The title of La Roux’s fourth album, Old Flames, came to her when she stared out of the window of her South London home and saw her newly purchased Jeep. “I love the Pacific Northwest region of America, and seeing the Jeep made me think of that outdoor lifestyle and campfires in the woods,” the singer, songwriter, and producer, whose real name is Elly Jackson, tells Apple Music. The phrase “old flames” also chimed with the emotional arc of the album, which follows Jackson as she works through feelings of “turbulence” and “confusion” to emerge from what she describes as a prolonged “funk.” Some of these songs deal with the devastating breakdown of a long-term relationship, while others pull from her “stereotypically bad” experience in the music industry. “I couldn’t trust anyone for a long time, so I really developed this ‘just leave me alone’ reflex,” she recalls. La Roux’s eponymous 2009 debut album, which Jackson made with producer Ben Langmaid, was a Grammy-winning smash that spawned the era-defining synth-pop hits “In for the Kill” and “Bulletproof.” After parting ways with Langmaid to become a solo artist, she made 2014’s Trouble in Paradise, which incorporated sunnier disco and dancehall textures, then 2020’s equally groove-driven Supervision, which Jackson now calls a “survival record” because of how quickly it was made. Old Flames—a warm, melodic collection inspired by the 1990s R&B of Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, and SWV—is a return to gleaming La Roux brilliance. And here, Jackson takes us through, it track by track. “Old Flames (Intro)” “I’ve never made an album with an intro before, but I was thinking about how some of my favorite hip-hop records are presented with skits, intros, and interludes. I love that element of records such as The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill because it really helps me to connect with them as a body of work. So I went to the piano and the album title, which I already had, kind of became a song very easily. I knew what I wanted to achieve with this song’s musical mood, which is kind of inspired by All Saints’ ‘Pure Shores.’” “Cabin Fever” “I’ve always wanted to sample ‘Nomalizo’ by [South African singer] Letta Mbulu, so I tried a few ideas with [producer] LiTek. We changed one chord of the sample, and then I sang the melody to ‘Cabin Fever’ over it, because I wanted the song to veer off in a slightly different direction. The other sample, believe it or not, is from Peloton instructor Jenn Sherman. There’s a part in one of her classes where she says: ‘Everyone’s invited, but you don’t belong here.’ She meant it as a joke, but I was like, ‘That’s actually so deep!’ It speaks to how we feel as humans when it seems like we’re left out of a world that everyone else understands. It’s a dark thought that sums up what ‘Cabin Fever’ is about.” “Lose Myself” “I flew to Spain to record some dub stuff with [producer] Youth that wasn’t meant for my album. When I got there, he’d just finished a session with The View, and Kyle [Falconer, the band’s lead singer] asked if I’d write with them. I loved this one section that reminded me of Michael Jackson’s ad-libs on ‘Earth Song.’ So I was like, ‘Do you give me permission to take this [section] and completely change it?’ It took me a long time to get ‘Lose Myself’ sounding right, but finally I got to the right musical reference: ‘Scream’ by Michael and Janet Jackson. When I wrote the lyrics, they didn’t mean that much to me. But now I can hear that they’re my subconscious begging me to stop smoking weed.” “Falling” “As we were mixing the album, I realized I wanted to add another song because I was worried the opening stretch could almost be too intense. I’d had this music [in a demo] for two years, and when I came home and played it, my girlfriend was like, ‘That’s the track, you should add it to the record.’ I wrote the lyrics the next day on the way to an acupuncture appointment, and it feels like a really important piece of the puzzle. Before ‘Falling,’ I’d written about everything that led to the breakup, but I hadn’t actually written ‘the breakup song.’ The lyrics came out very fast because I obviously needed to say them.” “To Make Our Love” “This song’s chorus is based on a sped-up sample from ‘Am I Losing You Forever?’ by 1980s girl band Mai Tai. I love how Chaka Khan’s ‘Through the Fire’ sounds when it’s sampled [on Kanye West’s ‘Through the Wire’], but it’s really hard to find other soulful-sounding samples that are slow enough to be sped up. Most of them have been used already! And then one day, when I was out on a run, ‘Am I Losing You Forever?’ just happened to come on shuffle. The lyric ‘to make our love feel like more than a passing phase’ encapsulates everything I was feeling at the time that I couldn’t put into words.” “Your Lover” “This song is me fantasizing about somebody coming onto me—it’s where the fantasy-meets-delusion section of the album begins! It’s not completely and utterly made up; it came from one of those scenarios where you’ve had an unspoken flirtation with somebody for a very long time, but you never actually go there. There’s something so palpable in that energy [of an attraction] that never gets resolved or exorcised. I think everybody can relate to that feeling of teetering on the edge, because we’ve all felt it at least once.” “Final Fantasy” “This song is like part two of ‘Your Lover.’ I’m riffing on the same situation, but now I’m no longer questioning whether there are feelings. Now, I’m going to a party with that person and thinking, ‘Fuck it, let’s just go there.’ Originally, I made a version of this song with much more trap- and hip-hop-influenced production, but that’s not what the album ended up becoming. But, because I knew ‘Final Fantasy’ had such a strong hook, I reworked it musically so that it would fit onto this body of work.” “Night Vision” “With this song, I wanted to channel the energy of ‘Heartbreaker’ by Mariah Carey and JAŸ-Z. The demo featured a rap by The Game, but ultimately, it just didn’t feel right musically. But, while I was making the track, I realized that the verse notes were too high for me to sing comfortably, so I pitched down my vocal hook to try the song in a different key. It was a happy accident that makes this track feel more like a duet [between two different registers of my voice], which is the whole feeling I wanted in the first place.” “I Just Keep Crying” “I really took time to get the balance of emotions right on this song. I wanted the chorus to feel epic and sort of euphoric, but also really sad at the same time. It’s about the frustration you feel when you’re trying to fix a relationship, but the other person just won’t wake up. It’s like you’re on opposite sides of a pane of glass, so you can never communicate properly. And in your heart, of course, you know there’s only one way things are going to end up.” “Babyline” “To be honest, the title ‘Babyline’ didn’t mean anything at first. Sometimes, when you make a backing track, you give it a name before you’ve written the lyrics. There was something about the keyboard line that felt childlike and innocent, but also kind of cheeky, so I named it ‘Babyline.’ As I wrote the lyrics, I realized this song is about coming back to yourself. So suddenly, ‘Babyline’ started to have that meaning: it’s about coming back to the person you were at birth, before all the tough stuff that life throws your way. I’ve ended up in a great place, so it felt important to sequence this lighter-sounding track at the end.” “Old Flames” “I’ve never done a reprise before, but I remember that George Michael did a good reprise [on his 1990 album Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1]. I wrote the intro version of ‘Old Flames’ first, but then my best friend said, ‘You have to write a complete song to this [musical idea]. You can’t just give people the intro.’ Writing the full version was on my to-do list for a long time, but when I finally sat down to write it, everything came out pretty fast. I knew exactly what I wanted to say at the end of the album, and I knew exactly the energy this song needed.”