Watch Tems Perform ‘Burning’ on ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’

Tems brought the heat to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday night with a live performance of “Burning.” The song arrived on the Nigerian musician’s debut album Born in the Wild, released in June.

While Tems has usually been backed by a multi-piece band during her late night appearances, her performance on The Late Show placed the spotlight solely on her. It was a fitting creative choice to accompany “Burning,” which finds the singer-songwriter and producer grappling with the fame that has accompanied her success. “I could figure out myself/When I’m distant in my world/I could hold on to the past and be absolutely mad/But I let go of my sins/I just searchin’ for my wings/If you know where I’ll find it/I would take a limousine,” she sings on the second verse.

Earlier this year, Tems told Apple Music, “‘Burning’ is about the feelings I felt when I first started getting popular as Tems. I didn’t really understand what was happening, and everything was happening so fast. And it’s about me looking back on that time and realising that we are all going through something. We all have our internal battles. We all have the things that we struggle with, our triggers. And ‘Burning’ is really about understanding that I have my triggers too, and now I know that I’m not alone. And there’s many people that have felt the way I do about not wanting to be seen, not really being used to attention, and people trying to take advantage of you in many different ways.”

These types of reflections are sprinkled across Born in the Wild, which also featured the lead singles “Love Me JeJe” and “Me & U.”

In a review of the album, Rolling Stone wrote: “Born in the Wild measures the soul-work it’s taken to get here. All of it – the professional, the familial, the spiritual – has paid off on an album so rich that the listening experience is a physical one as much as it is emotional. It’s made timeless with luscious, instrumental production that she spearheaded alongside Ghanaian Afropop maestro GuiltyBeats.”