Holly Humberstone’s personality has enough warmth to put the coldest of winter mornings to rights. That’s exactly what happens on 2026’s edition of ‘Blue Monday’ (January 19), as Humberstone gazes at the guitars that garnish the walls of London music store Dawsons before joining NME on the sofa. Visibly excited for the year ahead, you can only imagine how Humberstone is feeling today (April 10), as she finally unveils her long-awaited second album ‘Cruel World’.
In truth, the gap between now and 2023’s ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’ – plus her appearance on The Cover – feels long because of the rocket strapped to Humberstone at the start of her career. NME was one of the first on board around her outstanding 2020 EP ‘Falling Asleep At The Wheel’, which introduced the magical combination of her spellbinding voice with gut-punch indie-pop storytelling. She landed a major label deal with Polydor/Interscope, and was soon collaborating with The 1975’s Matty Healy.
The reality of Humberstone’s move to London from Grantham, where she was raised, was laid bare when she performed ‘London Is Lonely’ at the 2022 BRIT Awards as the winner of the Critics’ Choice (fka Rising Star) award. Touring life, it turned out, was just as intense as the Big Smoke. Four-walled hotel rooms, distance from her loved ones and never-ending change informed much of ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’. When its resultant tour cycle finished in September 2024, Humberstone, after nearly five years under the lights, finally had some downtime.
“When I came off tour, I was like, ‘I know who I am as an artist, but who am I as a person?’” she tells NME. “It was the first chunk of time that I’d ever had off. The main objective is to go and live your life like a normal person and write an album, which was a very different experience to how I wrote ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’. I really needed the space to take a breather, slow things down a bit and reconnect with who I am.”
The result is ‘Cruel World’, a radiant album that finds beauty in the good, the bad and the ugly of life as Holly Humberstone traverses her twenties, step by step. For the latest edition of our In Conversation series, she discussed the journey to the album.
NME: Where did ‘Cruel World’ start? Did it fall out of you, or was it a process you instigated?
Holly Humberstone: “Lots of things [changed] during this past year that informed the writing of the album. Firstly, my first experience of being in love and in a relationship. That’s such a formative thing, exploring love as an emotion and finding out that actually, it can be the most amazing thing, but it’s inherently such a painful emotion at its core. You can’t really separate out the amazing parts with the really, really rubbish lows. Exploring that dichotomy was a big theme in the album, which you can hear.
“Also, we moved out of the ‘Haunted House’ [Humberstone’s family home in Grantham]. For that first chunk of the writing period, I was going back to the Midlands and helping my parents sort out 25 years’ worth of six Humberstones. I rediscovered lots of old relics that I used to treasure in the back of my wardrobe and under my bed in my childhood room that I would never have found… it really helped me reconnect [with] who I am at my core.”
“I think we’ve all got to surrender to the weirdness of life”
What’s it like trying to start a new life in London and say goodbye to the place you grew up in? Is it something you’re still navigating?
“Definitely. I’m so heavily inspired by my physical surroundings. I’ve moved house in London… redefining home and physically shaping my world around me has been really crucial to the writing process. I painted my new bedroom pink, it’s the colour of my childhood bedroom. I think it’s hilarious, the character arc that I’ve been through.
“Being in your twenties is so confusing. I personally feel like a different person every week, trying to figure out who the hell I am… writing has always been my way of trying to navigate what’s going on around me. ‘Lucy’ is for any other young girl out there like me trying to navigate life in a world that isn’t really built for them. Things can be super confusing, but you’ve got to roll with the punches and realise that it takes time to find your feet in the modern world.”
It’s such an important message… things are changing, things are confusing, but that’s okay. What revealed that to you?
“The songs, honestly. I have no real control over what comes out in the room. That sounds so stupid, but I have to go with my gut in the room and write about how I’m feeling on the day. The beauty of life is that anything could be around the corner, and you’ve got to roll with the punches and remember that you’re only a human being. We’ve got to ride the wave of chaos that comes at you in your twenties… it’s hopeless trying to keep your life in check. I think we’ve all got to surrender to the weirdness of life.”
What did that life look like? You said you had to figure yourself out – did you need time for Holly Humberstone, the person, to catch up with the artist making music?
“It definitely took me a while to figure out how to exist, be on my own and have thoughts, because touring is overwhelming and overstimulating. [I was] trying to be kind to myself and to give myself the space to be creative in my own time. Obviously, the objective was to write an album, but also to find out who I am again and live my own life. I like going to the pub with my friends and sisters, and seeing my family is really important. It’s been a formative year, and I feel like I am in a position where I finally can take agency in my personal life, as an artist and run my own project more, which I found super hard to do in my early twenties.”
