Holly Humberstone is the real deal

Dive into HOLLY HUMBERSTONE’s debut album, ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’, where raw emotions and relatable experiences create a musical sanctuary.

Words: Neive Campbell.
Photos: Bryce Glenn.

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“Here’s to new horizons,” sings Holly Humberstone on the opening line of her debut album’s titular track, ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’. Emerging from possibly the most hectic year of her life, Holly has come face to face with newness time and time again – new cities, new people, new emotions, new heartbreak, new love. Navigating those things hasn’t always been easy, but for the 23-year-old, writing proved a balm for those darker times. On ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’, Holly invites you to step into that whirlwind with her, to block the rest of the world out and hear exactly what she has to say. 

Spending much of the last year away from home on back-to-back support tours, Holly found herself in a weird situation. Struck by the knowledge of how lucky she was and yet hyper aware of how much she missed home and her loved ones, it became difficult to grapple with the chaos of what was happening. As she has always done, Holly turned to her writing.

“I think a lot of people journal and try to touch base with their families, but I find it really hard,” Holly admits. “I don’t have the capacity for it at the end of a long day of work or travelling. I tend to make notes or voice notes throughout the day or even at night when I’ve shut the door and I’m in my hotel room on my own. If I have ideas, I write a lot of it down and then when I have time, I’ll go into the studio and flesh the ideas out a little bit more. It can be quite alienating, and I think writing in the last year has been a process of trying to figure out how to look after myself and try to preserve my mental health.” 

Somewhere amidst these tours, the album began to come together – across different cities, continents, and worlds, in hotel rooms and studios as and when it was possible. Bit by bit, Holly unloaded the weight of what she was feeling into her lyrics, and soon a story took shape. 

“A few weeks into a tour, you start feeling like nothing is real,” Holly explains. “Nothing is constant; everything is changing every day, apart from the people you’re with and the music you’re playing. There’s a lyric on one song on the album, ‘Ghost Me’, and it says: “The more I see, the less I know / this feels like the Truman Show”. That lyric, for me, really rings through. Everything starts to blur and feel like an alternate reality after a while. Writing helped me to stay grounded.”

Part of that came in the things Holly was actually writing. That narrative that takes hold is not necessarily one of empty hotel rooms and a constantly hectic schedule. Instead, Holly found herself attempting to bridge the gap between herself and her loved ones in different places. The story of ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’ could be any 23-year-old’s – it brims with all the cornerstones of navigating that period, as Holly glanced at the things she was missing back home and chronicled those moments more than ever. 

“I can’t stress enough how cool it is to be able to travel and do all these things,” Holly acknowledges. “But the stuff that I’m writing about that people will connect to is the real stuff. Relationships and my friends, my sisters, the feelings of being away from people and feeling like I’m neglecting things back at home and missing people. Real stuff like that, I feel like everybody will connect to it in some way.” 

Since her very first release, that truthfulness has drawn people to Holly’s music. Reassuring your sister that you’re there regardless on ‘Deep End’, coaxing your best friend through a breakup with ‘Scarlett’, feeling out of your depth and out of your comfort zone with ‘The Walls Are Way Too Thin’. For many of her listeners, Holly’s music has offered solidarity and assurance that she is on the same page – these things are not yours alone to deal with. ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’ offers that kinship tenfold. It’s woven into the fabric of the album, holding it together even when it adventures in various directions. It’s something that maintains a string of hope and love even in the darkest moments, and that string is, of course, first braided into the tapestry of the album in its title-track. 

“I feel like everybody will connect to the album in some way”

Holly Humberstone

“So much has changed since I last released music,” Holly reflects. “It’s that thing of wanting to feel like you’re on a new chapter. ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’ came about halfway through the writing process, and as soon as we wrote it, I felt like it had to be a really important track in the album. It felt like such a ‘fuck it’ release, like the ultimate serotonin hit. It isn’t really about anybody; it’s more for myself. It felt like something I needed to write to let go of all this shit I was feeling. It’s about letting go of the shit that is holding me back and all the stresses and pressure that I’m constantly putting on myself. For that reason, I felt like it summed up the whole album. It just felt so fucking therapeutic to write.” 

The track bounces into being – despite the dark image conjured by its title, it’s closer to the feeling of the sun first breaking through on a morning when you wake up and realise everything is actually going to be okay. “I’m gonna bottle up this feeling / Now with the windows down, I am reborn,” she sings. It’s that new page she was chasing – one of light and joy and freedom to chase what you want above all else. The album immediately opens with straight-up release. 

