Nadine Shah has revealed that she’s already at work on her new album – inspired by ‘being a female in her 30s’. Watch our video interview with Shah above.

Shah was speaking to NME on the red carpet of last night’s Mercury Music Prize, where she was nominated (and bookies’ favourite) for her acclaimed album ‘Holiday Destination’. While the record only dropped last year, Shah is already in the process of writing her fourth album.

“I’m 32, my female friends are a similar age and getting older,” Shah told NME of her current inspiration towards her next record. “Just the things that come along with that. I recently had an operation for something to do with that. Lots of women I know are having different things to do with fertility. I’m mainly speaking about being a 30-something-year-old woman.”

She continued: “I’m working on [the album] now. I constantly work because it’s my full time job and if I didn’t, I’d watch way too much daytime telly. I already do, I watch way too much. I don’t know when I’d release it – possibly next year.”

Asked who she wanted most to win the Prize, Shah gave a shout out to Lily Allen.

“It’s been a long time since a woman won and Lily is saying things that a lot of people aren’t as a woman, as a mother and speaking about what it means to be a good mother or what it means to be a bad mother and to be judged all of the time. I think it’s really important that somebody is writing songs like that because we don’t have that of role models who are being so candid and so honest and blunt about it…”‘

Asked if she might collaborate with Lily, Shah coyly replied: “Maybe, I’ll give her a shout about it later on. She’s amazing.”

Allen echoed similar sentiments in praise of Shah.

“I think that there is a bit of a cultural cold war thing going on at the moment…capitalism is [the] main enemy,” she said. “It should be arts and culture and it feels like politics has never been in such a drastic state as it is in this country and America, lots of the Western world hasn’t been as bad as it is now for a long time.”

Allen added: “I don’t know where The Clash is and I don’t know where The Sex Pistols are…but [Shah] is doing it.”

Nadine Shah tour dates and tickets

Shah is due to tour the UK in December.


2 – Manchester – Gorilla
3 – Bristol – SWX
4 – London – Heaven
5 – Brighton – Concorde 2