Shamir Sets Final Solo Album, Lead Single 'Neverwannago' Out Now

Philadelphia-via-Vegas artist Shamir has announced his final solo album Ten, out on Kill Rock Stars this spring. Less a swan song than an act of creative transference after a decade-long music career, the project is a love letter to friends who shaped Shamir’s life - 10 songs written by those closest to him, unused demos, and castaways given a new life.

Lead single “Neverwannago” is out now - written by Andrew Harmon (Like St. Joan) with a video directed by Matthew Ober featuring musician August Nandé, Shamir is enveloped in a '90s alt-girl nostalgia wonderland.

Performing and collaborating with everyone from Le Tigre and Courtney Barnett to Troye Sivan, Rina Sawayama and Mac DeMarco, Shamir’s career has been one of constant evolution - from the dancefloor irreverence of 2015’s Ratchet on XL Recordings to the lo-fi catharsis of his self-titled 2020 album. Heterosexuality followed in 2022, a searingly confessional record that wove together industrial flourishes and razor-edged vulnerability.

Ten finds Shamir in yet another mode: a conduit rather than a confessor, an interpreter rather than an architect. With his HBIC (Head Bunny in Charge) Leche on the cover, the communal and personal epilogue binds together disparate narratives with Shamir’s singular voice, ragged and divine.

Over the past decade, Shamir has navigated a music industry that has never quite known what to do with him — fluctuating success, industry indifference, and, at times, outright hostility. Ten is, in contrast, an exercise in love. It is a reclamation of music as a shared language, rather than a performance of self.

If there is any lingering question about whether this truly marks the end of Shamir as a solo entity, he leaves little room for ambiguity. “I’ve done and said all I wanted to say,” he states plainly. “I never want to feel like I’m forcing my art.” There is no desperation in that declaration—only certainty. He has spent the last ten years running through the storm, and now, surveying the wreckage, he has chosen to walk away.

Photo credit: Jason Rodgers