Holly Humberstone Talks 'Cruel World,' 'Beauty Pageant' Meanings

B
ack in 2024, Holly Humberstone was sitting in her parents’ home in rural Grantham, England, surrounded by her own heirlooms. The family was selling the home the singer-songwriter had lived in since she was three years-old and, at 26, she was rifling through everything she’d ever owned. From crumbling stacks of CDs — featuring Prince, Paul Simon, Kylie Minogue, and PJ Harvey — to old jewelry boxes, and even her beloved first copy of Brothers Grimm’s Fairytale, every item held countless memories that helped Humberstone shape her second album Cruel World.

“I rediscovered so much about myself that I just had forgotten,” Humberstone tells Rolling Stone. “For that reason, I feel like the whole album just feels so tied to who I am and who I’ve always been.” She’s backstage at the Circuit Kingston in London, a few hours before she will take the stage for her mini, acoustic-only tour where she’s been previewing the new tracks.

Humberstone’s green eyes are bright as she shares how excited she is to return to the stage — and for Cruel World to arrive on April 10. “It’s lovely to come back with a whole fresh set of songs that I really stand behind,” she says. “I feel like a lot of my music until now has felt a little more introspective and internal. This feels a little more sure of itself,” she adds.

Since 2020, the singer-songwriter has become a inescapable rising voice in pop music with diaristic songs that overflow with sincerity. In just a few years, Humberstone has found the perfect audience for her songs opening for Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour tour and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. She’s continued to deliver new music with three buzz-worthy EPs and her excellent 2023 debut Paint My Bedroom Black, flexing her pen on each release.

Below, Humberstone details key tracks from Cruel World — and explains how her childhood memories helped inspired the songs and vivid backdrop of her new chapter.

“Cruel World”

This one came about in the middle of the writing process. I’d written a bunch of songs that I knew that I was obsessed with and really loved, but I didn’t really know how it all fit together yet. And then I wrote “Cruel World” and it just felt like the album made sense to me. I was like, “This feels like it defines everything that I’m going through.” It brought all of the songs that I’d already written into the same sonic and lyrical space and gave me the blueprint to finish the album.

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A huge through line of my album is coming to the realization over the past year and a half that love is this really painful emotion and, it’s obviously the best thing in the world, but it can also be the worst thing in the world at the same time. “Cruel World” is about me working through the chaos of having a long distance relationship and how the whole world around you can look so different just without that one person in it.

“To Love Somebody”

If you have the opportunity to experience love in that real way, even if it didn’t end how you thought it was going to or the way you wanted it to, at least you got to experience that and at least you got to feel real true love… without sounding extremely cringe. The grief that you feel post breakup is just a measure of the love that you experienced. I don’t think you can really see that when you’re in that kind of dark place straight after breaking up with somebody or coming out of a relationship. Writing from my perspective about somebody who’s going through this really close to me, I feel like there’s so much out there in the world waiting for you.

I want to make joyful sounding music because that’s kind of what represents me right now. I want to celebrate being human and feeling all the things that I’ve been feeling over the past two years and the people around me have been going through similar things. A really fun part of the production and creation process is getting to figure out the harmonies that sound expansive and that clash and then resolve in an interesting way or little counter melodies. For me, that’s the part where you get to dress the song up. I love synths and Eighties music and you can hear that all over this song.

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“Die Happy”

I wanted to write a gothic love song for anybody who loves really hard that it’s sometimes scary. I love saying something really simple like, “I love you” in an interesting way. I feel like it’s maybe the most cinematic, visual song on the record. I wrote it around Halloween. I love Halloween movies, not horror films but those dark, gothic, fairytale-esque type stories. I love Tim Burton movies, his world-building skill is just beyond comparison. I was playing a little Tim Burton movie in my head whilst I was writing this song. The chords came before the lyrics and the creepy chord changes were really inspiring to me.

“Beauty Pageant”

I was inspired by this old jewelry box that I found that was broken in my wardrobe in my childhood bedroom. It was broken, but the ballerina in it still spun when I wound her up and the little tune still played and it just felt very nostalgic and strange to hear that. I hadn’t heard since I was a little girl.

There’s never been one specific event that was the catalyst for that song, it’s just been this overarching theme of my life. I feel like I’ve been trapped in this kind of beauty pageant and I’m like, “What’s the goal here? What are we trying to achieve? I just want to be happy and sing my songs.” When I first started working in the music industry, I had a real issue with how I was viewing my peers and other girls. I feel like that just was really heightened and it was something that I struggled with. Then I just realized that it’s all B.S., it’s all stupid and men aren’t held to the same impossible standards that we are. All of us girls are in the same boat, whatever industry you work in. We have to shout louder, we have to look amazing when we show up for work, otherwise we’re not going to be taken seriously.

I feel like I’ve always been in a writing room full of dudes, and I’ve never felt like it was the right time to bring this up because nobody else in the room would be able to relate or understand. But I think it’s important to be candid about the juxtaposition between how I present myself on stage and how we all present ourselves online versus what it’s like in the dressing room after everybody’s gone home or what it’s like on the other side of the screen. It’s far too complicated of an issue to really boil down into three minutes, but it was my attempt to show it from my perspective as a girl in this world that isn’t really built for us.

“Lucy”

I really wanted to do right by my sisters because we’ve kind of raised each other. We all feel like different versions of the same person. I really love this one, it’s one of my favorites on the album because it just encapsulates girlhood and feeling out of your depth, which is something that I think maybe never really leaves you. I feel like it’s a protective song as well, but also a song for myself as well. We’re all [Lucy]. We’re all just trying to figure out how to exist in the modern world that is very, very strange. I also wanted to write a lullaby for young people growing up right now because it is weird and horrific and confusing and scary. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed and to feel helpless and confused about the world around you and what’s going on outside of the house.

“White Noise”

I feel like “White Noise” is the most fun track on the album, even though it’s a song about crying in the club and being a hot mess. It was the last song to be written from the album and I needed a change of scenery. As a creative, I’m extremely affected by my physical surroundings and where I physically am informs the songs and how they sound. I was like, “Let’s go to Nashville and see what Nashville’s got to offer.” It’s just a fun place to be, you can hear how much fun we were having. We went to a band dance and we kind of set out to write just the poppiest pop song that we could.

We were referencing Post Malone, The Weekend, Miley Cyrus. Somehow, it ended up with this infusion of country, which is a sonic space that I’ve never really stepped foot in or tried to because it’s not my comfort zone at all. We were writing in John Green Studio and someone had a little lap steel and started playing it and it sounded kind of like crying and he riffed over the whole thing. We were like, “Great, you’ve turned it into a country song. It sounds fab.” I’m really, really excited for people to hear the recorded version. I’ve been playing it acoustically on this tour and I’m like, “You guys just wait until you hear the real thing.”

“Make It All Better”

There were a few things that I wanted to try out for the intro. I wanted the album to have this circular feeling where it ends where it begins and it kind of just loops around. When we were in the studio recording the strings for “Beauty Pageant” we were like, “Do you guys just want to tune up and we can record you?” That’s where it started. We would just tune up and see what happens. “Make It All Better” starts with this synth sequence and we got them to play through that a couple of times. It just felt like the natural opening to the album, like something’s about to start, take your seats.