Life is not linear, though, and neither is the album. Like any 23-year-old, Holly has multitudes to her – that freeing, high-chasing version of herself does not exist in permanence. Moods ebb and flow, there are as many lows as there are highs, and it was important for ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’ to accurately reflect that in its quest to document this year in Holly’s life. Somewhere along the way, it became clear that the album was divided between these two versions of the self. 

“There are definitely two separate sides to it,” Holly explains. “On one side, with ‘Antichrist’ and ‘Into Your Room’, it feels like a release, like my extroverted self. Other songs, like ‘Room Service’ and the other half of the album, feel like my introverted self, wanting to shut things out and forget about everything and fuck everything off.”

Of course, everyone flits between the two, and the album is a true reflection of that, both sonically and lyrically. ‘Cocoon’ craves intimacy, the comfort of someone else to help you through a rough patch – despite its bright guitar line and catchy hook, it’s a particularly stirring moment. The increasing pace of the guitar throughout perfectly captures that feeling of keeping yourself frantically busy to avoid dealing with something that lingers over you. The repeated mantra of “I’m just going through something” – which was almost the album’s title – is an incessant part of that spiral. 

Immediately followed by ‘Kissing In Swimming Pools’, the mood could not be more different. In a Mazzy Star-esque cascade of guitars, Holly shares perhaps her most romantic track yet; it’s a moment that is intrusively tender, her voice at its most gentle and overflowing with love. It’s a stark contrast from the moments preceding it, but a glorious one nonetheless. Those wildly different emotions co-exist for us all, and Holly immaculately documents how they sit side by side.

“Sharing so much of myself and who I am has been something that I’ve had to navigate over the last few months and years since I’ve been releasing music,” she notes. “Everybody has a couple of sides; nobody is one thing. I feel like this album listening back is sort of all over the place. It’s such a mishmash of random sounds and feelings and whatever I was feeling in the moment, we just did. Whatever me and Rob [Milton, her longtime producer] felt was good, we went with; we didn’t think too much about how all the songs would fit together. It’s honest and the truth. People who have their sound down and their thing nailed, I’m really jealous of. I feel like I’m a different person when I wake up every single day, and I want to do something different. The one thing that will be the same is the lyrics and that I can be vulnerable in them. It’s become really cool and empowering. Everyone feels things really deeply, and it’s a really empowering thing to share with people.” 

It may seem to Holly that it is a bit all over the place, but that’s part of the album’s charm. Anyone with a mildly chaotic stream of thought will recognise that feeling of jumping from idea to idea, spiralling into something entirely unrelated but still as keenly felt in seconds. Though the mood is in constant motion, there is that string of words and emotions running throughout that is intrinsically Holly. At times, her songs provide her the opportunity to say the things she can’t out loud, to work through feelings that have built up over time until they are nearly overflowing. Under the lights and warmth of the studios she built this album in, those emotions were finally unleashed.

“The more gut-wrenching I can make it for myself, the more satisfying it is when it comes out”

Holly Humberstone

“I push things to the back of my head as much as I can, so I don’t have to think about them and don’t have to properly confront how I’m actually feeling about stuff,” shares Holly. “I try and not really think. I feel like loads of people are really good at staying in touch with their emotions, but I find it really hard. I try not to think about stuff until the moment I get into the studio. That’s how I’ve always done stuff. A lot of the time, I also feel like I’m not great with conversations and words. In a writing session with people I trust, I can pick through my thoughts and find the best way to say things without having to be stressed in that moment. I can properly word things in the way I want to and take control of what I want to say.” 

In a sense, it seems the best way to understand Holly is through her music; her thoughts at their rawest. It’s another level of vulnerability, where her loved ones have her feelings and words to them immortalised in song. With every confession soundtracked by the luscious indie-pop beats Holly excels at, it’s made more palatable. 

“There are songs about my friend Lauren on the album, where there were so many things I wanted to say, and I didn’t feel I could articulate in a phone call or a conversation. Getting it into a song is my way of telling people things, and being able to send her the songs is better than having a conversation with her and explain shit. Everything comes out wrong for me.”

The track in question, aptly named ‘Lauren’, is a late-night escapade, a pulsing drum beat bearing witness to acknowledgements of a friendship growing distant and desperately bringing it back to life. It admits every fault of her own and attempts to make amends through a nostalgic twilight jaunt through beloved memories of Rock City nights out and dropping everything for a friend. ‘Baby Blues’, a stripped-back moment for Holly’s ethereal vocals to shine, is another track for Lauren – time and time again, her closest confidantes and loved ones are embedded into the album’s fabric, drawing it closer and closer to Holly’s heart.

