Hope Tala Unveils Latest Single 'Jumping the Gun' & Announces Her Debut Album 'Hope Handwritten'
HOPE TALA UNVEILS HER LATEST SINGLE
“JUMPING THE GUN”
& ANNOUNCES HER DEBUT ALBUM 'HOPE HANDWRITTEN’ SCHEDULED TO LAND ON 28th FEBRUARY
Today - 17th October, rising star Hope Tala continues her upward trajectory with the release of brand new single ‘Jumping the Gun’. Alongside this release, Hope makes the highly-anticipated announcement of her debut album, ‘Hope Handwritten’, which will release digitally on February 28th via PMR Records. News on a physical release to follow in the next month.
Over the past few months, Hope has been on a spectacular rise building anticipation for her debut album. With ‘Jumping the Gun’ now serving as the fifth release from the forthcoming project, she continues to gain momentum, showing no signs of slowing down
Speaking on the making of ‘Jumping the Gun’, Hope shares; “It’s a funny coincidence that one of the percussion elements in this song is a clicking pen. I didn’t realise the link between this and the album title - Hope Handwritten - for some time. ‘Jumping the Gun’ is one of the first songs I wrote for the album and is one of only two that made it from the very first draft I wrote in 2021 onto the final track list - I never once considered letting it go.”
‘Jumping the Gun’ follows a string of successful singles, including ‘I Can’t Even Cry’, ‘Bad Love God’, ‘Thank Goodness’, and most recently ‘Shiver’. Each of these tracks have garnered widespread acclaim, with fans and critics praising Hope’s ability to seamlessly fuse diverse musical influences while maintaining her unmistakable sound. The new single continues that trend, pairing a punchy R&B beat with Hope’s golden, ethereal vocals - a combination that perfectly displays her innovative approach to music.
In addition to the single’s release, Hope Tala will also perform a sold-out headline show at London’s O2 Academy Islington tonight, as part of The Mini Tour. Kicking off tonight in London, the tour will give fans a taste of Hope’s vibrant, genre-blurring style, blending elements of soul, bossa nova, and pop to create her signature sound. Tonight’s show promises to be a true celebration of her journey, creativity, and this new chapter in music.
As Hope gears up for the release of her debut album in 2025, excitement continues to build around her rising profile. With a series of successful releases and a sold-out tour, this next chapter in her career is set to be a monumental one, cementing her status as a breakout artist to watch.
After revealing the title of her debut album, Hope shares what it means to her; “The title contains multiple meanings; I write most of my lyrics by hand in a notebook, hence ‘handwritten’, and I’ve put so much of my heart and soul into this music, which is where the self-titled element came from - but it also communicates what I believe is the crux of the record, which is the struggle to hold on to the feeling of hope.”
Clash - “New single ‘Shiver’ is aptly titled – a feast of emotion, it's gripping from first note to last. Retaining the beguiling innocence of her earlier work, the song revels in maturity, with Hope’s incisive vocal framing her experiences perfectly.”
More on Hope Tala…
Hope Tala is emerging from her very own cultural reset. Making her mark crafting an intimate musical language that feels equal parts romantic and philosophical, the 26-year-old West Londoner, now based between the capital and LA, has made her return to the scene with the brooding single ‘I Can’t Even Cry’ as her first release since 2022 and as a newly independent artist for the first time since signing to Universal in 2020. “I’ve really had the opportunity to grow as an artist and a human being and have certain experiences that I wouldn't have been able to catalogue [back then],” she says. The Hope of today is in the midst of a coming of age that also feels like a homecoming, something explored in technicolour on her upcoming project. As she enters this thrilling next stage of her career, seamlessly weaving together organic, live musical textures and musings on heartbreak, newfound love, ancestry, introspection, humanity and community.
Self-taught on the guitar aged 14, raised on the silken tones of Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu and D’Angelo and the razor-sharp words of Maya Angelou, Zadie Smith, Sylvia Plath and Toni Morrison, her own balmy poetic soundscapes have already gained her fans in everyone from Dazed and Billboard to Barack Obama through to the HBO team behind the new gen Gossip Girls remake. Yet with all the transformation and growth of the last few years for the British-Jamaican songwriter, the warm, glowing heart and whimsy of Hope’s signature still remains intact - a place to escape to and feel both soothed and seen. “The most powerful thing that I feel when I listen to music that I love is that it’s somewhere I want to be, I want to live in it,” she says. Her own utopia would be one of perpetual summer, no police, no prisons and free education, she jokes. “But I would love people to see themselves or something they recognise in it, and also to want to come back to it and live in it in that way too.”
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