“Every songwriter probably has that intrusive thought – ‘I’ve written my last good song’ – but I think that’s a normal thing”
That empty time, feeling understimulated – were there things you did to fill that void? Was music the thing that kept coming back? Or is it not about filling the void, and just being okay with it?
“The instinct is to try and fill the void with having The Simpsons on a constant loop in the background… me and my sister [Eleri] had a lot of time to go on some crazy tangents with the films we were watching that have really heavily inspired the creative, as well. Especially with fixing up the house, it’s been a learning curve, and I still don’t really know anything. For once, going to the studio was the least stressful part of my life. I didn’t have the spare mental capacity to be worrying about what I was going to write. So when I did get to the studio, that felt like the place to escape and to create my own fantasy world, which is where ‘Cruel World’ came from. It’s nice to be able to romanticise the mundane. I talk a lot about where I live, being a young woman in London and trying to figure out this confusing city.”
For future periods of change, you’ve always got songwriting and the studio. Is that a nice thing to think about, that music can always be there for you?
“Every songwriter probably has that intrusive thought – ‘I’ve written my last good song’ – but I think that’s a normal thing. Music will always be such a huge part of my world, which I’m so grateful for, because the world would be such a dull place without music and human connection. Especially with the current climate and all the horrific, terrifying things that are happening in the world, having human connection and music to retreat to as a comfort thing has been so important for me. I think that’s why it’s important to be vulnerable, open and share the truths, the good parts of my life, being in love, and also the not so pretty parts.”
‘To Love Somebody’ is a great example of that. How easy or difficult is that to focus on lots of different emotions, rather than isolated emotions, and channel them into a song? It’s so easy to focus on negatives, when times are tough. Where do you find the silver lining?
“I wrote it about somebody really close to me going through a really, really rough breakup. When I set out to write that song, I think my main aim was to give her something that felt positive, to flip a horrendous, brutal heartbreak on its head. You’re feeling all of these really low lows right now, but the grief that you feel now is only a reflection of the love that you felt. Some people go through their whole lives without being in love, and it’s such a special thing to have in your life, even if it is short-lived, it comes and goes.”
To follow on from that, ‘Make It All Better’ and ‘Die Happy’ are about the relationship you’re in at the moment. What’s it like to give yourself to that amazing feeling and convey those emotions?
“They’re talking about the exact same thing, how love can be all-consuming and so powerful. ‘Die Happy’ was really inspired by the season I wrote it in, which was Halloween. I loved Tim Burton movies, his world-building aspect, and I wanted to write my own Tim Burton-esque song about how love can feel really dangerous, and you can love somebody so much that it can be scary. ‘Make It All Better’, I’m really proud of that songwriting. I wanted to romanticise my own life and write in a melodramatic way about love.”
Your sister Eleri was involved with the creative, something you said you threw yourself into more than you’ve had time to in the past. What was that process like?
‘When we wrote the song ‘Cruel World’, that sparked everything and led my sister and I on this crazy tangent. I’ve always been inspired by gothic, dark fairytales. Alice In Wonderland, The Wizard Of Oz and stories about alternative universes where the main character goes into this underworld or upside down to try and escape growing up and avoid reality. The videos tell that story from my point of view, and I feel like ‘Cruel World’ is my own dark fairytale universe that I’ve made with my sister. It was my first time working with a female director [Silken Weinberg]. It’s definitely given me so much more backing and confidence to work with my sister, who knows me better than anybody. I really trust her.”
You’ve moved in with two of your sisters plus a friend, and you’ve never been shy about writing songs about how much you appreciate them. What’s that been like in this house, especially given ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’ was partly written about missing some of these people and holding relationships when you’re halfway across the world?
“We’re all young girls trying to navigate life in our twenties, and it’s really nice to be able to do that alongside each other. My sisters and my friends are so much wiser than I could ever be. I don’t feel the need to leave the house because I’ve got my best friends and favourite people within the house. I think it’s turned ‘Cruel World’ into a very feminine record. The transition from girlhood to adulthood is very scary, and I’m very lucky to be able to do it alongside other girls. My small contribution to what we’ve got going on in our little cult is that I can write songs for everybody. It’s not that great, but everybody needs to know that they’re on the right track sometimes. That’s why ‘Lucy’ and ‘Beauty Pageant’ are really important for me to put out and were really cathartic for me to write.”
Holly Humberstone’s ‘Cruel World’ is out now