You can either spend your teens and twenties following the rules, and have an early midlife crisis in your thirties or forties. Or you do your early adulthood right and live fast and make mistakes. It’s the founding ethos of rock’n’roll and the preferred route of The Regrettes frontwoman turned solo pop artist Lydia Night. “As an artist, I feel like it’s so easily excused to be messy, especially romantically – but only if you write about it,” she says. “It’s making these decisions for art versus for long-term success in life and happiness. And I still don’t know where the line is.”
That line is being increasingly scrambled in today’s chaotic mainstream pop space, whether it’s Charli xcx’s visceral party anthems, Chappell Roan’s queer messiness or Sabrina Carpenter’s devilishly coy sexual provocations. Rarely does it come from a performer who has built a million social media followers of genuine fans purely from touring the world, cutting her teeth for years on bills with rock and alternative artists like Twenty One Pilots and Yungblud. But now Night, 24, has dropped the guitars and rock band members and has her sights set on being a pop girl, albeit a left-field one, with minimal production and maximum attitude.
