Somewhere in the middle of extrovert and introvert sits Holly Humberstone. It’s one of a few dichotomies in which the 23-year-old singer-songwriter operates. A loud stage and a quiet hotel room; the stimulation of social media and the calm introspection of her Notes app; her heart rooted in sisterhood — she’s the second youngest of four sisters — but her reality often alone, traveling for work. On her candid debut album Paint My Bedroom Black, Humberstone is learning to embrace this fluctuation in herself, her emotions, and her music.
She sits in her London bedroom, long wavy brown hair cascading over her shoulders and voice slightly hoarse from shooting the day before, and tells Teen Vogue that Paint My Bedroom Black is a culmination of studio sessions last year, songs forged in rare downtime between shows. “It started to feel like I was living two completely different lives: being out on tour and then getting into my hotel room at night, missing friends and being alone in my head,” Humberstone says of her time on the road, supporting Olivia Rodrigo and girl in red.
Songwriting became a remedy for when the adrenaline petered off and homesickness took over. “It was really important for me to enter the studio whenever I had a day off so I could work through my feelings,” she says.
Humberstone’s debut album captures the raw dichotomy of this pivotal experience, riding pop chorus highs (“Into Your Room”) before coming back to earth with diaristic musings of regret (“Flatlining”) and confessional outpourings of isolation (the interlude “Baby Blues”). Picking up Rodrigo and girl in red fans on her way, Humberstone has this irresistibly appealing lure where her vulnerable lyricism is so specific (“I’ve become a taxidermied version of myself” on “Cocoon” and “You gathered my bones in a blanket / so can we kiss in your swimming pool?” on “Kissing in Swimming Pools”) it should be off-putting but her written watercolor of bleeding emotions is utterly mesmerizing.
This has always been the case. Nearly four years ago Humberstone released her affecting breakthrough single “Deep End.” The debut was followed by a plethora of singles building into EPs Can You Afford To Lose Me and The Walls Are Way Too Thin, a Rising Star Award at the 2022 BRITs, and bucket-list festival gigs at Coachella and Glastonbury.
Though her career is skyrocketing, Humberstone’s lyrics anchor her back home with openhearted candor. If that’s not enough, she can always count on her three sisters to ground her. “If I'm ever running my mouth they’ll be like, ‘Holly, you sound really cocky’,” she says with a fond smile. “It’s kind of creepy, we all look the same, we’re the exact same height and we sound the same and speak the same. We're just like the same person.”
Humberstone grew up in Grantham, Lincolnshire, a rural market town, or as she affectionately refers to it, “craptown.” The feeling isn’t unsubstantiated; Grantham was voted the “worst hometown in Britain.” Her “very supportive” parents work for the NHS and it seems Humberstone has inherited their creative pastimes: her mother (“though she’d never admit it”) is a gifted pianist and cellist while her father is an avid poetry reader (“he loves Leonard Cohen and T.S. Eliot.”) The pairing is perfect: a musical ear and a lyrical heart.
However, Humberstone maintains that any legitimate music career for a girl outside of London with no connections seemed like an utterly unrealistic possibility. She tried university but pinballed between studios with frequent collaborator Rob Milton in Nottingham and London. She then bit the bullet, dropped out, and moved to London to commit to songwriting.
Working in the capital, however, brought its own issues: “The only people that I was really interacting with were forty-year-old men that I'd do sessions with. Nothing wrong with them, all lovely people, it just wasn't my usual crowd.” That isolation became the inspiration that gave way to her 2022 single, “London is Lonely.” This is classic Humberstone: she digs into the depths of feelings and creates haunting melodies which her fanbase of predominantly young women gravitates towards.
Part of that relatability is that sisterhood is a core facet of Humberstone’s identity, from growing up in a household of sisters to coming of age at an all-girls school to finding comfort in her love for her friends. The latter is at the heart of “Lauren,” a track that brings a refreshing look at love through the prism of precious friendship. “I wanted to write love songs for my friends. Being away makes the little time that I do get with them so sacred,” she says. “[“Lauren” explores] feeling not up to scratch to people who I think are amazing and that I always fall short.” I remark to Humberstone that I bet Lauren would refute her declaration. “Yeah, I know. I think she's just gassed that she's got a song,” she laughs.
The record also attentively examines the frayed threads of broken heartstrings. “Flatlining” is a track about “feelings coming back up and not wanting to face guilt and feeling like a shitty person all over again,” Humberstone says. Over a snappy, pulsing heartbeat, she sings: “We just can't be friends anymore / Did I use you ‘til your heart turned black? / Now there’s no coming back from that.” “Flatlining” pokes at the tender bruise of romantic loss and chronicles a turbulent time post-breakup with an ex. It sounds like an ordeal… because it was. “My ex moved in down the street from where I am now. We’ve got the same local pub, it was really like a nightmare and jarring for ages,” Humberstone says, clarifying that they have now “made a truce.”
Baring such vulnerability in the studio and then carrying those emotions on tour with Rodrigo and girl in red became a real test of stamina. “I loved every moment but it got slightly harder to get up and motivate myself to go back [onstage],” Humberstone says. “Like ‘please follow me on Instagram,’ you’re kind of having to beg all these strangers to like your music.”
Out of everything involved in her work, Humberstone pinpoints social media as her least favorite aspect. “I have like a million conversations about social media every single day,” she says. “I had one just before talking to you about ‘you need to be on Instagram posting stuff and make it more authentically you.’ It's just not authentic to be on some sort of app.” Relating to her fans in an authentic manner is what she lives for, but she finds posting candidly a tricky beast. “You pour yourself into the music and make the most personal, heart-on-your-sleeve track, and it’s like: ‘Oh, can you just do a silly little dance to that song you made that’s about something really, really personal’.”
This expectation to give beyond the insight of her music with online posts adds a new requirement of extroversion for Humberstone in a moment when she’s still in a personal and professional evolution. While so many artists are defined by one ‘sound’ and online personalities are watered down to a “brand,” Humberstone is embracing sonic duality with every new release.
“I probably should have an idea, but I’m still discovering who I am. I wake up one day feeling different to how I went to sleep,” Humberstone says. “That shows in this album, each song is a different feeling. I think that’s kind of cool, I’m using my songwriting to take one step closer to knowing myself.”
