I’d love to say I’d be a gorgeous elf,” says Holly Humberstone with an impish grin, “but let’s be real: I’d be a f***ing hobbit.” The 2022 Brits Rising Star winner is talking about who’d she be in The Lord of the Rings – she discovered the films aged 15 at a New Year’s Eve party she didn’t want to be at, and has been lost in Tolkien’s universe ever since. “There’s a story called ‘Beren and Lúthien’,” she says. “It’s really, really sad and heartbreaking. That’s maybe my favourite.” She pauses. “The fans will come for me with pitchforks if I get the lore wrong.”
The Lord of the Rings, in its way, explains a lot: the escapism, the dark fairytales, the compulsion to build whole mythologies out of feeling. Cruel World, Humberstone’s second album, is steeped in all of it. Her sound is very much a patchwork: Taylor Swift’s diaristic instincts; Phoebe Bridgers’ arch folk intimacy; vocoders and synths that are pure 1975. Stitching it together is a quavering, gossamer voice that gives even the most festival-ready chorus the texture of a confession.
