The title of the newly-released third LP for English songwriter Shura is plenty evocative: I Got Too Sad for My Friends.

"It's not a criticism of my friends, it's an insight of my inner workings," explains Shura, AKA 36-year-old Alexandra Denton.

The album followed a period in which Shura's life had been thrown for a loop. A run of tour dates supporting her 2019 LP Forevher were cancelled with the arrival of the pandemic. She was dropped by her record label. And lockdowns brought her artmaking to a standstill. It reached a point where she was unsure if she'd write another song, let alone make another record.

"It's not new that I'm riddled with self-doubt," Shura admits. "When my tour was cancelled, being dropped by my label for the second time, there was a point where I was like: 'I don't know if I'll be afforded the opportunity to do this again'."

In conversation with Anthony Carew on The International Pop Underground, Shura talks about coming out of a creative block, re-connecting with her childhood sense of play, recording under a family nickname, and looking back on her first album a decade later.

Feature image: Charlotte Croft