Spotify has premiered Tems: Surround Sound, a full-length concert film of Nigerian singer Temilade Openiyi, known as Tems. The film was released on Wednesday, November 11, and is now available on the platform. Directed by Tim Horwood and shot in Lagos, it follows Tems through songs from different stages of her career.
The setlist includes "Try Me", "Looku Looku", "Crazy Tings", "Replay", "Love Me JeJe" and "Me & U", alongside tracks from For Broken Ears, among them "Damages", "The Key", "Higher" and "Free Mind".
For the entire performance, fans were placed around Tems, and the film was shot in the round. Horwood said the production was built to keep the intimacy of her delivery while giving each song room in the set. "With Tems, the voice and the space around it are central to the experience," he said.
Horwood explained what the team was aiming for:
"We wanted the film to stay close to the detail of the performance while allowing each song to breathe."
Closing the set with "Free Mind" helped connect the different periods the film represents. Horwood said it gave the team "a way to follow the emotional thread connecting different moments in her music."
For Broken Ears came out in September 2020 as a seven-track project and introduced Tems to a wider international audience. Spotify's September 2026 data puts the streams of For Broken Ears at more than 888 million across 185 countries. Its data adds that since 2023, its songs have introduced nearly 19 million listeners to Tems for the first time on the platform, and 21.6 per cent of the people who streamed the EP in January 2022 returned to it in August 2026.
Rifumo Mdaka, Spotify's content marketing manager for Africa, said Tems's early music remains an entry point for new listeners and a collection older fans keep returning to. Mdaka said: "Surround Sound gives that relationship a physical setting, with Tems surrounded by fans in Lagos." Mdaka added that the film lets audiences outside the venue experience the songs as part of the singer's broader musical journey.
Surround Sound is Spotify's live-performance format, which originated in sub-Saharan Africa. The format brings together artists and a chosen set of Spotify Premium subscribers for close performances that get recorded as full-length concert films.
Audiences outside Lagos now have the chance to watch the performance.
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