néomí is becoming a regular presence at Where the Music Meets, and I have reached the point where I instinctively press play when I see her name. I already know she has probably left another little note for us somewhere in the forest we call life. “I Wish I Never Met You” carries that same sense of intimacy I have come to expect from her, but there is plenty of emotional conflict packed into its gentle frame.
Her vocals are the first thing that gets me. They are sweet, beautiful and wonderfully raspy, but there is also a maturity in the delivery that makes her words feel less like declarations and more like advice from someone who has already sat with these feelings for a while. The natural quality of the recording helps enormously. The instruments and vocals feel close enough to touch, giving the whole track that familiar, friendly proximity I love in her music. Nothing needs to be dressed up when the voice already carries this much character.
The writing is equally direct. “I Wish I Never Met You” understands that relationships can leave behind several truths at once: you can care about someone, recognise the damage, wish things had changed and still wonder whether never meeting would have been easier. The lines “I wanted us to make sense / I wanted us to change” say so much with very little fuss, while the repeated title lands with the bluntness of a thought you might only admit to yourself. The contradiction is the point, and néomí lets it remain unresolved rather than trying to tidy it away.
That is probably why I keep finding so much soul in her songs. There is a lot of heart in the mouth and a lot of mind in her voice, and “I Wish I Never Met You” brings those qualities together beautifully. The song may be about regret, but I do not hear it as an exercise in bitterness. I hear someone looking directly at an experience, accepting that it was messy and painful, and allowing herself to say what she actually thinks. That honesty is one of the reasons I became a fan in the first place. Great piece as usual, néomí!
About néomí:
néomí, the moniker of singer-songwriter Neomi Speelman, builds her music around sincere storytelling and dreamy folk-pop arrangements. Her influences include Bon Iver, Ben Howard, Bob Dylan, Phoebe Bridgers, The Paper Kites and Novo Amor, while songwriting has been part of her life since she first picked up a guitar. Her debut EP “before” introduced that diary-like approach to writing, and her later work continues to sit comfortably with emotional contradictions rather than forcing neat answers. For me, that consistency is what makes her return to Where the Music Meets feel like hearing from a friend whose voice I already recognise.
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