The British musician had a prominent part on his Chromakopia and is headed out on a sold-out U.K. tour run to finish out a big 2024.
When Lola Young comes on stage, all eyes in the audience gravitate toward her like iron filings to a magnet. Look attentively at internet footage from the south Londoner’s recent North American tour, and you’ll find hundreds of people sobbing, headbanging, shouting - relishing moments of release, letting go of inhibitions with abandon. Young matches their passion, snarling and roaring her words as though she’s feeling the sorrow of her songs for the very first time.
Each time the 23-year-old performs live – she’s completed two American journeys this year, and has gigs in the U.K., Europe and Australia planned until early 2025 – she shares an emotional encounter with the public. After returning off the road last month, having done hundreds of headline performances plus festivals such as Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza Chicago, the first thing Young did was “cry a lot,” as she informed her 620,000 TikTok fans in a recent post.
“I know you’re not my therapist,” she laughs to Billboard via a video conversation, “but it’s important to be honest and say that I’ve felt quite low. Leaving tour is like a tremendous comedown. After being so busy by performing my heart out every night and receiving so much love, it’s pretty hard to adjust to reality again. It’s been challenging, but I am getting there - I’m on my way up.”
Young’s sultry voice and collection of clever, elastic pop tunes connect to something deep inside her following. There are the devotees who mimic her blush-heavy makeup, as well as the more casual listeners who have created so many clips featuring the glorious single “Messy” that her Spotify streams have increased tenfold in recent weeks, which, at the time of writing, currently stands at 12.7 million monthly listeners. Her first LP This Wasn’t Meant for You Anyway, released in June on Island Records, was typified by its stark honesty: “I can dance in the mirror and feel seen without being watched by someone / Especially not no ugly man, or woman,” so goes her spoken-word outro.
Even with her camera off, Young stays true to form throughout our talk. She laughs a much. She curses a much. She exclaims “f–k” in virtually every phrase, trying to highlight that she’s still coming to grips with how dizzying the previous few months have been. Having followed her aspirations since she started composing songs at 11, she’s now moved beyond voracious early career ambition and is pursuing a new level of worldwide superstardom.
“What I’m realizing about myself as an artist is that I’m not about the glitz and the glam — I don’t scream ‘Hollywood’,” she explains. “For a long time, I wanted to represent this ideal of Westernized beauty – but then I realized I’m not that. I now chose to provide realness and honesty. I’ve got a bit of a belly out, I f–cking curse a bunch and I have fun. And that’s what people are resonating with.”
Young is ringing in from Paris, where she is in the studio already working on her next project. She has turned a diligent, laser-focused work ethic into a rising career: Beginning with 2023’s My Mind Wanders and Sometimes Leaves project, in the last 18 months she has drip-fed a plethora of extended releases and one-off singles (from “Flicker of Light” to current Lil Yachty team-up “Charlie”). This Wasn’t Meant for You Anyway contained wholly new material, while her distinctive, immensely popular live performance video have introduced her to a global audience via social media. With a vintage mike to hand, she has done everything from getting tossed out of a London Underground station to dancing happily in front of the Golden Gate bridge.
It’s this hardworking mentality that has drawn the eye of some of modern music’s most recognized figures. In the summer, Young briefly hit the studio and had egg rolls with SZA, who routinely adds flame emojis on her Instagram postings. “This is insane and I live for it,” exclaimed the “Kill Bill” singer when Young broke the news of “Like Him,” her gorgeous appearance on Tyler, the Creator’s latest Billboard 200-topping LP Chromakopia.
The rapper had previously praised Young over DM, and when he messaged asking if she would contribute vocals to his song, her reaction was an immediate, emphatic yes. “When I first heard Tyler’s ‘Yonkers’, it totally changed the way I viewed music,” she continues.
Read Also: Eras Tour Hit New Orleans on Halloween Weekend
Young’s exquisitely nuanced, impassioned voice throughout the chorus heightens the song’s sad tone, a reflection on complicated familial ties. “Like Him” landed at No. 29 on the Billboard 100, further solidifying Young’s fast-growing fame in the U.S: in October, she played at L.A.’s 1,600-capacity Bellwether music hall, twice the size of her April show at the city’s Echoplex venue.
Young’s path is a lesson in how, for emerging musicians, being allowed the room and time to establish their feet can result in really fresh, distinctive music. Yet her transatlantic triumph hasn’t come without its misgivings. To an extent, she remains unfairly connected in some listeners’ minds with the commercial balladry of her early days, as well as the cover of Philip Oakley and Giorgio Moroder’s “Together in Electric Dreams” she recorded for the British store John Lewis’ 2021 Christmas campaign. At age 16, she was a timid but ambitious finalist on the now-defunct reality television series Got What It Takes.
“A lot of strings were being pulled when I was starting out. It everything seemed false. It seemed forced,” she says. Notably, in her live shows, she doesn’t perform any songs from her 2019 EP Intro or its follow-up, Renaissance. “This isn’t about blaming anybody, but nothing was really clicking at the time. Now, I have creative autonomy alongside a grasp of who I am and where I want to go.”
Young has endured her own challenges of selfhood. Her concerns, anger and pride now inspire her songs. She claims the light-bulb moment occurred when she started donning a mullet two years ago, a style that has increased her confidence “massively”. She has subsequently explored themes of identity and self-destruction in her art, recovered from an operation on her voice cords and spoken about her schizoaffective disorder diagnosis on Instagram.
When she talks about these events, Young maintains that she abides by the old saying that tiny deeds may lead to huge changes in one’s life. “I kept holding faith in the fact that if I cut my hair, the music would follow” she recalls, apparently happy that her own prophecy came true.
