With a smoldering voice and soul-stirring songs that ache with memory and emotional clarity, London’s Reem Mitten is stepping fully into her artistry – cementing herself as an essential artist to watch in 2026 and beyond. 

“Back to the Start of It” – Reem Mitten

Smoke, heat, and something tender flickering beneath the surface – that’s the world Reem Mitten opens when she sings.

Her voice lands like a slow-burning spark, soft at first, but smoldering into something that takes the air out of the room. It’s arresting in the quietest way possible: A tone heavy with memory, bruised with longing, and sharpened by the ache of trying to make sense of what’s been lost. And woven through that voice is a songwriter with the rare ability to turn raw feeling into something cinematic – to transform private reckoning into songs that feel like they were written inside your own chest.

Reem Mitten doesn’t just write heartbreak; she writes the heat that comes before it, the tremor after it, the breath you hold in the moments when you know you’re repeating history but you still say yes anyway. Her music aches from the inside out – smoldering, soulful, emotionally unfiltered – and in just two 2025 singles, she’s already carved out a world that feels lived-in, heavy, and utterly human. If you’ve ever tried to go back, if you’ve ever tried again even when you knew better, her songs will find you.

A North West London-born singer/songwriter of Moroccan and Irish roots, Mitten is as enigmatic as she is expressive: Someone who would rather disappear into the feeling of a song than stand in front of it. She describes herself as a private person – the kind who prefers listeners not to know too much, so they can build their own world within her music. Offstage, she’s gentle, introspective, happiest on the sofa with her dog; on record, she becomes something else entirely: Bolder, sharper, more willing to excavate the emotional terrain most of us avoid.

She first introduced herself last year through her debut two-track It’s All Colour, aptly pairing the songs “Orange” and “Purple,” followed by the slow-burning “All Your Love.” Those early releases hinted at her emotional depth and magnetic vocal presence, but it’s her 2025 material that reveals an artist stepping fully into her power: Rawer, more vulnerable, and unafraid of the mess.

Released in April, “Back to the Start of It” marks her fourth career single, and the beginning of a striking new chapter. Named an Atwood Editor’s Pick, the song is all wounded desire and sharp clarity – a bruised, slow-burning confessional that spirals through anger, longing, nostalgia, and the bitter wish to rewind time. Mitten sings with a haunted kind of urgency, as if she’s standing knee-deep in déjà vu, naming the things she kept quiet the first time around. “Don’t you know that you wrote this? Don’t you know that you caused it?” she sings, her voice cracking through the track’s glossy darkness like a flare in fog. The chorus hits harder each time it comes around, rooted in that final rhetorical question: “How do we get back to the start of it?”

don’t talk to me like that
don’t tell me how to suffer
when I’m lying in the water
don’t tell me how to feel
don’t you know that you wrote this?
don’t you know that you cause it?

I wanted it, I wanted it
I needed it
how do we get
back to the start of it?

As Mitten explains, the song “was fueled by anger – not being heard, good times turning bad.” That tension radiates through every line. The production swells and contracts like a bruise in slow motion. The performance aches. You can feel the weight of every unsaid thing, and then the release when she finally lets it spill. “Back to the Start of It” feels like the older sister to her latest, fifth single – volatile, aware, already scorched.

Its counterpart, “What the Hell,” moves differently. It’s softer, rounder, almost naïve in the way a younger sibling carries the same wound but hasn’t yet built the same armor. Mitten calls it the “younger sister” to “Back to the Start of It,” and you can hear that innocence – the hopeful tenderness that lives right at the threshold between remembering and relapsing. “Oh what the hell, maybe we are out of love, maybe we are out of touch…” she sings, letting resignation melt into something more fragile: Acceptance, reflection, the ache of trying again despite knowing the ending.

So we’re doing this again
Guess what could go wrong
You are going wrong
Caught up in your cycle all
of what I though you weren’t what I though

Oh what the hell
Maybe we are out of love
Maybe we are out of touch
Maybe it was nothing at all

Where “Back to the Start of It” is charged, “What the Hell” is contemplative. It holds nostalgia like a weight in the throat – especially in the song’s most devastating plea: “Call me back to when I was 17… why is everything so heavy?” Mitten doesn’t over-explain the feeling. She never does. She lets the ache sit. She lets the listener breathe into it, offering just enough to crack something open.

And that’s the heart of her artistry: Reem Mitten writes songs that don’t point back to her; they point inward, toward you. “What I want people to know about me is actually very little,” she shares. “My aim is always to turn a feeling into a kind of fantasy… so that whoever’s listening doesn’t see me in it, but sees themselves instead.” That philosophy becomes both her signature and her power. She’s not writing autobiography; she’s writing emotional portals. Her voice may smolder, but her intention is to disappear, to create a world where your own memories fill the room.

