UK’s defining voices during the late 2010s. London’s music scene was booming, with paragons like J Hus, Yxng Bxne, AJ Tracey, and Not3s – whom Mabel shared a few hit singles with – contributing to the era’s soundtrack. The vibe was a little bit Afroswing, a little bit grime, R&B, and a whole lot of London.

But now we are in 2025, and while her singing voice casts a shadow of the past, her overall sound has evolved, taking it from an echo of 2017 to fully-fledged Mabel: no reheated nachos here. “I think of that time really fondly. It’s really nostalgic,” Mabel tells me over Zoom, a few weeks before she is set to headline NOTION’s House of R&B stage at SXSW London. 

For her forthcoming mixtape, MABEL, announced yesterday, the now-29-year-old’s aim isn’t to erase that 19-year-old version of herself, but honour it. Honing in on the essence of what made her earlier music such a success, she has injected a newfound sense of self into her old creative process. “There are so many things that I’ve gone back to about that era. It’s something that I’ve studied going into writing this chunk of music. There was a freedom to me as a writer and as an artist [back then] because I didn’t have people listening to me. There’s a freedom when you’re just making music for you,” she explains. “[I’m trying to] find that childlike thing of writing music with no rules, because annoyingly and ironically, the more you do something, the more you analyse it.”

This framework pushed her to build an at-home studio, where she could “get back to life and art happening at the same time”. “The songwriting process shouldn’t feel like work,” she professes. And so the entirety of the project was assembled from the comfort of her home, with help from a team of good friends and musical accomplices: Arthur Bean, Sion, and Oscar Scheller. 

Recounting this process, Mabel recalls a six-week streak of “experimentation and making eight ideas in a day, [then] going away and listening and being like, ‘This one feels like me’”. ‘January 19th’, which announced the project, marks a stark turn inwards. Having started her career at just 19, Mabel has been through it all. “It’s an internal conversation [about] the industry and my relationship with my career. I’m having to redefine what success means to me, because I’ve had the numbers, which I would love to have again, but not at the expense of my integrity and my personality,” she confesses.

For Mabel, she is not only navigating the music scene after a whirlwind of fame in the infancy of her career, but also a meteoric shift that happened during and in the aftermath of the pandemic. “When I started making music, there was a very different approach to being an artist. It was like there was a wall in between you and the listener… COVID changed everything,” she recalls. “All of a sudden, people want to know who you are. I spent so long creating this perfect version of myself during an age when I think most people are figuring out who they are. I was so focused on the projection of what I thought I should be, so when that switch happened in the industry, I was totally lost.”

Reflecting on what she looks for in a collaborator, she touches on the appeal of someone who “isn’t too fussed about genres”. Breaking free from the constraints and pressures that she previously felt within the industry is integral to who Mabel is as an artist today. She is now able to render the collaborative process as “therapy”, revelling in the “intimate, vulnerable environment” that it creates. 

Saying that, she is equally careful not to wish for the past to be any different. “I would hate to not be exactly where I am right now. I’m really proud of that. I love the people that I have around me, and I’m really grateful to be here,” the singer-songwriter assures. Fighting from referring to the oh-so-topical ‘butterfly effect’, every decision that Mabel’s made has led her to where she is today.

Since the beginning of her career, R&B music has been an integral part of Mabel’s artistry, so it was a no-brainer to have her headlining our stage at SXSW London alongside some rising stars. “R&B is a really important part of what I do. I’m never gonna lose that. It’s a thread that I’ve kept throughout my whole career, even when experimenting with other genres, I always keep that R&B songwriting top line,” she says.

Her love affair with the genre began from an early age, recalling that even as a child, she recognised that Destiny’s Child’s ‘The Writing’s on the Wall’ had the ability to make her feel “powerful and free”. It’s this sense of freedom that Mabel is chasing in her performance. “A thing for me that’s really important is not over-rehearsing because I think there’s so much beauty in mistakes and in things not being total perfection,” she muses. “People go to shows, not for the perfect experience, but for connection. It lights a spark.”

This performance, in tandem with the release of this mixtape, is Mabel hatching her newfound confidence and individuality. “I got rid of a lot of the old songs, most of the set is new music and is off the tape because I just want to showcase where I’m going musically and give people something different.”

‘Mabel’s self-titled mixtape is out July 25^th’