Tems Brings Her Lagos Concert Up Close in Spotify’s New Film

Tems is at the centre of Spotify’s new concert film, “Surround Sound,” which captures an intimate performance in Lagos and places fans around her rather than in a conventional audience facing the stage. The platform released the film on November 11, presenting it as a close-up look at the Nigerian singer’s music and her connection with listeners. Directed by Tim Horwood, the performance moves across songs from different points in Tems’s career. The set includes early tracks such as “Try Me” and “Looku Looku,” alongside later releases including “Love Me JeJe” and “Me & U.” Songs from her debut EP, “For Broken Ears,” feature prominently, among them “Damages,” “The Key,” “Higher” and “Free Mind,” which closes the show. Spotify’s September 2026 analysis found that more than one in five people who streamed “For Broken Ears” in January 2022 were still returning to it in August 2026. The EP has accumulated more than 888 million streams across 185 countries, according to the platform. Spotify also said that, since 2023, its songs have introduced nearly 19 million listeners to Tems for the first time on the service. The film’s circular stage arrangement lets cameras show the performance from several angles, making the gathered fans part of the visual experience. Horwood said the team wanted to keep close to the detail of Tems’s performance while giving each song room to breathe. He also described the closing “Free Mind” as a way to follow an emotional thread through different moments in her music. Rifumo Mdaka, Spotify’s Content Marketing Manager for Africa, said the project takes the relationship listeners have with Tems’s early music and gives it a shared, physical setting. The Surround Sound format began in Sub-Saharan Africa, bringing an artist together with selected Premium subscribers for a small live performance that is then filmed for a wider audience.