With his 2024 debut album, the soulful singer-songwriter Manana fleshes out the trilogy of romantic highs and heartaches he began with his EPs: 2020’s In the beginning was the end and 2022’s But could the moments in between. “At the beginning of this kind of trilogy, the idea was obviously to describe the journey of a relationship,” Manana tells Apple Music. “And it journeys through heartbreak, intense love and everything in between. This last project is supposed to be a processing project, so going from a place where something has ended, and what that would look like—the different stages of ending. If the relationship ends up in extreme love and you’re besotted with the person you’re with, that’s a point of mending. If it ends in heartbreak, healing is also mending. Whatever I’ve gone through, our broken hearts will mend.” Across the project’s 16 tracks, the artist born Ndumiso Manana employs his plethora of sonic influences while the instrumentation plays as much of a role in storytelling as the lyrics do. From the walking bassline of “If We Move”, that draws on early-2000s neo-soul, to the balmy bossa nova of “A view with a beach outside (Interlude)” and the gospel-infused vocals of the title track that underscore its message of healing and triumph over tribulation, Our Broken Hearts Mend is a showcase of both Manana’s songwriting acumen and his emotional depth. “People who know me think that I’m very pragmatic and sometimes pessimistic,” Manana explains. “People who don’t know me think I’m this hopeless romantic. I think I’m both things at different times, but I also think that I’m just someone who accepts gleefully what people sometimes see as realism or pessimism. We’re going to go through stuff, and being positive and being happy doesn’t necessarily mean I’m not going through things. We’re going to go through stuff, and that’s cool. Be happy with that.” Read on as Manana talks through key tracks from the album. “Alone (I’m Tired)” “When we started writing this song, we wanted to write a song that was speaking about my general irritation around how social media has made us as people: people that relate to each other through highlights. So the lyric ‘Sweet days that the good Lord gave us/Been handing out party favours/Smiling but we know we’re faking’, it’s kind of the theme of the whole thing. It’s this thing where it’s like we act like we’re good just because our social media profiles look great. Then you can kind of draw that theme into a romantic relationship and use that as a metaphor or a comparison. That’s where ‘I’m tired’ comes in. This is kind of why I take hiatuses off social media. I genuinely think it’s tough to not do it, and I’m yet to meet a person that can honestly, truly say that they don’t ever look at social media. It’s tough.” “Decide” “I wrote this with The Imports duo [Bubele Booi and David Balshaw] and Loyiso Gijana. This is one of those songs that is centred around this narrative, around being in a state of confusion. And in the state of not being sure if the person that you’re trying to court is actually sure about you, and vice versa. It’s just as the hook says: ‘I just hope you can decide/Or am I the other guy.’ Obviously relationships look different, but if you think about long-term relationships and commitment, I think it’s scary on both sides and often it feels like it’s a singular kind of journey. You feel like it’s something you struggle with alone, but I think a lot of people actually go through similar stuff.” “Waste Your Love” “I think it’s one of those songs that will become a crowd favourite. I wrote this with Dayyon Alexander, and we were thinking about how sometimes, in a relationship, you want someone to commit. But at the same time, it’s like this thing of ‘Oh, flip, I’m going through [things] in my mind, and I don’t know how you’d be able to handle that. I care about [us] so much, that I just want you to know that I don’t want to waste your love.’” “If We Move” (with Ariza) “The entire song was recorded on my phone. We did this [recording session] online and I came with that ‘if we move’ idea with the keys and the melody line and sent it through via iMessage. Ariza put it in a session and was like, ‘Yo, this is really dope. Let’s elaborate on this.’ And then myself, Ariza and The Imports guys [who were in LA at the time] just went back and forth via iMessage. We’d write four bars and then I’d record it on my phone, send it through, and after three hours maybe we were done with the writing of the song and I’d sent all the vocals and all the voice notes. My brother loved Musiq Soulchild, and he loved Maxwell and he loved D’Angelo. That’s a sound that I’ve never really experimented with as much. So with this song, when I had that in my mind, I was like, ‘Oh man, it’d be really dope to try it out.’” “See What I See” (feat. Rapsody) “I feel people all think like they have a [more] photogenic side, which I always find hilarious, but I guess it’s a real thing. But people experience you from both sides. Their eyes are looking at you from both sides every day. So when you see yourself, you’re like, ‘Oh no, my left side is the best.’ That’s why I think it was a perfect opening line to be like, ‘Oh, see what I see.’ That’s how the conversation happened in the studio, and we wrote that verse. I’d recently started talking with Rapsody and there’s some stuff that I’d sent. We were just going back and forth with some stuff with her project that didn’t end up working out, but we sent this song to her and she loved it.” “Why” (feat. solace) “This is my favourite song on the project. We were on tour with the band that I’m a part of, Seba Kaapstad, in Germany, for some time—I think it was like five weeks—and I stumbled on music by this artist solace. It changed my life perspective on writing because, with a lot of her music, she’ll use interesting elements—from patting on the lap to claps and different sonic tools. I went into the studio and wrote the song just with piano. When it was time to put in the rhythm, I got back to South Africa and MaxOnProduction and I came up with this rhythm that became the pulse of the song. It kind of resembles this gospel-y, choral, Zion Christian Church-style foot stomp. Bubele and I rearranged some of the stuff and, once it was done, I sent it to solace. She loved it and her verse is perfect—she ended up just elevating the song.” “Soap” “This is another song that we did with Loyiso Gijana. I think a lot of us have similar experiences with our mothers, or our caretakers. It was us trying to honour the people that raised us, and with the memory of just being bathed as a kid. Some of us would visit our grandparents and we’d wash in these metal tubs. My context is either my mother or my grandmother, and we’re just honouring the people that raised us with this song.” “Our Broken Hearts Mend” “With this album, I wanted to have a song that someone listens to and they can sit and literally put it on loop for hours and hours, just being encouraged by the fact that a lot of us, I think, have moments of comparison, not all the time, but you feel like you’re not doing enough—and the hilarity is everyone feels like they’re not doing enough. So, it was this song to be like, ‘You know what? We’re all on this journey and our broken hearts will mend. And despite the journey we are here and we’ve made it through some things, so we’re going to make it through some more.’”