INTERVIEW: Rising star Nectar Woode on her music and upcoming new EP 'it's like i never left': "I know that I'm unique in my own way, and comparisons don’t really affect me."

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Published: 24 June 2025

British-Ghanian artist Nectar Woode is one of the UK’s most impressive young singers. Her soul-R&B-pop music has brought her much critical acclaim, including praise from none other than Elton John.

Growing up in a household that was full of jazz and highlife thanks to her saxophonist father, Woode went on to earn a Creative Musicianship Degree from London’s Institute of Contemporary Music Performance, with other notable alumni including Ed O’Brien from Radiohead and Benjamin Seargent from The Script.

in 2021 Woode’s first released song came via a collaboration with Mom Tudie and Eriksson Kaner, the jazzy-highlife-pop blend ‘Fear Leads Us On’, which was followed by another collaboration with Eriksson Kaner, the stripped back piano ballad ‘I’ll Remember’.

In 2022, Woode released her debut solo single, the dreamy soul-R&B ‘For The Best’, with her debut EP Nothing To Lose arrived in February last year. It was quickly followed by her second EP Head Above Water later the same year.

At the beginning of this year, Woode launched the next chapter of her music with the single ‘Only Happen’, a smooth, sometimes brooding, soul-pop track co-written with and produced by Australian-New Zealand artist Jordan Rakei. Earlier this month, she dropped ‘Lose’ a soulful groove of a track with a hypnotic soundscape and vocal performance that brings a distinctly summery, hazy feel.

‘Ama Said’, Woode’s third new release of 2025 dropped last week and brings in a stronger, shoulder-shimmying beat as she sings of letting go and being your true self. ‘Do whatever you feel / Live a little too much / Love whoever you love / Don’t fight so hard.’ she sings.

All three songs will feature on Woode’s third EP it’s like I never left due for release on 18 July. It is both a study and celebration of her family and dual-heritage, and was informed by her first ever trip to Ghana, her father’s homeland, where she found instant community, saying “It’s honestly like I’d been there before, I can’t explain it.”

Woode is one of those special artists whose voice and music touch something in your soul., and while you may not be able to identify what or why, it is an instant, intrinsic connection that will draw you back to her again and again. A mesmerising performer with everything it takes to become a global superstar, Women In Pop recently caught up with Woode to find out all about her music and what to expect with her new EP.

Hi Nectar! It’s so lovely to meet you, and there's just so much I want to talk about. There is a very delicious EP on its way, and we’ve had some beautiful singles so far. ‘Only Happen’ with its slinky, kind of sexy hot step and then ‘Lose’ with its groove and this beautiful looseness to it. ‘Lose’ felt like such a release of feelings, even listening to it. Was it almost like an emotional let go, snd if so, what did you find on the other side?
Oh, great question. So the process of making this EP started with ‘Only happen’ and I wrote it with Jordan [Rakei] in England, and we were talking about me having a mixed heritage and even though I've grown up with a lot of rich, West African culture from my dad who is from Ghana, I haven't been to the place that I'm half from. Then I went to Ghana, and there was so much going on, so many fleeting emotions of being like, ‘wow, I'm finally here’. The first reaction to it was to let go of everything. I was there writing with [music collective] Super Jazz, and they're super easy breezy, and we were just letting the rhythm take the song, then writing a melody over. And I've not really done that before, normally I do chords, then melody or melody then chords, but it was more rhythm, and then how does that make me feel going into the melody. So it was a different process.

I think that's lovely, and I like the way you describe doing something new as actually a release from the get go. Usually when we're doing something new, especially when you're doing something new in the public sphere as an artist, it's really daunting. Do you think a lot of that comfort came from the fact that you were coming home, even if it was a home you've never been to before?
Oh, definitely. There's the fear of ‘I'm not accepted in my homeland because I've never been there before’, butI felt the opposite. I instantly felt at home, even though I've never been there. Because I was surrounded by the culture so much growing up, it was the same. It was lovely. It didn't feel weird. So that's why I felt so comfortable to just write and let go, not think about the lyrics too much, because I sometimes overanalyse them! It was a different songwriting process

You have said this collection, it's like i never left, beautiful title by the way, is more you. You were just speaking about the rawness behind the writing process, was there a moment where that feeling actually clicked for you when you went, ‘this is actually me. This is me unedited’?
Yeah, I had to let go to get to that place though. Because when you collaborate with different people, they always bring a different side out of you. That's why collaboration is amazing, and the way Super Jazz approach a song is so different to the way I would do it, so I had to let go my ideas of writing a song to be like, ‘let's just go with how they approach it’. Because I felt so comfortable in the space, it was really easy, I can't lie. ‘Lose’ was probably the easiest song to write, because we just followed the flow.

I love that. Was that also quite weird as well, that, it came so easy? Did you have a nervous hit and thought, ‘Wait does that mean it's not good, or is it not done?’
100%! Especially that process when you've just finished the song. A song's never finished unless you call it and say ‘let's send it to get mixed’. And in that process, I was like, ‘Is it done? Do I need to add something?’ That was the final part of letting go, being like, ‘No, It is finished’. And I listened to what Super Jazz had to say, they were definitely ‘it's done’!