Despite her relatively recent entry into the industry, Mitten has quietly built her foundation over the past year –

earning early BBC radio support, collaborating with producers like Dave McCracken, and sharing stages with Swim Deep, Bill Ryder-Jones, and Phoebe Green. But it’s these two recent singles – equal parts fire and reflection – that reveal the artist she’s becoming: Confident, emotionally incisive, and wholly her own.

She describes “What the Hell” as a space where nostalgia, disconnect, memory, and hope collide – “a song listeners can interpret for themselves,” shaped to fit any relationship. And she refuses to define the narrative for them: “I don’t want listeners to wonder what I went through while writing the track,” she says. “I want them to think about what they’ve been through – what the song reminds them of, and what they personally take away from it.”

This is the rarest kind of songwriting: One that holds a mirror instead of a spotlight.

As Mitten looks ahead, her focus is inward but expansive. “Emotionally, what I want people to feel when they hear my music is a pull inward,” she shares. “I want to be a device that helps people lean into themselves. I hope to become the sound of a memory for listeners, whatever picture that creates for them.”

This is the start of something special – a quiet ignition, a glow at the edge of what promises to be a breathtaking rise.

With a voice that smolders and softens in the same breath, lyrics that cut with quiet precision, and a growing catalog of songs that ache in all the right places, Reem Mitten isn’t just emerging – she’s arriving. Her music feels like late-night clarity, like sitting alone in the aftermath of something you still don’t have the language for. These songs hold that silence. They give it shape. They let it breathe.

And that’s why Reem Mitten is an undeniable artist to watch – not because she tells her story, but because she helps us hear our own. Atwood Magazine caught up with the burgeoning singer/songwriter for an intimate conversation about the emotional world behind her latest releases, her creative philosophy, and her hopes for the future. Read our interview below and pay close attention to Mitten as she steps even further into her voice in 2026!

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:: connect with Reem Mitten here ::

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A CONVERSATION WITH REEM MITTEN

Reem Mitten: What I want people to know about me is actually very little, haha. I’ve always loved not knowing much about the artists I creatively value – it lets me build my own world around their art or music, without a backstory or personal context getting in the way.

I think the same goes for my own music. My aim is always to turn a feeling into a kind of fantasy, to separate myself from it and forget how I felt, so that whoever’s listening doesn’t see me in it, but sees themselves instead (if that makes sense).

But if people had to know something about me, it’s that I love a day off spent on the sofa with my dog, watching anime or true crime.

Reem Mitten: I’m really proud of “Back to the Start of It.” Weirdly, it was a song I didn’t think would do very well at first. We made so many versions of it (maybe I’ll release an alternative one in the future) that I kind of got lost in the sauce, haha.

But the final version ended up landing right in the middle of everything we’d tried, and so far it’s become my best-performing song. So yeah – I’m really proud of it.

Reem Mitten: I feel like there was an innocence or a kind of naivety in “What the Hell.” It’s about letting your barriers down one last time and allowing someone re-entry, even though the first verse already hints that history is going to repeat itself.

It’s a lot more reflective than “Back to the Start of It.” “Back to the Start of It” was fueled by anger – not being heard, good times turning bad. Meanwhile, “What the Hell” feels like the younger sister: She already knows all of this, but still chooses to try again.

Reem Mitten: I think with this question I’m going to lean into the element of mystery and not dig too deep into what it means to me personally. I will say that with songs that sound like this, the first interpretation is usually that it’s a heartbreak track in the romantic sense.

But lifting the blanket on the mystery just a little – for me, “What the Hell” isn’t that song.

What do you hope listeners take away from “What the Hell,” and what have you taken away from creating it and now putting it out?“]

Reem Mitten: I really hope that with “What the Hell,” and with anything I make, whoever is listening interprets it in a way that resonates with them and reflects their own experiences. As the artist, I almost don’t want to be seen or thought of (if that makes sense, haha).

I don’t want listeners to wonder what I went through while writing the track, but instead to think about what they’ve been through – what the song reminds them of, and what they personally take away from it.

Reem Mitten: I’m really looking forward to evolving even more. When I look back at where I started, I’m extremely grateful to the people who helped me get to where I am now – especially considering I never thought I’d pursue music. For a long time, it was just a private outlet for me.

My hope is that it’s only up from here: to make more music, to discover how many sounds I have in me, to gig more, and to enjoy the journey – the good, the bad, all of it.

Emotionally, what I want people to feel when they hear my music is a pull inward. I want to be a device that helps people lean into themselves. I hope to become the sound of a memory for listeners, whatever picture that creates for them.

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“Back to the Start of It” – Reem Mitten

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