“I want to provide a safe, otherworldly space where people can get lost,” Holly Humberstone tells Apple Music. “My own world where all of this music and all of these stories can exist. Music for me is such an escape from the realities of life, which these days are scary, harsh and brutal.” Enter, then, her second album Cruel World, on which Humberstone explores the rush of new love, heartache and the growing pains she’s felt as a young woman and an artist against the most confident music she’s created yet. That assurance came, she says, from reconnecting with herself as she was making this record; first, by standing still after years of near-constant touring and second, through clearing out her family home after it was sold. (The beloved house has been so inspiring to Humberstone that it’s practically become a character in its own right in her music; see 2021 track “Haunted House”.) “So much of my identity is rooted there,” says Humberstone of where she grew up. “I found all of my old stuff and was like, ‘Oh wait, this is actually me.’ I feel like I just had forgotten so much about myself.” Cruel World arrives six years after the Midlands singer-songwriter first started releasing music, and after a steady ascent that’s seen her win fans in Olivia Rodrigo, girl in red and Taylor Swift (who invited her on The Eras Tour in summer 2024), as well as a BRIT Rising Star Award in 2022. After everything she’s achieved, this is the album, she says, that looks and sounds like what she thought she’d make back when she was 11. Featuring an organic palette, warm synths, plenty of pop sensibility and lyrics that are as incisive as they are tongue-in-cheek, Cruel World is loose, liberated—and a lot of fun. “I didn’t feel like I had any boundaries or any limits,” says Humberstone. “There was nothing to stop me from experimenting and trying to redefine myself.” Escape into the singer-songwriter’s world and let her guide you through it, one track at a time. “So It Starts…” “I was a junior associate at The Royal Ballet School when I was about eight. My first ever experience of being on stage was in the Royal Opera House and it was crazy. Being in a theatre is such a gorgeous, sensory experience and the sound of the orchestra tuning up is the best sound in the world to me. I wanted this to feel like you’re sitting down to watch a play or a ballet or see a gig. You’re taking your seats and the show’s about to begin.” “Make It All Better” “This was the quickest song to write on the album. It felt natural and sort of fell out. At the time I was fresh into a new relationship. It’s about wanting to protect and nurture something special, while also romanticising it and dreaming of what the future might hold.” “To Love Somebody” “I wrote this after somebody really close to me went through a devastating heartbreak. When you’re in the depths of that, you can’t see the silver lining—that this could be a positive thing for you and that this is growth. I read the situation as, ‘You’re so down bad, but the grief you’re feeling is a measure of the love that you experienced.’ I wanted to give her an affirmation that this is only one tiny blip in the story—this blue and green ball just keeps spinning and you have so much more waiting for you.” “Cruel World” “It’s about a long-distance relationship and how your whole perception of the world around you can look so different when that one person is missing. We [Humberstone alongside regular collaborators Rob Milton and Benjamin Francis Leftwich] were picturing being in a club where all these couples around you are making out—it just reminds you how alone you are. This song is also cheeky and fun. It’s the euphoric feeling that comes with being in love, matched with some darker-toned lyrics.” “Die Happy” “I feel like this is the most cinematic, visual song on the record. It was around Halloween when we wrote this—I feel like Halloween, for some reason, has always been assigned to me. I love spooky things, like we reference Bela Lugosi, who was in the original Dracula film, and I’m a huge fan of Lana Del Rey, who does this kind of spooky, ethereal, kind of feminine, ghostly [thing]. We were just having fun with it. I wanted to write a song for people who love so hard that it kind of scares them at times. There’s a danger and darkness in love. It’s just a spooky love story for any goth couples out there.” “White Noise” “I felt like I needed a change of scenery so we went to Nashville. I fully immersed myself in the culture and you can hear that. This is a straight-down-the-line, shameless pop song with little ripples of country music running through it. And it’s just a drunk girl in a club singing along to whatever the DJ’s playing—we’ve all been there. We [Milton, Jon Green and Nashville-based songwriter Mikky Ekko] were referencing Post Malone, Miley Cyrus, The Weeknd and, of course, Kacey Musgraves.” “Lucy” “This song is a lullaby for Lucy, but also for myself. I felt like I needed to hear it. It’s a hug in a song: you’ve got this, you’re on the right track. It’s for any young girl who doesn’t really know where they fit in in a world that isn’t really shaped for us. I don’t think that feeling ever goes away, it’s just something that you learn to make peace with.” “Red Chevy” “I did my last show of 2024 and had been in America for a long time. I came home, went straight into the studio, and wrote this. It was before I knew what the album was or how I wanted it to sound, just a first stab in the dark. To me, this feels like the bridge between Paint My Bedroom Black and Cruel World. It’s also a bit of cheeky, sexy song. It was the first time I felt I could express that side of myself—I felt empowered and ready.” Drunk Dialling” “This is just a bit of fun. We’ve all been in the situation where you’re desperate for someone’s attention and they just couldn’t give less of a fuck about you. This one sounds like the concoction of horny and sad and also unrequited love—and I feel like this is the one where I’m just taking the piss out of myself as much as possible.” “Peachy” “For me, no album is complete without a deconstructed piano ballad. It’s about being emotionally responsible for somebody else’s feelings—I personally don’t feel responsible enough as a person to be holding that much of somebody’s heart. This song feels like the follow-up to my song ‘Friendly Fire’ [from 2021’s The Walls Are Way Too Thin EP].” “Blue Dream” “This was never meant to be anything too serious. The inspiration behind the song is quite simple: my boyfriend was in LA working on an album and was smoking Blue Dream. It’s about how love can feel psychedelic. Blue is such an evocative colour for me: It’s peace and love and nature, but it’s also a sad colour. And the two things existing in the same space felt like such a big theme of the album.” “Beauty Pageant” “It sounds like the curtains closing and going into my dressing room at the end of a show, taking all my makeup off and sitting with myself in the silence after everybody’s left. I wanted to talk about my experience of being a woman—and how I feel like prettiness and the stamina to keep going, to show up and have a smile on your face, and to deliver and perform is currency for all of us—no matter what what line of work we’re in. I’ve been pitted against my female friends and my sisters and I had such an issue when I started releasing music with the way I viewed other female artists. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit that, but our society is built so that we’re pitted against each other. This song is about the juxtaposition between how we present ourselves on stage or online versus behind closed doors. And the actual struggle to stay relevant and to stay pretty and to stay young.”