The way you approach music, you've got this very refreshing, seemingly effortless blend of genres. Beautiful old jazz with these modern pop elements, and then we get a little bit of early 90s R&B, all with this Ghanaian beat to it. It's this really amazing melting pot. With so many influences that seem to come into your work, how do you know when not just a track has landed, but when a track can sit within a collection of tracks, like the it’s like i never left EP?
That's a great question. A lot of people can overthink it sometimes but I like to finish writing the songs and then just jumble them all around and listen to how they feed into each other. For ‘Only Happen’, I didn't have the intention of writing an EP at that point, I was just trying to express the fact that I'm from mixed heritage and I've got a lot to say. And once I was in Ghana, I could see this EP was starting to shape up.

There's a song that's coming out in July with Super Jazz called ‘Light As A Feather’, and that's more of the soul approach. I probably had more influence in the chords there, and it’s definitely a marriage of both of our vibes. ‘Only Happen’, ‘Lose’ and ‘Light As A Feather’ makes it make sense sonically. Growing up with loads of different genres around the house, is definitely something that's influenced my taste.

Was that a big part of it? We all listen to our our family's music before we get our hands on our own, who were those beautiful vocalists or musicians that piqued your interest into making your own?
Growing up, it was a lot of different artists. My mum loves Motown, so I had a lot of Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin and the soul singers. She loved them, so she'd be blasting them. And then my dad would love a bit of highlife, mixed with straight jazz. So I was listening to some of the jazz greats, like Sarah Vaughan, but then listening to Motown, and then they loved R&B in the car - it was only R&B in the car! So then it would be Alicia Keys, that kind of vibe going. So I always had a melting pot of world music - jazz, soul, R &B.

But then I took Amy Winehouse in my own way. I remember being 15 or 16, Spotify was just being a thing and I downloaded all of her albums and just listened to them from start to finish. She was definitely an influence, she influenced my jazz, soul, R&B, all in one, and she's super English as well.

It’s a beautiful collection. Speaking of outstanding women, I always hate comparison, but you have had some exceptional shout outs. You’ve been called the new Lauryn Hill, and Elton John compared you to Nina Simone.
It’s crazy! It's so nice to have some support from Elton John, that's wild. I still can't believe it, to be honest,

How do you hold that? It must be both beautiful and scary I imagine for artists, when they say ‘you're the next this, or you're the next that’, and I imagine it could make you feel you are being placed in a very particular box.
I feel like coming up in the industry, I've definitely had that a lot. But I’ve now come to the conclusion that you know what? You can say what you think I am, but I know that I'm unique in my own way, and comparisons don’t really affect me, because I know they're drawing it sonically from somewhere. So when Elton said Nina Simone, I was like, I love Nina Simone! I know objectively, it might be a broad one, but this is a great compliment, especially from Elton John, , he's probably heard Nina Simone in real life, so that was a huge compliment.

I take them in my stride, and I think these ones are more meaningful than what I call the lazy comparisons of my image. I'd rather be compared to my music, so I'll take it.

Speaking of incredible jazz, you have been building spaces through Soho Radio’s Women In Jazz show that you host. You've been building spaces for voices that aren't always getting the spotlight, which is a hard sphere anyway, in jazz, but it's an extra narrow sphere to get a spotlight on a woman. What have you learned about that community, and possibly even your power as an artist to shine a light on these incredible performers that maybe wouldn’t get that attention otherwise?
I think in London especially, we've got a big jazz scene. It's amazing, a lot of collaborations going on. But then growing up as a female musician, you don't feel comfortable going in those spaces, because there's not that many female musicians. It's definitely changing now, but when I first moved to London, I had no confidence to go up and play guitar in a jam, it would just be singing. But then I'd meet a few female instrumentalists, and we all had the same thing. So when I was doing Women In Jazz, I just pulled from my network of people I’d met in real life at jams, online on Instagram, friends of a friend, and I just wanted to get them on and talk about their experience. And my whole thing is, how did you get into like, music now? I don't like the comparison of, ‘oh, I just met a manager and they helped me’. I wanted to be where were you at school? Who was your comparison? How did you find the motivation to get to where you are? I like asking that question because I'm intrigued, because I'm a fan of all of their work.

That then creates collaboration, writing with more female artists and musicians. We just need to build more of a collective community, which is happening so much more. I'm meeting more people that are coming out of Guildhall and Trinity [Colleges], and they're more confident, even though they're the only female person studying there, they're still more confident because they're meeting people. I would love to just keep that conversation going to be honest.

You have had an exceptional year, and you've been churning out music, you've been on stage with the Teskey Brothers, praised by Elton John, you have this beautiful EP coming to us, you went back home to Ghana.. Has anything about this last year felt particularly full circle or life changing for you?
I've recently turned 26 and I was reflecting on 25 and that whole year was just a whole thing from start to finish. A crazy whirlwind moment. I've spent many years being like, ‘Hey, look at me. I write songs!’ I started off doing R&B covers in London just to get money, and then doing jams and all that stuff trying to get noticed, and now it's all clicked in the last year. People were starting to put two and two together with me, even though I'm doing the same thing. But it's kind of nice to get the recognition. It's cool.

Lastly, not that we're taken away from all the stuff that you've done, but I'm curious, if you know, what is the next rabbit hole of sound you've already started peeking into?
So I'm currently writing, I'm away writing with my favourite producers, and I've realised that highlife music and a bit of Brazilian music have a nice connect. That's all gonna say! I'm a big fan of consuming different kinds of genres but l I'll never let go of my soul jazz chords that I use. It's definitely exploring a different space, still with my warm chords. So there's songs, there's definitely some songs coming.

it’s like i never left will be released on 18 July via Sony Music Australia. You can pre-order and pre-save now.
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