One of the UK’s most underrated, quietly influential singer-songwriters is on the comeback trail.
Now 80 years old, Labi Siffre has announced that his first album in 27 years is in the pipeline. Unfinished Business is arriving “later this year”, but its lead single, Far Away, is out now. In fact, Siffre has just performed the track in BBC Radio 2's Piano Room.
What do you mean who is Labi Siffre? Even if you don’t recognise the name, you will surely know his three most famous songs. He is the writer of one of Madness’s most beloved hits, It Must Be Love, and indeed made a cameo appearance in its video when they took it into the UK Top 5 at the end of 1981.
But his biggest hit is the anti-apartheid anthem (Something Inside) So Strong, which went Top 5 in spring 1987 and has since turned up on TV talent shows innumerable times.
And his other signature track? Well, that’s I Got The.., the opening track on his 1975 album Remember My Song, which was sampled on Eminem’s My Name Is, giving Siffre his first credit on a Number One single.
In the last few years there has been a revival of interest in this most singular of singer-songwriters. Samples of his work have been used by Dr Dre, Jay Z, Kanye West and Miguel to name but four. Then, bizarrely, his 1971 single Bless the Telephone went viral via TikTok, leading to over 52 million streams. In amongst this he was also honoured with a BBC Imagine documentary in 2022, which was presented by the late Alan Yentob.
Last year, he briefly made the news when the British hard-right figurehead Stephen Yaxley-Lennon aka ‘Tommy Robinson’ used (Something Inside) So Strong at a rally. Siffre issued a swift cease-and-desist order, saying: "Anybody who knows me... will know the joke of them using the work of a positive atheist, homosexual black artist as apparently representative of their movement.”
There’s no confirmed release date yet for Unfinished Business, though before then, in April, one of his classic albums, 1972’s Crying Laughing Loving Lying, is to be given a double album reissue on Record Store Day.
