Naomi Sharon is not here to be background music. With her upcoming EP The Only Love We Know, the Dutch-Caribbean singer reasserts herself as one of R&B’s most emotionally attuned voices — equal parts mythic and mournful. Due out May 9 via OVO Sound, the six-track collection promises to continue the deeply introspective journey she began on 2023’s Obsidian, but with even sharper edges and more open wounds.
The newly released title track is a gorgeous slow-burner that sounds like it was pulled from the ashes of a love that couldn’t survive the weight of its own mythology. Produced by Jordan Ullman of Majid Jordan — who also executive produced the full EP — the song envelops you in Sharon’s signature sonic world: dusky synths, tactile percussion, and vocals that feel less sung than confessed. There’s a poetic fatalism to the song’s core question — whether love can exist without illusion — and Sharon poses it not as a lament, but as a resignation.
What’s striking about Naomi Sharon’s approach is her refusal to rush emotional revelation. There’s a patient, almost theatrical quality to her sound. In “The Only Love We Know,” she sidesteps pop conventions in favor of mood-driven structure, letting the atmosphere do as much storytelling as the lyrics. It’s the kind of song that doesn’t need a climax to be devastating — the devastation is the atmosphere.
Earlier this year, she teased the project with “Can We Do This Over,” a sparse, pleading track that hinted at emotional regression and the ache of what-ifs. The song marked her first release in nearly a year, and it was worth the wait. She spoke of writing the track in a particularly raw headspace, and you can feel it in every pause and inhale.
If Obsidian was about rebirth and revelation, then The Only Love We Know seems to be about the comedown after spiritual awakening — the quiet, painful moments when clarity sets in and the heart must recalibrate. There’s a ritualistic quality to Sharon’s music, a sense that listening isn’t just consumption but participation in a sonic séance.
With collaborators like Justin Tranter, Eren Cannata, and Alex Lustig helping sculpt the project’s emotional blueprint, Sharon doesn’t just make R&B — she makes meditations. Her music asks you to sit with your discomfort, to interrogate your longings, and to accept the unresolved.
Naomi Sharon doesn’t perform heartbreak as spectacle. She offers it as communion.
