Laila! has announced her sophomore album, We'll Never Be This Young Again, arriving Oct. 23. SZA has already given the project a glowing early endorsement, calling it "the most beautiful shit I've heard all year."
The 12-track record follows Laila!'s debut, Gap Year, released two years ago and recognized on Rolling Stone's Future 25 list. Unlike her debut, which she made in her childhood bedroom studio, this project was recorded in professional studios across New York, Atlanta, and Paris. "I think this project really does show the ways I've grown up," she told Rolling Stone. "I'm buying my own groceries and shit and doing everything for myself. It's been a great experience for me."
The announcement arrives alongside a new single and a teaser for the title track, which Laila! previewed on Instagram with a stripped-down video of herself recording vocals at a desk in her apartment. "With creating this album, I became really obsessed with nostalgia and postcards and memories and travel and people and places and things," she said. That fixation carries into the album cover — a headshot of Laila! framed by an ocean shore, with a mango stamp in the upper right corner referencing the lead single, "Miss Mango." The cover was shot by Dylan DeJong-Dougherty, who also shot the Gap Year cover; Laila! called the portrait element "really important" to her.
Much of the new material draws from major life changes, including moving into her own apartment for the first time at 19. She admitted the adjustment to New York wasn't easy: "living in New York is just not fucking easy," and she initially struggled to find a space big enough for her belongings, at one point saying, "I don't like this spot at all," before eventually finding an apartment she now loves.
Laila! said she still handles most of the production and songwriting herself but is learning to embrace collaboration, noting there's "a little something in there that I think is really special." She also described being in her "lover girl" era, saying, "I love love. I love writing about love. I love being in love."
On the album's title, she explained she wanted it to serve as a reminder that "today is the youngest you'll be," adding, "We're young. We have time, for sure."
Outside music, Laila! said she's been training in Muay Thai every day, describing it as a way to sharpen her focus for songwriting. Looking ahead, she said her ambitions are sky-high: "Go big or go home: Grammys. I want all the nominations. I want covers, and I just want to go for the moon, beyond the moon, beyond the stars. But more than anything, I really just want people to connect with it and resonate with it."
Photo: Lennart Perlenhem, CC BY 2.5 dk, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/dk/deed.en, via Wikimedia Commons
