néomí – “I Wish I Never Met You” | UpToHear Music Review

Surinamese/Dutch singer-songwriter Neomi Speelman, aka néomí, is back with “I Wish I Never Met You,” a song deeply rooted in regret and emotional exhaustion.

We’ve lost track of how many times néomí has appeared on our blog. From her vulnerability to her tenacious grasp on emotional lyricism, we have always found a multitude of reasons to churn out a few paragraphs about each new release. The streak continues with “I Wish I Never Met You,” and this breakup song is bound to win you over as well.

The song begins with a confident, no-frills rhythm before reserved chords from a piano fall into place. The mood is a touch upbeat, but leans into a melancholic state of existence as néomí begins her vocal performance. Subtle acoustic guitar chords populate the background, but everything expands on the chorus, utilizing multiple vocal layers to elevate the listening experience.

The beat comes dangerously close to inspiring everyone to dance alone in the kitchen, but it’s also perfect for those midnight drives to nowhere. And this is exactly the space we have reserved for those introspective songs that allow us to examine all of the mistakes that led us to who we were meant to be. They give us enough distance from the people who came into our lives as lessons, allowing us to finally understand what they taught us before moving toward the people we are meant to love.

There’s something particularly poignant about wishing you’d never met someone not because you hated them, but because you hated who you became around them. That distinction gives “I Wish I Never Met You” a little more emotional weight than your average breakup song. néomí isn’t simply looking backward at a relationship that failed; she’s reckoning with the people they became along the way, and the uncomfortable realization that sometimes moving forward means accepting that the story was never going to end the way you wanted it to.

About the track, néomí adds that “It’s about that one person you wish you’d never met, not necessarily because you dislike them, but because you dislike who you became with them, how you treated them, or how they treated you. It’s a question mark aimed at love itself and why it always gets so complicated. Nobody wanted to hurt anyone, but what’s done is done. So you try to move on and sometimes still wish you’d never met them.”