Jae Stephens debut album AUDACITY takes shape with two revealing new singles

Two singles released in quick succession tell you quite a lot about what to expect from the Jae Stephens debut album AUDACITY, due on 25 September via Def Jam Recordings. The pair, ‘I Miss The City’ and ‘Gymnastics’, were unveiled on Apple Music’s Zane Lowe and, taken together, they sketch out a record confident enough to hold contradiction: longing and deflection, vulnerability and comic self-awareness, sitting side by side without apology.

On ‘I Miss The City’, produced by MNEK, Stephens finds herself narrating the slow suffocation of a relationship that has traded city freedom for domestic stasis. The lyric is precise about the feeling: ‘I miss the city when it’s late at night / Sitting pretty, I should be outside / I’m sick of feeling like my hands are tied / Baby, all I do / Is pretend that this is for me.’ The production keeps things deceptively light, which is clearly the point. Stephens described it as ‘the sweet spot of the album,’ explaining that ‘the instrumental feels light-hearted and endearing while the lyrics paint a darker picture of a bored city girl desperate for freedom from the mundane. Duality!’

The approach recalls a lineage of writers who have understood that a buoyant arrangement can carry a bruising confession further than a minor key ever could. Think Carole King’s Tapestry-era warmth wrapped around something that quietly stings. MNEK, whose production instincts consistently lean into that territory, is well suited to it.

Gymnastics and the art of the backhanded apology

‘Gymnastics’, produced by Dallas Caton, operates on entirely different emotional logic. Where ‘I Miss The City’ aches, ‘Gymnastics’ pirouettes. The lyric, ‘Can’t trap me, baby, watch me do gymnastics / Thought he had me, then I hit him with a backflip / One plus one equals run, it’s mathematics / Leave them easy, yeah, I’ve had a lot of practice,’ is the kind of songwriting that earns its wordplay through specificity rather than mere cleverness. Stephens described it as ‘the part of the album where I finally say the quiet part out loud: maybe I’m the problem! Rather than apologising for my avoidant tendencies, I own them unapologetically and deliver my best backhanded apology in true melodramatic fashion.’

Both tracks follow the recently released ‘Sugar Trap’, which will also appear on AUDACITY. The album is, in fact, 11 tracks on digital platforms, with one additional song reserved exclusively for the vinyl edition, according to uDiscover Music. That kind of considered format distinction suggests a project being handled with some deliberateness.

Jae Stephens debut album backed by a UK and European tour with Khalid

The release has been given further context by the announcement of a UK and European tour this autumn, on which Stephens will support Khalid, as confirmed by The Line of Best Fit. For an artist releasing a debut album, it is a substantial platform, placing her in front of audiences already accustomed to emotionally candid, polished pop-R&B.

The visual world of AUDACITY has also been given careful attention. According to uDiscover Music, creative director Cass Meyers, known for work with SZA and Megan Thee Stallion, helped shape Auda City, an imagined setting that links the record’s music and visuals into a coherent conceptual space. The name itself does the work neatly, collapsing the album title into a place, a frame of mind, a way of carrying yourself.

AUDACITY arrives after a prolific run of EPs: Sellout (2024), Sellout II and Total Sellout (both 2025). In a 2025 interview with Clash, Stephens reflected on how that pace changed her relationship to releasing music. ‘I’ve had three babies this year, back to back to back. It was mentally a lot just to purge all that, figure out the rollout, the release, how people respond,’ she said. ‘It’s a whole process. I used to just be like, I like this song, I’ll put it out. I didn’t even know what streaming numbers were. Now it’s like night and day.’

AUDACITY arrives on 25 September, with the vinyl edition carrying that one additional track for those who want the full picture.