It’s 11am on a crisp Wednesday morning. “It’s early,” warns 22-year-old singer/songwriter Lola Young, as she puffs away on her pineapple-ice-flavour vape, wearing a baggy, sold-out Supreme sweater that reads ‘Hey F*ckface’. In this moment, she is the very picture of Gen Z. Her signature lashes poke out from beneath her heavy fringe.
If you’ve entered the realms of TikTok within the past two weeks you will likely have heard Young’s south London accent belting out the lyrics ‘You said I’m really f*cking boring… well, that’s rich coming from you’. The snippet is taken from her latest single, Don’t Hate Me, and has been lip-synched by Bella Hadid, Kylie Jenner, Kehlani and Brooklyn Beckham and Nicole Peltz — as well as more than 138,000 other users. “It’s amazing, I can’t lie,” she says, having just received the Kylie Jenner news. “This response changed my plan. It was never going to be a single, I freestyled the whole thing.”
The full song — her latest single, and the first to catapult her into a new stratosphere of fame — has only been available for a week and it’s already surpassed 1.5m streams on Spotify. “It’s incredible but I need to keep myself grounded. TikTok is a massive part of this success. It’s such a blessing and a curse, it took me a while to find my feet on the platform but now it’s a massive blessing. Now I’m like, ‘wow, this is a platform that can change people’s lives’,’’ she says, as her follower count grows in its thousands every day and the single is picked up around the globe. Her rapid TikTok success even caught the attention of American singer Gayle, who shot to fame last year with her viral track abcdefu. Gayle, having recently been in the same position herself, reached out to Young to offer support.
Born near Crystal Palace to a Jamaican-Chinese father and English mother, she grew up listening to the likes of Prince, Joni Mitchell, D’Angelo, Curtis Mayfield, Leonard Cohen and, more recently, Frank Ocean and SZA. Young’s father used to run salsa nights with her mother, who works for the mental health charity Mind, while her aunt is children’s author of The Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson.
One of the most influential parts of her upbringing? The city. “London has massively influenced my taste, the culture, how little I want to say and how much I want to say, my accent too. You can see this hub of creativity, the blossoming of new artists and the scenes.”
That being said, she’s quick to remember the pitfalls of the capital too, “I was on the Tube yesterday and three people pushed me as I was walking, I turned to the guy and said “people in London are so rude, why are you pushing me!?” London’s a great place to make music but it definitely has its downsides.”
London has massively influenced my taste, the culture, how little I want to say and how much I want to say
Young started writing music at 11, a passion that was nurtured by her parents who took her to numerous gigs and encouraged her endeavours to apply to The Brit School, the performing arts school in Croydon which boasts alumni including Amy Winehouse and Adele, the two singers Young is most often compared to. “I love it, but sometimes it’s like, I am my own person. But they’re also artists that I admire. At the end of the day people want to understand you,”, she says of the comparisons, which have increased since the release of Don’t Hate Me.
With Winehouse hailing from Camden and Adele from Tottenham, it’s to be expected that a singer with such strong London roots would be compared to her predecessors. Especially the former, given that she brought Winehouse’s former manager Nick Shymansky out of retirement. The story goes that Shymansky swore he would never manage another artist after battling to get Winehouse into rehab in 2006. Flashforward 11 years and Shymansky was on his way backstage to meet Young after one of her gigs. He’s managed her ever since. Between then and now she’s been nominated for the Brits’ Rising Star Award, has played Glastonbury, and even landed the 2021 John Lewis Christmas advert (she’s the voice behind the Together in Electric Dreams cover).
At just 22, her list of achievements is vast. But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Just as things started to take off for Young, she was told she needed a major operation. “I had a cyst on my vocal cords two years ago and it’s come back. I had an operation to have it removed but it’s come back and now I’m living with it. I knew something wasn’t quite right because I was getting a dysphonic sound at the top of my register — it crackles.” (she sings a growly ‘aaah’ note to demonstrate).
The news shocks me but she seems chipper. Though the cyst has affected the stamina of her vocal abilities, she’s enjoying experimenting with the new, gravelly tone to her voice. “It gives me a rasp to my voice. When I didn’t have it my voice was like “eeeee”’ — she sings a clean, high-pitched note and winces — “it was so clear, now I’ve got this rasp going on so I really enjoy it, actually.”
My diagnosis is who I am, I’m learning to accept it
During her time at Brit School aged 17, Young was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a rare mental health condition that is marked by a combination of schizophrenia symptoms, which she now talks openly about. “I’m open to talking about it because I think it’s a really important part of who I am. It’s massively affected the project.”
The ‘project’ she mentions is a body of work she’s been privately working on, that sounds like an album — but isn’t, she assures me. “Here’s a cheeky insight,” she teases. “The first song is called Stream of Consciousness, the last is called Chill Out and the project is a note to self. [My diagnosis] is who I am, I’m learning to accept it.”
Barely three months into 2023 and Young already has a hit single; a ‘project’ on the way (with a possible second to follow); a series of shows that are soon to be announced; and generally, a whole lot in store. Life is about to amp up for this 22-year-old, and contrary to what her viral lyrics might suggest, Lola Young is anything but boring.
