How I wrote ‘Slow’ by Rumer

Rumer: “The important thing is to get the soul of the song, and everything else is craft”

Step inside the creation of Sarah Joyce’s breakout hit – a dreamy, soulful reflection of infatuation and unfiltered twentysomething creativity

Few debut albums arrive with the kind of quiet authority that Rumer’s Seasons Of My Soul carried in 2010. A slow-burning success, it climbed to No 3 on the UK Albums Chart, went multi-platinum, and introduced a songwriter whose timeless sensibility felt at odds with the era. Drawing comparisons to Karen Carpenter and Dusty Springfield, Rumer’s rich, emotive voice and understated songwriting struck a deep chord, with lead single Slow becoming one of the defining songs of that year.

But behind that apparent overnight success was a far longer journey. Before the accolades, the MOJO Awards win, and two BRIT Awards nominations, Rumer – born Sarah Joyce – had spent years honing her craft on London’s open mic circuit, writing songs shaped as much by instinct as by perseverance. Her music, blending folk, soul, and classic pop influences, would later lead to collaborations with icons such as Burt Bacharach and shared stages with the likes of Elton John, Daryl Hall and Jools Holland.

Here, she reflects on the deeply personal and intuitive process behind Slow – a song born from fleeting emotions, simple chords, and a period of intense creative exploration…

First published in Songwriting Magazine Spring 2026 issue

Released: 23 August 2010
Artist: Rumer
Label: Atlantic
Songwriter: Sarah Joyce
Producer: Steve Brown
UK Chart Position: 16
US Chart Position: –

“The reason why the album was called Seasons Of My Soul was because it was such a long journey to get the album made. I had been on the sort of London singer-songwriter open mic circuit for years, and had come into contact with various A&R. You’ll remember back in 2003-2005, the only way to really have a record out back then was to have a record deal. I was on that circuit as well as the acoustic open mic scene, and that was when I gave up… well, before I kept going and was successful. It was a lottery. You just had to send some demos off and hope for the best. It was like a sort of game with no rules, no instructions. It was like trying to figure out what the crystal means, trying to figure out: how on earth does anyone get a record deal? I didn’t know anyone in the music business. I didn’t have any friends in high places. I didn’t know anybody. All the people I knew were just people I worked with, in minimum wage jobs, knocking about South London. I didn’t know anyone who knew anybody who knew anybody… So I just started to go out with my guitar and play these songs; the bulk of Seasons Of My Soul were written around 2004. I’d been starting to play them out, try them out in various places. I was a regular down at The Cobden Club.

“The [other] reason why the album was called Seasons Of My Soul was that I had a room in a flat in South London which overlooked a big park, and it was the first floor. It was SE24, so Herne Hill, and I would sit at the window and play my songs, looking out onto the park. And I would do it as the seasons changed, so I would see the snow, I would see the spring come in, the summer, and I’d see the autumn and all the leaves. It was a very beautiful view. You could really get a sense of my emotional internal world connecting with that natural world. And because of how long it took me to get anybody to notice. I started to notice that the themes in my songs were coming around again – these emotional feelings. So that’s where I came up with Seasons Of My Soul, because they kept coming around again, and I was looking out the window at all the natural world and stuff.

“[Slow] was definitely about a crush or an infatuation I had at the time. I’m in my early 20s and prone to infatuation, and it was at a particular time in my life – I found fantasy relationships safer than real ones. I wasn’t really in a position to have any kind of healthy relationship. In fact, for those 10 years that I was focused on my album creation and my writing and my creativity, I didn’t really have any real relationships. So most of the relationships I had were in my head. You know, I had a guy who was a soldier I was writing to in Iraq, stationed in Basra. I like the sort of romance of the non-relationship. I’d just write to this soldier; it was all very romantic. So it was definitely the era of the sort of non-relationship, or the fantasy relationship. Maybe, in some ways, I was exploring it for creative reasons, unconsciously. So yes, it was an infatuation or a crush that I had, and I was just exploring the rush of dopamine and the dreamy feelings, and I was happy.

“I would sit in the kitchen or sit at the window with my guitar and play a couple of chords. A lot of the songs that I wrote on Seasons Of My Soul started out with that. I’m somebody who can [play] about five chords, but that’s kind of all you need… I’m actually really good at teaching people to play the guitar; I just teach them what I know. I just say, ‘Look, here are five or ten chords.’ That’s it! There’s a saying that you should write a song on an instrument you don’t know. It forces you to be more creative with the melody. And I think that, for me, if I’m just playing one chord, then I have to be creative with the melody, because I don’t know any more chords! That’s basically how I’ve written. And musicians have always scratched their heads when they’ve come to play my songs because of their irregular patterns. I might use the same three chords, but irregularly. Which, ironically, is what Burt Bacharach does, but I’m sure he does it with a great deal of education and mastery, whereas I’m just doing it because of a lack of chords. So I’ve got good at teaching people the guitar, because I just teach them what I know, and also I’m not intimidating, because I’m not sitting there showing off. The important thing is to get the soul of the song, and everything else is craft.

“[With the lyric] I wasn’t thinking at all. It was all really coming out through improvisation, and it was a feeling in my heart that created a sound that became the words. And, at that time, I remember sometimes I would create a sound, and find the nearest word that it would fit, and then later I’d reflect and go, ‘That’s the perfect word!’ I’m not saying they all come out like that. I don’t think it’s possible to get lightning in a bottle like that all the time, but in terms of Slow and a lot of the songs on Seasons… it was definitely a period of time in my life where my creativity was very high, but it was also a time when my emotional instability was at an all-time high, so it was very unstable…

“In my early 20s, I didn’t have any responsibilities; I didn’t have any relationships. It was a time when I was just fully committed to my creative journey and my emotional development and learning about myself…

“I wasn’t thinking; I was just letting it come through. So a lot of songs, including Slow, were very much like a channelling… I was in a sort of ‘eye of the storm’ phase, exploring all the emotions, a bit of a magic carpet kind of experience.

“And because it was a time when I didn’t have responsibilities, I was really committed to my creativity and my curiosity in a way that I wouldn’t be now. I wouldn’t be as curious now, because I’m older and I’ve got a child, and I’ve got responsibilities… I feel more grounded, and I’m definitely committed to being in the physical plane. Whereas then I was curious about travelling different dimensions of reality, and taking those sorts of psychological risks – I would say, taking a deep dive into my psyche, diving for pearls. And I think a lot of the songs on Seasons Of My Soul are me taking those risks and diving for pearls, at a time when I was able to love it because I wasn’t so tied to the physical world.”

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