Mahalia’s Apple Music Home Session gave the Leicester-born artist the chance to do something she’s been eager to try for a long time. “I’ve wanted to do a stripped down version of ‘What You Did’ ever since we first put it out,” she tells Apple Music of the gentle reworking of her 2019 track about infidelity, featuring Ella Mai. “Doing it this way felt like the best. Including my original second verse felt wrong and right—I hadn’t been singing that version for the longest time and it made it all the more special.” The session—part of Apple Music’s series where we ask some of our favourite artists to set up at home and reimagine some of their, and others’, signature tracks—also sees the R&B singer-songwriter offer her take on “Eternal Light”, a sensuous, laidback 2019 hit from Free Nationals & Chronixx. Recording at home, she says, has its benefits—“I love the intimacy of doing this kind of thing in my bedroom”—but like so many of her peers, she’s “gassed” to get back on stage. “Dancing, singing and laughing for 90 minutes on stage together—I miss the feeling of it all.” That said, Mahalia won’t be rushing to get back to life exactly as it was before. “I’m much more of a fragile person than I thought I was,” she says, talking about what the lockdown period has taught her. “I’m a person with real, deep feelings and I wasn’t releasing enough. I was spending too much time looking forward and not enough time looking to the people around me who love me. I lost myself a little before all of this, and I feel like lockdown helped me find those missing pieces.”