Lucy Fitzgerald 
This one goes back to 1987. Omer Ahmet, the London based songwriter and producer with roots in Cyprus, Türkiye, Greece, Italy, the Middle East and Kenya, has spent years writing music pulled from actual memory rather than made up scenarios, and this track is a good example of that. The backstory here is simple, but it hits. A young man with mixed heritage who never bought into the way people back then stuck to their own communities ends up at a Nigerian wedding, plate loaded with jollof rice and lamb stew. A woman walks up, asks if he’s enjoying the food, and he’s left speechless for a second before blurting out the first thing that comes to mind. She laughs. They talk. They start dating. Bowling nights, easy conversation, two years together. Her name was Toyin. Then her family decides to move back to Nigeria, and with no job and no savings to follow her, he lets her go rather than be dead weight in her life. This song was written for her.
You can hear that history in the vocal delivery. Nothing about it sounds like it was performed for its own sake. It sounds like a guy talking to someone specific, someone he actually knew, and that gives the whole track a personal edge that’s hard to fake. The arrangement stays out of the way of the story, letting the words do most of the work. Honestly, this is one of those tracks that sneaks up on you after a couple of listens, and it’s rare to hear a love song built around a real relationship instead of a generic one. Give Omer Ahmet a follow if you haven’t already on Instagram, Spotify, and wherever else you keep up with new music, and drop “I Wanna Be Your Man” into your playlist. Songs like this one deserve to travel past the first listen, and following independent artists directly is one of the easiest ways to help that happen.
Listening to songs so you don’t have to! Just kidding :D, you totally should. Music blogger by day, nurse by night
