Laura Mvula has admitted her ego was extremely bruised after she was dropped by her label.
The 34-year-old singer doubted whether she would release a new record after she found out she had been dropped by Sony’s RCA Victor label via email in 2017.
Laura was forwarded the correspondence, which was seven lines long, but her former manager had been told in person that her five-album deal was being terminated.
And the ‘Got Me’ singer has admitted she found it really hard to “make sense of and to come back from”.
In an interview with Music Week magazine, she reflected: “I was very much aware that I wasn’t charting. It’s not like my albums were hitting the Top 10 and staying there.
“It was pretty intense. It was a very brief note saying that they were so grateful, but this was the end of the road. It’s a hard thing to make sense of and to come back from.”
The music star added that she “still feel[s] this kind of resentment. And, you know, my ego suffered a lot.”
Laura has since signed to Atlantic Records and releases her new album Pink Noise on July 2, an upbeat and uplifting collection of 80s disco-influenced pop trailed by singles ‘Church Girl’, ‘Safe Passage’ and ‘Got Me’, the latter of which recently got the Krystal Klear remix treatment.
Speaking in March 2017 about her abrupt exit from Sony, Laura admitted it felt “so cold and cruel” and it was a “huge wake up call”.
She said: “I didn’t see anyone, I didn’t hear anybody’s voice. I just read words. It felt so cold and cruel.
“Not even the fact I was dropped, the way that the whole thing happened. To be treated like that doesn’t feel quite just.
“First I was confused, I didn’t understand. I was always told I was such a valued part of what Sony had become today – I was an artist who was taking risks and doing things that fresh and genuinely new – I believed them.
“I guess in my head I always thought there would be a conversation, a renegotiation, but never kinda, ‘It’s over’. It’s been a huge wake up call.”