Eric Benét turned 60 on Thursday (Oct 15), and a day later he released "Heaven," a slow love song produced by Camper. It came out through JBR Creative Group, the independent label he runs with longtime business partner Alison Ball. The single also serves as the formal announcement of We Need Everybody, a new album due this fall, though the label has not set a release date.

His debut, True to Myself, reached stores in 1996, and its 30th anniversary passed in September, a few weeks before the birthday. Benét once described those first sessions to Rated R&B, which reprinted his words alongside the new single: "I remember how exciting it was to be able to record anything I wanted, the way I wanted to record it. No record label people came to the studio while we were writing and recording. It was just an incredible, autonomous feeling."

That freedom narrowed in the years that followed. Warner Bros. shelved an album he wanted to make outside of R&B, and disagreements over his musical direction eventually led him to leave the company that launched him. He started JBR shortly before the pandemic, with Ball as CEO and himself as president. Ball is the former Warner Bros. A&R executive who, by his account, gave him his first record deal.

"Our whole approach at JBR is to be aware that the artist is the captain of that artist's career," he told the Los Angeles Sentinel in 2024. In the same interview he said he wants the label's artists to co-own their masters alongside the company.

The arrangement has produced his best chart run in years. The Co-Star, a duets album released June 6, 2025, paired him with Keri Hilson, Ari Lennox, Alex Isley and Judith Hill. His duets with Tamar Braxton ("Something We Can Make Love To") and Chanté Moore ("So Distracted") both reached No. 1 on adult R&B radio. Four months later he released his first holiday album, It's Christmas, and said he was "even more" proud of it because it came out on his own label. We Need Everybody will be his first solo studio album since the self-titled Eric Benét in 2016, the record that carried "Insane" and the Tamia-assisted "Sunshine (Remix)."

In June he put out "Who's Gonna Save Us?", a protest song, and "Heaven" returns him to the bedroom ballads that built his catalog. Camper, who also produced the Ari Lennox duet "Gaslight" on The Co-Star, builds the track on guitar, keys, horns and an unhurried drum pattern. Benét sings the verses from the warm bottom of his range and climbs into his falsetto on the bridge. The chorus keeps circling one promise, that the night will end feeling like heaven, and the video keeps the camera on Benét alone.

Both songs will appear on We Need Everybody, which the label pitches as Benét's answer to what he feels is missing from today's music and culture. He recorded the album with a live band, and the press materials frame that choice against the spread of A.I.-generated music. "Eric's goal was to center on real musicians, real instruments, and the energy that comes from a recording session," the announcement reads.

The road comes before the release date. The You Do Tour opens Dec. 1 at ACL Live at the Moody Theater in Austin, then moves through Dallas, Houston, Cincinnati and Detroit. Later stops include the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, the Buckhead Theatre in Atlanta and the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia. The run closes Dec. 22 at Sony Hall in Manhattan.

Next November, Benét sails from Miami to Nassau as part of the lineup for Rock The Bells' I Need Luv R&B cruise, sharing the bill with Tank, Xscape, Ginuwine and Mýa.