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Lola Young never intended to be a TikTok phenom. And yet, if you thumb through the app right now, there’s a solid chance your entire timeline will be deploying her 2024 megahit “Messy” to soundtrack their daily moments of mundanity. What makes a soul-pop song by a 24-year-old from South London resonate with anyone from a viral hairstylist from Las Vegas to a Houston-based baker to a nepo baby in Los Angeles?
Perhaps it’s simply that her breakout single is shitting all over the self-help industrial complex that powers so many other clips on the app. “OK, so yeah, I smoke like a chimney/I’m not skinny and I pull a Britney every other week/But cut me some slack, who do you want me to be?” she vents, ramping up to the catchy, expletive-laden hook that’s catapulted her here: “A thousand people I could be for you, and you hate the fucking lot.”
In 2024, Young secured a second BRIT Awards nomination, a Number One hit on the U.K. charts, and a prominent guest appearance on Tyler, the Creator’s Chromakopia. Less than a decade earlier, she was an earnest teen armed with an acoustic guitar and her own writing at open mic competitions. Young easily set herself apart from more than 9,000 others at Open Mic UK, a national live music contest, with an original song entitled “Never Enough” in 2016. Three years of performing in similar contests and local gigs later, she was signed by Island Records after graduating the BRIT School, where past alumni includes Amy Winehouse and Adele — two artists to whom her cavernous vocals, lyrical candor, and endearing cackle have long invited comparisons. It’s no wonder Winehouse’s former manager, Nick Shymansky, left retirement to represent her, and Nick Huggett, who signed Adele, followed suit.
Since then, Young hasn’t stopped releasing music, all leading up to her second album, This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway, last May. Across 10 tracks, Young wittily indulges her insecurities, rails against narcissistic exes, and embraces unrepentant vulnerability, all with gusto. On “Intrusive Thoughts,” she speaks softly to her brain over scratchy chords. Then, on the percussion-forward “Good Books,” she issues an ultimatum to an emotionally unavailable lover: “It’s me or the weed.” There are tinges of reggae, a tad bit of folk, and heaps of heart. Young manages it all with a maturity beyond her years. The release amassed more admiration among critics, industry peers, and personal heroes like SZA, who keeps singing Young’s praises on Instagram. And, of course, there’sTikTok, where she currently has 1.6 million followers. She’s not bothered about that, though.
“I think you can get bogged down in the social media aspect of things, but there’s so many artists who have millions and millions and millions of followers on TikTok, then they can’t sell tickets,” she says.
“This is not just about TikTok. It has to transcend. And that’s what I think I’m hopefully doing, to a certain degree: Transcending a moment that can be really fleeting and making it something that’s tangible.”
For rising artists like Young hoping to strike a chord, there might be a sad irony in breaking America via TikTok. If a Kardashian lip-syncs your chorus online, it’s inevitable that many observers will reduce your years of sacrifice to “overnight success” or “a moment.” Make no mistake, Young appreciates all of the praise. It’s just that her ascent didn’t start yesterday. And she’s much too savvy to conflate one viral sensation with staying power. Lately, her mind has been trained on how to beat the algorithm, the industry, and the attention span of the average listener. She has much more to say about the mess.
When we speak, Young says she’s working on a new album that will include more uptempo songs that play like an amalgam of genres, and the kind of confessional, occasionally caustic lyrics that have become her calling card. If her tone of voice and the speed at which she shares is any indication, she couldn’t be more excited.
“The new album is going to be a lot more about my personal struggle and less so about love,” Young says. “There’s some real bangers on there. I can’t say too much, but I can say that this feels like a step up.”
The personal struggles she mentions have included a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder at age 17. Young has been open about its effect on her mental health for years; in 2022, she wrote on Instagram, “I have crazy fucking highs (mania) and immense lows and even both at the same time…. It’s like breaking a leg, it’s physical and it hurts. Society just isn’t at a place to understand that yet.”
“It’s very important that I’ve been open about it because it’s given the leeway for other people to be open about it and the drive for other people to reach out and say how much it has helped them,” she tells me now. She cites the occasional episodes that have taken place in front of collaborators, and how writing through them has resulted in some of her most raw work to date.
How does she parse out what’s for public consumption and what’s to remain sacred amid all the new attention? Her answer snaps all the comparisons to Winehouse into sharp focus.
“Well, everything should be for public consumption unless it’s offensive. But I don’t even think offensive really matters, because art should never be offensive,” Young says. “I believe that everything that I say should be honest, should be true, and should be something that I’ve experienced, or someone close to me has experienced that I’m taking from.”
Songwriting, she adds, is “the only place” she can be truly herself. That’s something she plans to take with her in the next chapter, and why wouldn’t she? It’s worked well professionally, but personally, too. As her career has grown, she’s created a community online, where commenters feel safe enough to share that her writing “saved” them, and IRL, where audiences are free to contest conventions side-by-side with her.
“I think that’s the whole purpose of why I make music, is to make people feel like they belong somewhere,” she says. “That’s what I want people to feel. I understand them, and millions of other people do, too.”
This year, Young will tour Europe and the U.K., debut at Coachella, and prepare her next release. Given she preached the power of a new hairdo when she last spoke to Rolling Stone backstage at Lollapalooza in August, I can’t help but ask what cut will be most emblematic of the year ahead.
“I used to be that bitch that was like, ‘I’m not cutting my hair,’ and I had some awful bob with little straggly bits — I’m exaggerating,” Young said at the time. “But when people say, when you cut your hair it changes things, especially for a woman…. I think that can be really important to create a transitional stage. It’s a turning point. You go, ‘Actually, hang on, I can be who I want to be.’”
Now, Young is thinking something even more drastic than her current streaked shag. “I want extensions, like super long, blonde hair,” she tells me. “Like how Doja Cat had it at Coachella. But I don’t know if it’s gonna happen yet, because obviously it’s going to be a lot of money to get my hair dyed, and then get long extensions…”
When I tell her I suspect money probably won’t be a problem in the future, she lets out a hearty laugh, hinted with disbelief: “That’s funny.”
