Songfacts®:

• Early in her career, Jorja Smith felt daunted putting her work out into the world knowing others will judge it, but now she's learning not to let fear hold her back. "Try Me" is a message of empowerment. The song is a reminder that we should not let the opinions of others hold us back from pursuing our dreams.
  
  "Try Me," Smith said, was inspired by "putting yourself out there, in front of a world that has many opinions, as it only ever used to be me really being my own critic. This is the first time I'm putting stuff out there that I can connect with right now."
• The song opens with a commanding percussive section, then it takes an unexpected turn and transitions into a delicate, cello-driven section before abruptly ending.
  
  The duality present in "Try Me" reflects Smith's personal growth and evolution since her 2018 hit debut album, Lost & Found. The intervening years have brought both immense success and a sense of powerlessness, a theme that is woven into the fabric of the song.
• Jorja Smith wrote the lyrics to a beat created by Edith Nelson and Barbara Bolo, aka the production duo DAMEDAME. Speaking with BBC Radio 1's Clara Amfo, Jorja Smith opened up about "Try Me."
  
  "I think I was writing this to my friends in 2021," she said. "I had just come back from a run, and they were playing the beat that you hear right now. I was like, 'I need to shower, but I want to sing.' So I started singing, and I was singing about how I've changed. And then when we were writing, we were just thinking about how so much has changed for me. Now the pressure of like putting yourself out there in front of loads of people, that's what the song's about."
• DAMEDAME previously worked with Smith on a couple of remixes for her 2021 single "All Of This" and co-wrote her 2022 collaboration with Calvin Harris and Lil Durk, "Something Else."
• Directed by Amber Grace Johnson and shot in the suburbs of Marseille, France, the music video shows footage of the iconic Roman amphitheatre in Arles, another town in southern France. Johnson also shot Smith's visual for her 2019 song "Be Honest."