Often, those connections are brought to life in specificity – rewatching The O.C., a first kiss under a streetlight, sticky floors of a dive bar, singing ‘Angels’ at karaoke. The hallmarks of your early twenties are brought to life with every word Holly sings. At points, she allows this to extend further. ‘Ghost Me’ includes a voice note quoting a Spongebob meme known and loved by all, and it’s that subtle humour amongst the heartache that makes the album resonate even harder. 

“I wrote this song called ‘Elvis Impersonators’, and to me, that’s the most personal song on the album,” Holly decides. “I wrote it about my sister living in Tokyo and being quite far away. When I’m writing about personal stuff, I love adding as many personal, heartbreaking details in there as I can. The more gut-wrenching I can make it for myself, the more satisfying it is when it comes out and for other people to hear. The more I can expose myself, the better.”

‘Elvis Impersonators’ feels like a sonic fist tightening around your heart. Placed in the depths of the experience, the images of her sister play out as though in a snow globe, where Holly watches from above. It’s filled with heartache and sheer, inescapable adoration and love. Like much of the album, there’s a real cut-open, say-it-how-it-is nature to the song: no depth of emotion is too much. Somewhere in that process of repressing her thoughts until the minute she stepped into a studio, Holly allowed everything to come out bolder and brighter than it ever might have. It explodes onto the track, completely unmasked and largely untouched. 

“I try not to think too much or get in my head too much about what I’m doing,” considers Holly. “I just try to be as honest and be as vulnerable as possible and as real as I can with the lyrics. I never try to overanalyse my lyrics or rewrite stuff. That’s really hard for me. We don’t really touch much production stuff after we’re done. Mostly, all of the songs you’ll hear are demos, with a few added little bits. They are supposed to be what they are on the day. I don’t think I’ve ever gone back and changed lyrics after we’ve written it. It’s always been just how it is in the moment. The demo is always the best.”

That impulsivity ensures that these songs are exactly what needed to be made and say exactly what needed to be said. Whether that’s a promise to bunker down and be there for a loved one, or treating someone badly, or overthinking the early parts of a relationship, Holly gives space for her thoughts in their most original, authentic form. Chasing that truth was crucial on ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’, even when it didn’t come as easily.

“Being able to trust myself, always, is when I get the best results”

Holly Humberstone

“A way of dealing with shame and things like that is by putting humour into my writing and being a bit self-deprecating,” recognises Holly. “That’s my way of dealing with it. ‘Antichrist’ and ‘Flatlining’ were both about the same situation and feeling like I didn’t have spare energy for somebody – hurting somebody you really care about. It’s about taking accountability for being a bit shitty and not being there for somebody who really deserves it and treating people like shit, which we all do unintentionally.” 

‘Flatlining’ feels like a completely new direction for Holly: erratic beats, building towards a true frenzy where it seems the words won’t quite come out quick enough. Though it is an unpredictable turn for Holly, that tumultuous, feverish outpouring returns it home. Her truth persists, and centring that in the process was vital – it allowed her to extend musically into different worlds, knowing hers will remain spinning.

“Being able to trust myself, always, is when I get the best results,” Holly concludes. “When I’m trusting myself, not trying to be anything, not trying to be anyone, just being myself. I also think there are so many people that I feel like I have to impress and deliver for, and I honestly have learnt to stop giving a shit about what everyone else thinks, and to trust myself above everybody else, and trust Rob. I trust my manager and my core team. I think that I’ll know, deep down, if it’s a good song. At the end of the day, when I’m an old lady looking back, I want to be like, ‘I made myself proud, and I still love this music and connect to it; I wasn’t trying to fit into any boxes or any mould, I was just doing my thing’. Hopefully, the authenticity will come through in it. Whether it is a sky-rocket success, at the end of the day, it won’t matter if I’m really proud of it. For myself, for my friends, my family and the people who are connecting to it, that’s kind of all that matters.” 

It’s hard to see how Holly wouldn’t be proud of it. She recently shared a video of a girl at one of her shows getting emotional at one of her tracks. It’s not an isolated moment – over the past few years, Holly’s music has come to mean a lot to her listeners. It’s a musical invite to your friends, an assurance that someone is with you each step of the way and you will get through this, whatever it may be. On ‘Paint Your Bedroom Black’, Holly Humberstone continues to do exactly that. It’s the extension of a pinkie finger, an oath to stay by her listeners’ sides for as long as they remain by hers – with such a brilliant debut, it’s hard to imagine they’ll do anything but that. ■

Taken from the October 2023 edition of Dork. Holly Humberstone’s album ‘Paint Your Bedroom Black’ is out 13th October.