Lisa Mishra says there are two reasons why her debut album is called Sorry, I’m Late. First and foremost, it’s an apology to fans who’ve been waiting for years for the singer-songwriter—who’s been uploading videos of her performances to the internet since 2007—to release a full-length project. Secondly, she notes, it’s an expression of remorse for her habitual tardiness. “Everyone on my team laughs and says it’s so apt [because] I’m never punctual,” she tells Apple Music. “It’s gotten worse since I moved to India.” Mishra, who shot to fame with her reprise version of “Tareefan” from the 2018 Hindi film Veere Di Wedding, has a much more justifiable explanation for the delay in delivering her debut LP. She attributes it to needing “time to learn the landscape of the Indian music industry” after she moved from Chicago, where she was raised, to Mumbai in 2018. “Because I came in through the Bollywood fold,” she says, “it was different here because there was a music director, a lyricist and all these other people. I grew into that space but it didn’t really feel like me.” Though she’d always intended to make an album, Mishra says she scared herself out of doing it on numerous occasions. That changed, however, when she met Jay Mehta, the managing director of Warner Music India, who asked her what her story was and why she’d not told it yet. “I was very honest with him,” she says. “I was like, ‘I don’t know how to.’” Mehta told her he would set her to work with the label’s head of A&R, Abhishek Patil, and a group of songwriters, composers and producers, including Abhijay Sharma, Charan, Riz Shain, Soham Mukherji and Karan Kanchan. And then, he said: “We’ll see where we go from there.” Five months later, the album was ready, with Mishra having composed every track and co-written six out of the seven songs (the record closes with an eighth track, an alternative version of “Aadat”). “I didn’t know I had so many stories and so many melodies in me,” says Mishra, whose duet-heavy back catalogue includes collaborations with artists ranging from Badshah and Prateek Kuhad to Vishal Mishra and Zaeden. While the process enabled her to determine a distinct R&B-meets-pop sound, she was certain from the start that she didn’t want to crowd the collection with guest vocalists. She says: “I couldn’t let it be distracted by heavy features because the point is that this is about me.” Mishra was also determined that she wanted to convey women’s experiences in multidimensional ways. “A lot of times,” she says, “we’re relegated to writing only about love and heartbreak. I said to myself: ‘What is stopping me from [writing from the perspective of] being a jealous ex, or angry that something didn’t work out my way, or flexing that I have the pick of being with whoever I want to be with?’” Here, she tells Apple Music about the making of the album by taking us through it, track by track. “Lonely” “Every song on this album is directly about my life. ‘Lonely’, for example, [was inspired by the fact that] I don’t have my family here [in India]. I’ve lived by myself for all these years and figured out this city and industry without this fundamental pillar. The first verse opens with a general discussion about loneliness and the second verse [imagines] what it would feel like if I had a lover, in this sort of dream state. I wanted the soundscape to be heavy because the emotion is heavy—but I wanted the melody to contrast that and be a little more lilting and easy.” “Love Song” “This is my favourite song on the album. It’s very influenced by the type of production and songwriting I love. It’s in the Bryson Tiller and Kehlani zone of American R&B. Kehlani is an idol of mine and I wanted it to have that sexiness and that push and pull [you hear in her songs]. The production on this has so much tension and release. It could have been a solo track, but Charan’s voice has such a rich texture and he has such an incredible range, I couldn’t not have him on it.” “Roshni” “This is my redemption track [for when] everything has gone to shit but you have to find the light and the way through. It’s very message-orientated, which is something I didn’t see myself doing. I knew we needed a song on this project that was drum ’n’ bass because I love it. I also knew that, for a song like this, I could write the melody but it needed a very strong lyrical element to do justice to the subject. Kunaal [Vermaa] came in and nailed it. He had all the lyrics within an hour. And Yashraj is someone I’ve always wanted on a song. The crazy thing is that he had written the first few lines a week before [we brought him into the studio]. He was like, ‘You wouldn’t believe it, but I’ve just started writing a song with the word ‘roshni’ in it, which is about the exact same thing.’ It really felt like divine timing.” “Saza” “SZA’s my favourite artist. I really look up to her as a songwriter. She bookended her first album, Ctrl, with these two really beautiful, very bare acoustic tracks: ‘Supermodel’ and ‘20 Something’. They’re such vulnerable songs. I wanted to give people that feeling but also, this is what I’m known for. I grew up on my fans’ screens for 11 to 12 years, playing guitar in my bedroom. They only had my voice and a guitar for over a decade. The OG fans from then, this is what they hold on to, so I had to do right by my audience. I told Charan to think about relationships that you’ve been in where you taught a very specific thing to your partner and, afterwards, when you see them do that special thing with someone else, it crushes you. He’s happily married and in a very healthy relationship—but the words just poured out of him.” “Nasha” “On the first day [of working on the album], I walked into the room and wrote the hook for ‘Nasha’ within 20 minutes. I think it was just that feeling of empowerment I had from the head of this major label saying: ‘You don’t see it but I do, so go in and claim your space.’ It was that little push I needed. The hook and the first verse were done in a day but, for whatever reason, for four months we were not able to figure out the second half. I had rotated all these ideas, like maybe we should do a feature with a rapper because originally the second half was a drill beat, but once we pulled that out, I felt very liberated. I played ‘Nasha’ to [singer-songwriter and composer] bebhumika and said: ‘Can you pop in the booth and do whatever melodies come to mind?’ She riffed off on some stuff and I was like, ‘Great—I’m going to take what you did and music-direct you Bollywood-style to make a song out of it.’ I felt like everything was right with the world again because we were so confused about where the track would go until she stepped in.” “Aadat” “‘Aadat’ is about being unable to move on. It’s where you’re kind of the villain in this story where the other person has moved on and is happy but you’re not able to let go of them and it just makes you angry. You’re like, ‘How dare you move on first?’ And you weren’t even mad about it before, but now you’ve run into them and that’s the only thing you can think about. I have been that person so many times. It was never meant to be a duet, but I wanted bebhumika to help with the songwriting. I loved what she was doing and wouldn’t have done justice to the sauce she brought.” “Dil Yeh Mera” “I’m India’s biggest fan of [singer-producer duo] RANJ x Clifr [who worked on this track]. When their first EP came out [in 2021], I remember being obsessed with how phenomenal RANJ is. We had so many ideas in the sessions we did but I liked this one the best because the message is so in your face—but I’ve sung it so sweetly that it intentionally takes you by surprise. It’s like, I’m so over you, watch me not give a shit about you. I wanted this to be a girl anthem. My vision for this song is to see a female audience sing it with me about the exes they couldn’t care less about.” “Aadat (Alt)” “I felt ‘Aadat’ could [also] be done in a slower, more bare-bones space because although there’s not so much going on, the sounds envelop you. I wondered how the song would sound stripped back and conveyed less tightly in the melody—what if it was a little looser and even more heartbroken? What if now I get to convince you that this addiction [to the person the song is about] has absolutely devastated me? I really wanted the alternative version in there because one [version] is this racy, uptempo thing and on the other, [I’m completely] gutted.”