U.K. pop singer Lola Young is riding a wave of attention for her neo-soul sounds.
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Lola Young: This Wasn’t Meant for You Anyway Tour
Any way you look at it, the 23 year-old from Croydon was in fine company.
Her 2023 Island Records debut, My Mind Wanders and Sometimes Leaves Completely, firmly established the South Londoner’s brand of gritty, genuine, funky and fun style in slam-dunk singles such as Don’t Hate Me and Black Cab. Now she’s back with This Wasn’t Meant for You Anyway, another collection of scruffy-but-honest bangers like the leadoff single Conceited and disarmingly direct love songs such as Wish You Were Dead.
With a look and delivery that defies manufactured product endorsement-ready brands filling up the pop charts at the moment, Young has a refreshing take-no-guff attitude and honesty in interviews. She attributes her directness partly to her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. It’s a breath of fresh air in chats and creative output.
Young reflected on the constant activity of career building, joking she is growing used to doing laundry “somewhere in Pennsylvania,” before hitting the road once more on her North American tour in support of the new record, which brings her to the Commodore Ballroom this month.
“It’s amazing, it’s mad and, knock on wood, my mental space is good at the moment,” said Young. “When I’m not on the road, I’m in studio making music, because that’s what I love to do more than anything else. I started writing and playing piano age 12, releasing at 18 and have been pretty prolific with my output since.”
Besides the two major label full-length albums, Young has dropped two EPs, the 2019 mini album Intro, and a slew of one-off singles. She occasionally worries that she’s too prolific. But counter that opinion reflecting on today’s music business landscape where social media and streaming platforms encourage putting out as much music as an artist wants.
“I came up right on the turning point from CDs and albums to posting on Spotify and Apple Music and social media,” she said. “Yes, I want to make amazing, enduring albums that are perfect. But I also want to make what I want to make when I want to, and to throw it out there and see what people think. That also becomes an artist’s great body of work.”
Young says arriving at a concept for an album comes from getting those other ideas out of the way so you can focus. This Wasn’t Meant for You Anyway is about love, both good, bad and better. The next one will be another chapter, that won’t start with a song titled Big Brown Eyes suggesting to an ex that they are that colour because they can eat feces.
“I wanted to tell a story of where I was in my life at that time, that moment where I was in a relationship, left it, and quickly jumped into a new one that was also bad or worse,” she said. “Good Books tells the first part — I gave you an ultimatum/It’s me or the weed — to Crush about leading into the next go-round then right up to Messy, Wish You Were Dead and the Outro. Now that I’m single, I see it and the feelings that came with it in very different ways, but that kind of direct, slightly sarcastic lyric writing is something new for me on this album.”
“I’m always there in the room, saying whether I like it or not, because it’s me being recorded,” she said. “But it’s always about a group collaboration, a give and take between everyone involved, brainstorming around a suggested idea and then jamming on it. If the sound forms and feels quite instinctive, like on Wish You Were Dead, then we’ve arrived at it.”
This gives This Wasn’t Meant for You a range from upbeat dives to the solo acoustic ballad You Noticed. Asked if she could see a future all-acoustic album in the works, Young says that was where she started writing in her room as a kid and where she expects her music could go.
Where she doesn’t see her sound progressing is into collaborating with some DJ of the moment on a dance club remix like so many of her peers. Asked why, she just says that style wasn’t meant for her, and laughs.