{"id":2285749,"date":"2026-02-17T14:42:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T14:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2285749"},"modified":"2026-02-17T14:42:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T14:42:21","slug":"labi-siffre-announces-new-album-gives-rare-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/labi-siffre-announces-new-album-gives-rare-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Labi Siffre Announces New Album, Gives Rare Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Labi Siffre, a UK folk musician influenced by soul and jazz, has had a fascinating career. Over the decades, Siffre has only intermittently been active \u2014 a cluster of solo albums in the early &#8217;70s, a few more in the &#8217;80s and &#8217;90s. A few of Siffre&#8217;s songs have been UK hits, like &#8220;<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3324G5VhZ_s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">It Must Be Love<\/a>,&#8221; which reached the top 20 in 1972 and later became a hit for Madness, or like the anti-apartheid protest song &#8220;<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7B-4Lsrx8IA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">(Something Inside) So Strong<\/a>,&#8221; which reached #4 in 1987. Dr. Dre sampled Siffre&#8217;s &#8220;<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xKISdd2mKzU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">I Got The&#8230;<\/a>&#8221; on Eminem&#8217;s &#8220;My Name Is,&#8221; and Kanye West sampled his &#8220;<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hrFdHVqgjYQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">My Song<\/a>&#8221; on &#8220;I Wonder.&#8221; Siffre is now 80, and he&#8217;s back in the public eye, thanks in part to TikTok. He&#8217;s also getting ready to release his first album in more than a quarter century.<\/p>\n<p>As with any such story, it&#8217;s hard to pinpoint exactly how Gen Z discovered Labi Siffre, though it could&#8217;ve had something to do with his 1972 UK hit &#8220;<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=o75BbNp8dLU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying<\/a>&#8221; appearing in <em>The Holdovers<\/em> a couple of years ago. In 2024, Miley Cyrus sang that song at LA&#8217;s Chateau Marmont, and mxmtoon <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/shorts\/sD1eKZyrxGY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">covered it<\/a> for Track Star. That same year, someone launched official YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok channels for Siffre&#8217;s music, and new interviews and restored videos show up on those platforms. In 2025, &#8220;Cannock Chase&#8221; was featured in the acclaimed film <em>Sentimental Value<\/em> while &#8220;Bless The Telephone&#8221; turned up in <em>Hacks<\/em> and a Bumble campaign. Last fall also saw the release of a new Siffre <em>Best Of<\/em> collection and on this upcoming Record Store Day UK there will be a <em>Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying<\/em> <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.recordstoreday.co.uk\/record\/recnnzIBRKGHNtNRG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">limited reissue<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Today, Labi Siffre announced <em>Far Away<\/em>, his first new album in 28 years. In recent years, Siffre hasn&#8217;t been completely inactive; he released a single called &#8220;(Love Is Love Is Love) Why Isn&#8217;t Love Enough?&#8221; in 2020. Still, this feels like a major return. We don&#8217;t have a release date or album details yet, but Siffre has shared a new single called &#8220;Far Away.&#8221; It&#8217;s a grand, soothing piano ballad that was first previewed in the 2022 BBC documentary <em>Labi Siffre: This Is My Song<\/em>. His voice sounds frankly incredible. Check out the song&#8217;s Luke McMahon-directed video below.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"jeg_video_container jeg_video_content\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Labi Siffre - Far Away (Official Music Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1Ura6nikYYY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>As part of the album rollout, Labi Siffre also did a rare live performance in the BBC Radio 2 Piano room, with the BBC Radio Orchestra backing him up. (As it happens, Celeste covered his song &#8220;Bless This Telephone&#8221; in her own Piano Room session last year.) At least <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.setlist.fm\/setlists\/labi-siffre-4bd4b3ee.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">according to Setlist.fm<\/a>, Siffre almost never performs life. That must be a personal decision, since he certainly <em>can<\/em> do it. In that session, Siffre sang his new single &#8220;Far Away&#8221; and his old one &#8220;My Song,&#8221; and he also covered the Four Tops&#8217; classic &#8220;Baby I Need Your Loving.&#8221; Watch below.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"jeg_video_container jeg_video_content\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Labi Siffre - Far Away ft. BBC Concert Orchestra (Radio 2 Piano Room)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/G4itw5a8Yo4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"jeg_video_container jeg_video_content\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Labi Siffre - My Song ft. BBC Concert Orchestra (Radio 2 Piano Room)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_Q4_8UB5mgA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"jeg_video_container jeg_video_content\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Labi Siffre - Baby I Need Your Loving (Four Tops cover) in the Radio 2 Piano Room\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/futKtLRquiU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source stereogum.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Labi Siffre, a UK folk musician influenced by soul and jazz, has had a fascinating career. Over the decades, Siffre has only intermittently been active \u2014 a cluster of solo albums in the early &#8217;70s, a few more in the &#8217;80s and &#8217;90s. A few of Siffre&#8217;s songs have been UK hits, like &#8220;It Must [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2285750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2285749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Labi-Siffre-Announces-New-Album-Gives-Rare-Performance.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2285749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2285749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2285749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2285751,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2285749\/revisions\/2285751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2285750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2285749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2285749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2285749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}