In many ways 23-year-old singer-songwriter Holly Humberstone has had a charmed entry into the music business. She built a fan base of millions from her bedroom during the pandemic — emerging from the cocoon of successive lockdowns a fully-formed pop sensation, with two EPs that caught the hearts and minds of fans and critics alike.
She came runner up in the BBC’s Sound of 2021 and a year later was named 2022’s Brit Rising Star (previous winners of the award include Adele, Florence and the Machine and Sam Fender). She’s written songs with the 1975’s Matty Healy and now with 220 million streams behind her she’s set to release her debut album, Paint My Bedroom Black in October and her new single, Superbloodmoon (feat. D4vd) today. It’s a fairy tale for — as she puts it, when we meet one lunchtime in north London — “a girl from rural Lincolnshire, who went to a science and languages school and had no f***** idea about how any of this works.”
Humberstone’s music has an intimate, broken-hearted quality so I expect someone quieter and more aloof. In person, though, she is funny, thoughtful and direct — she sighs at having missed so much pub time with her friends because of touring. One of four sisters, she grew up in Grantham to two medic parents, and though she was always surrounded by music, she’s the first in the family to take it up professionally.
Since becoming the Brit Rising Star last year she has toured almost constantly, swinging from elation at hearing audiences sing along to her music to grinding loneliness in “silent hotel rooms in random towns in America”.
We’ve ended up talking about the pressures that young artists face. She’s at the start of her career but as she tells me at one point: “at 23, I feel like I’m old in the [music] game. Maybe that’s because I’m a female, and we’re held to these impossible standards. Or maybe I’m just putting the pressure on myself? I feel like it’s a race to be successful as soon as I can.”
For many, music has become an industry of diminishing returns where the artist is squeezed while record labels, and platforms like Spotify and Tiktok, rake in profits. “It is weird, you have to start thinking of yourself as a business,” says Humberstone. Labels front the money for things like tours and marketing an artist but then expect them to return their investment through ticket and album sales when they make it big (a much more difficult proposition in the age of streaming).
Is it simply a broken industry? “That’s a big question,” says Humberstone. “It’s hard because I think you’re pretty much at the mercy of everybody around you as a young artist. And contracts are worded so that they’re impossible to understand. You kind of just have to believe what you’re told. I mean, for me personally, I was just so excited to be signing anything,” she says. “I think if I didn’t have my dad or my manager, Josh, I would have signed whatever the f*** was given to me. because I had no clue. I so desperately wanted to be a recording artist, to tour and to make an album.”
Dressed all in black (her mesh top was made by her sister, she explains, her skirt is from eBay) with a pair of giant, stomping New Rocks she looks like a cross between a grown-up Wednesday Addams and a young Kate Moss. “They’re like a staple, now,” she says of the shoes. “They’ve got good height — I’m short but I like to feel powerful.”
Despite the fact that she explores themes like loneliness, disconnection and the guilt of missing out on loved ones’ milestones, the album is incredibly catchy; full of heartfelt lyrics and poppy trills. She wrote most of it while touring — supporting the likes of Gen-Z pop juggernaut Olivia Rodrigo, before breaking out on her own. “I think I was just feeling disconnected and far away from everyone I loved,” she says. “I started to feel like I wasn’t there for the people who are important to me. Obviously, nothing compares to performing live, and having an amazing show — but it comes with sacrifices.” At the time, she was also trying to figure out a new relationship.
Her boyfriend, she says, is a musician who plays in Sam Fender’s band. “He’s signed with the same label — and we kept meeting at festivals. At the start of our relationship I was away so much, on my own, that messaging him became like an anchor… He became like my comfort space.”
The problem with being untethered from all the people who love you and the things that keep you grounded, especially while working in the music industry is that, as Humberstone points out, it’s easy to let thoughts spiral into negative places. “I’d get into my hotel room late. It would be dead silence and I’d just be alone, scrolling on my phone, seeing all these other artists being incredibly successful. It was hard — like it’s hard for anyone not to compare themselves but especially in this job where people compare you to other musicians all the time. It took me a long time to kind of chill out and realise that it’s not a competition, I’m in my own lane, and I can take my time with it.”
It took me a long time to chill out and realise that it’s not a competition, I’m in my own lane, and I can take my time with it
Humberstone was discovered after uploading songs to the BBC Introducing platform and being picked by the broadcaster to play on their stage at Glastonbury. “That’s how I met my manager, and honestly for someone with no connection to the industry, who doesn’t even come from London, there are so few other ways to get your foot in the door,” she says. She signed to independent label Platoon and was able to build a fan base and find her sound before being snapped-up by a major label. “I got to figure out what I wanted to release and how I wanted to present myself first — to kind of write my own story before signing anything.” Plus, she says, “I found that that was the only way to get any kind of deal that was half decent.”
“It’s been wild,” she says of the period since the Brit win. “I’ve been trying to get out of my head — I don’t want to be an old lady looking back and regretting that I didn’t enjoy this experience as much as possible.” Music is a complicated business; as she points out, she is yet to turn a profit (as is the case for many much more established touring artists). “With a tour, you have to budget everything and then the label will loan you that much money, and then you have to pay it back before you make any profit. So I’m extra conscious of how much money I’m spending — and it is difficult, like touring is so expensive. I had no idea how expensive it would be. And making any kind of profit isn’t even a thing for me yet.”
This was the reason that she started so small on her first few tours, she explains. “It was literally just me and this looper thing. I mean, I went on this huge tour supporting girl in red and Olivia Rodrigo and I’d have to trigger all these loops, play my guitar and sing. Stuff was going wrong the whole time because if there was one faulty cable somewhere in the system, it’d all go to s***,” she laughs. “It all went to s*** quite a few times.”
It was a useful learning curve, though, and she says it has made her fearless on stage. Sadly it’s not a fearlessness that has translated to social media. An integral part of any musician’s journey nowadays seems to be a mastery of TikTok but Humberstone finds the whole experience daunting. “It’s an amazing platform for people to discover new music on but I personally find it very hard… I don’t really know what people want to see from me on that platform.
“Trying to capture someone’s attention within three seconds but still feel authentic to myself, and not like I’m creating a whole new character for social media, is really difficult”.
She says she’s trying her hardest not to put too much pressure “on having something just blow up over night. Especially with this album, the hours and stress I’ve put into making it — every word means something to me. And hopefully if I just keep writing songs I care about, releasing stuff that I believe in and believe that people will connect to, it’ll just happen and I’ll have a long career,”
Amen to that.
