British R&B/soul singer Terri Walker discusses British soul, her career to date, and her latest album.
Talking at a thousand words a minute, Terri Walker is a hoot. The British R&B/soul singer is excited, and with good reason: her latest album MY LOVE STORY is enjoying a welcome reception among music tastemakers and, crucially, the fans who have stuck by her since her initial forays into music.
We start our conversation with Walker’s upbringing. Born in England, Walker spent her childhood in Germany, an experience she has described as largely positive. She was exposed by her mother to the folk music of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, the archetypal soul music coming out of States, but also British soul from the likes of Mica Paris, Omar, Soul II Soul, and Loose Ends. However, Walker explains that, from her vantage point in Germany, she tended to conflate American and British soul. “They were just Black artists making music. It wasn’t necessarily, ‘Oh these guys are from the UK,’” she says, later recognising some of the unique characteristics of British soul once she had returned to the UK for boarding school.
Though she was classically trained, studying at the prestigious Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, Walker was more drawn to the pop/R&B vocal styles of the Black female artists she was hearing on the radio. Hearing the Phyllis Nelson track “Move Closer” (which topped the UK charts in the spring of 1985) as a five year-old girl was formative. “I was thinking, ‘What the hell is this? Oh my God, I need to make people feel the way this is making me feel.’” A fascination with Whitney Houston soon followed. “Back then, I always thought that the louder you sing, the better singer you are,” she says. “I used to break my voice getting these notes out. I realised I’m not that type of singer. I’m more jazzy. A bit easy.”
After lending her vocals to several garage tracks, Walker eventually signed with Def Soul UK in the early 2000s. She initially resisted identifying with the label “soul singer.” “I’m not just ‘soul.’ I’m everything. I’m this and I’m that,” Walker remembers asserting in a conversation with Natalie “the Floacist” Stewart from R&B duo Floetry. However, she has learnt to shake off any apprehensions with the label. “Being called a soul singer is actually the biggest compliment because it means that you’re touching people’s souls… Call me a soul singer all day long!”
Her debut album Untitled was released in 2003, spawning Terri Walker signatures “Guess You Didn’t Love Me” (featuring rapper Mos Def), “Ching Ching (Lovin’ You Still)”, and the Lauryn Hill-inspired “Drawing Board”. “I called it Untitled ‘cause I didn’t know who I was… I didn’t know what I was doing,” Walker admits. But she remembers always feeling supported by the British soul artists who preceded her. “I was taken under each of these people’s wings. It’s like they were protecting me.” She highlights her particular admiration for the way Mica Paris and Beverley Knight have navigated the industry, balancing their desires for autonomy while communicating carefully and diplomatically to avoid the wrath of industry misogynoir. “I think they come from a place where they both know how to present themselves,” Walker says. “There has to be some kind of code switching.” Indeed, Knight has previously spoken about the code switching required as a Black female artist at risk of being labelled a “diva”.
Walker released her sophomore album L.O.V.E in 2005 and third album I Am in 2006 – shortly before Amy Winehouse came out with her epochal Back to Black album. As white soul and soul-adjacent artists like Winehouse, Adele, and Duffy dominated the charts, the media spoke of a British soul renaissance, much to the chagrin of Black British (soul) artists like Estelle, Omar, and Hil St Soul whose contributions to the genre had been minimised. Walker shares the frustrations of her Black British peers but explains that she nonetheless felt championed by Winehouse: “Amy used to come [to my concerts] and she’d say, ‘I love your first album,’ and she’d do interviews, and she’d be like, ‘why don’t people talk about Terri Walker and Mica Paris and Omar?’”
In the intervening period between her third and fourth albums, Walker undertook a range of projects. Staying in New York for a period, she worked with Damon Dash and hip-hop producer Ski Beatz; she later collaborated with Salaam Remi on a side project called Champagne Flutes; and released an album in 2013 as part of “Lady”, a retro-soul inclined duo with Nicole Wray. Walker waited until 2015 to release her fourth solo album Entitled – a statement of her inclusion and belonging in the music industry (listen to the feisty “Already Told Ya” and stirring “Bad Boy”). In 2019, she released the EP Breakout.
And now Walker is back with MY LOVE STORY. Produced by Mancunian duo Children of Zeus, the album is marked by its spacious, meditative grooves. “It feels so intimate, like it’s between me and you,” she says. Compared to the beltier, brashier Walker we hear on her earlier releases, her delivery here is subdued. She tells me that she pushed back on some calls in the studio to unlock the full might of her voice. “That’s not where I’m at right now,” she says. “I’m in a really calm space. I’m so at ease and I’m so in pocket with myself.”
From the reggae-inflected “I Remember”, the fizzingly sensual “I Surrender”, and the Womack & Womack-esque “You’re Not Coming Home”, we hear Walker opt for quiet confidence and self-assuredness over the boisterous personality we’ve come to expect. Walker is revelling in her newfound quietude. “I realised when doing this album, I’m grown, I’m 44 years old,” she remarks. “I ain’t gonna do nothing that I don’t wanna do.”
MY LOVE STORY is out now
