Hemlocke springs has one of the most brilliantly fantastical and creative minds of any pop star right now. For Naomi Udu, though, the persona is a reaction against the rather more sedate pastures of her day-to-day life. “I’m pretty boring, unfortunately,” she laughs. “I wake up and have some hot water, not too hot, but you’ve got to get something to warm the insides. I go to the gym and come back and do some meetings and social stuff. I watch some anime when I have downtime, and then I go to sleep. It’s really boring. Maybe that’s why I can be so imaginative. Urghh, give me something.”You get the sense, though, that Naomi is selling herself just a tad short. Perhaps it’s something like the Superman scenario where the inconspicuous civilian morphs into the larger-than-life superhero. If hemlocke springs is Naomi’s superhero persona, then we’re now past the origin story of her early buzzy singles back in 2022, and we’re in full show-stopping blockbuster mode as she exhibits her full range of dazzling powers on her debut album, ‘the apple tree under the sea’.hemlocke springs is an artist who can appeal across genres and styles. As she released more and more music and began to understand what the project could be, the vision for the pop star from Raleigh, North Carolina, began to appear for Naomi. A juxtaposition between weirdness and accessibility that strikes a perfectly odd balance. “I’m going for alt pop star,” she pronounces. “I’m going to manifest that for myself. There were certain times when I wanted things to be equally catchy and experimental. That’s the way that I would like to grow. I know that I’m capable of making a straight-up pop song, but my goal as hemlocke is to grow and expand in different musical genres. The only way to do that is to experiment. I’m a pop girl at heart, though, so I have to experiment, but with a level of this is hitting, and this is something that I would sing.”
“I’m a pop girl at heart”
Naomi has an infectious excitement as she talks a mile a minute about anything and everything that enters her head. It was these qualities that made her such an exciting arrival when she first appeared with a stunning flash of kaleidoscopic colour and a clutch of knockout pop bangers. Now, a few years into the process, the realisation of what it actually takes to be a pop star has tempered that excitement just a little. Things are now very real. “It’s been a bit tumultuous,” she admits. “I’m not saying I haven’t had fun in the process, but now being hemlocke and taking on that role, the rose-coloured glasses are off. I get how people were talking about how, ‘Oh my gosh, this industry is tough’. I heard it when I was just studying and thought, ‘Yeah, yeah’, but I get it now, and I understand. I’ve been able to just build habits so I can protect myself and have a team that understands me, and that’s been very cool. I know now that if you don’t have that wall, it can be very tough and very hard.”“I definitely think more,” she continues, pondering her changed circumstances. “It’s weird. I feel like, if anything, the process has gotten tougher. Oh, I’m contractually obligated to make songs and music only has so much money to give people, so you then think, how do you live? It’s tough to be freely creative while thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I need all this’. It’s tough to balance those thoughts sometimes. I’ve had to shut the economic side of things out. That’s been a hard thing to do.”There’s nothing that crystallises your thoughts more for an artist than releasing your debut album. ‘the apple tree under the sea’ is a wildly ambitious collection that is an engrossing concept record. Except Naomi didn’t quite realise that at the time. “I didn’t really think of the concept until the end. I thought of it as a collection of good songs, and as I started telling the story behind it, I realised there actually was a story behind it. I think in one interview somebody said it was a concept album, and I was like, yeah! Of course it is. I knew that from the start,” she laughs.
The concept that blossomed came from Naomi’s childhood growing up in a religious family with two Nigerian parents. The album is about desire and escapism. Finding yourself and embracing your originality. “My parents are Nigerian, and that in itself is rooted in a lot of tradition,” she explains. “They are really religious. I feel that, being raised in such an environment at the time, I didn’t really think much about it, but during that time, I started creating songs and stuff, and went to college and really expanded, and I was like, ‘Oh, maybe you’ve been going through something girl’, which makes sense. I feel like I’m not a very traditional person, so there were parts of me that were suppressed, but it came out in song format. A good part of the album is me working with those thoughts. I don’t live at home anymore. I live in LA. I’m not in the church anymore. I’m just around. It’s kind of like a recap for me. Here are your thoughts at the time, and now you’re out in the world, and you’re out and about, how do you feel? It’s a rebirth of myself.”Naomi’s rebirth into hemlocke springs allows her to enter another world. A world where she does things that you don’t really hear other pop stars do. Take her lyrics, for example. hemlocke springs is smart. Very smart. And she’s not afraid to show it as she peppers her fizzing 80s synth-pop-flecked anthems with brilliantly creative and florid lyrics like the line in ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Ankles’ where she sings ‘She’ll wander far and wide from the garden of Eden to the tenebrous festered corners of your bed.’ It’s as if William Shakespeare grew up on a diet of TikTok, reality TV, anime and fizzy sweets.“I read a lot of Wattpad when I was younger, and the things I would read on there were crazy but very creative. I would not make this, but I feel like I was able to adopt that mindset when writing these songs. I’m not sure if anybody would put these words together, but I’m me, and that some person is another person. If you like it, then that’s all that matters.”
It’s often the case that the greatest pop characters don’t quite realise what it is that makes them so brilliant. They are just themselves. Dizzyingly creative and idiosyncratic to others, but run-of-the-mill ordinary to themselves. “I would like to say I’m different from a lot of the artists who are popular right now, but I don’t really consider myself to be different,” says Naomi as she examines the current pop landscape in which she will be releasing her album. “We’re all striving towards the same goal of making great music that touches people. I would like to say I’m a little bit warghhh, actually, that’s not a word, what’s the word for warghhh? Unique? Yes, I’d love to say I’m a little bit unique, but that’s for other people to decide.”A big part of hemlocke’s success is her social media persona, as she has expanded and developed the hemlocke springs persona for the modern pop age. Not that she has particularly noticed this herself. “I’d love to say I’ve been able to cultivate this great character and blah, blah, blah, but honestly, I’ve been able to fuck around and try new things and do whatever comes to me and not think about it,” she laughs.“I’m in a place where I can be very open with my friends,” she continues. “I can quite literally take a shit, and people will go… Actually, no, that’s weird, but I’m in that space. Maybe after the album is out, I’ll take a few steps back, but right now I’m in a really open space where I can do anything. The world is my oyster.”hemlocke springs is full of contradictions. An artist with a grand theatrical vision who really is just instinctive and impulsive and brilliantly happenstance. All the best pop moments happen by accident, and her fantastical world is proof that planning and organisation are overrated. “I don’t really think about a lot of things, which is weird because you might feel that I do,” laughs Naomi as she encapsulates the vision of hemlocke springs. Don’t think about it. Just do it. Anything is possible. ■Taken from the March 2026 issue of Dork. hemlocke springs’ album ‘the apple tree under the sea’ is out 13th February.
