Asha Jefferies – Backwards Baby

Australian songwriter Asha Jefferies returns with “Backwards Baby”, her first new material of 2026 and a signal that the next chapter after her 2024 debut Ego Ride is taking shape. The single was recorded in London and co-produced by Jefferies and Tom Iansek, known for his work with Big Scary and Maple Glider. The arrangement apparently went through several versions before landing: Jefferies has called it “a beautiful musical puzzle”, one that only resolved itself once she was working in London.

The song sits on a digital drum pulse and a bed of synths, Jefferies’ voice doing the emotional work above a production that stays controlled rather than reaching for scale. The subject is a relationship with someone who couldn’t stop looking backwards: a partner whose attachment to the past left her waiting, silencing her needs in the process. She arrived at the title line, and the song, from the outside looking in, having realised the pattern wasn’t hers to fix. The arrangement mirrors that: it holds its patience, never pushes for the liberating moment, and the chorus lands as resignation rather than release.

She puts it plainly: “sometimes the way people treat you has nothing to do with you”. The song earns that line. I’m here for wherever this next step leads.