As the summer walks its way out the door, Mary J. Blige is back with a heartbreak song to get you through cuffing season. Blige has released “Whole Damn Year,” the latest off her upcoming 13th studio album, Mary J Blige: The London Sessions. 

With "Whole Damn Year," the Queen of Soul delivers a love track covering 12 months of anguish. “See winter took most of my heart, and spring punched right in the stomach,” she sings. “Summer came looking for love, and by autumn I was left nothing/It took a whole damn year to repair my body/It took a whole damn year/It took a whole damn year to repair my body, it’s been a bad five years.”

While the new song feels reminiscent of the R&B classics the native New Yorker is known for, the album conceptualizes life across the pond. Blige worked with British soul crooner Sam Smith and Scottish singing powerhouse Emeli Sandé on the release, along with embracing UK culture in a way that she had never done before. 

"The music is free over here the way it used to be in the States," she said in an interview with UK newspaper The Guardian. "Artists are just free to do what they love ... The music is living and breathing — you can hear that from Adele's last album. It was massive — a big deal. But she did what she loved."

Mary J Blige: The London Sessions is due out Nov. 24. 

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