Interview: Holly Humberstone
Holly Humberstone
As Holly Humberstone releases her new single ‘Please Don’t Leave Just Yet’ co-written with The 1975’s Matt Healy, alongside the announcement of her second EP ‘The Walls Are Way Too Thin’. Philip Giouras chats with Humberstone to find out more.
2021 has been an incredible year for 21-year old, Lincolnshire singer-songwriter Holly Humberstone. She started off as runner-up in the highly coveted BBC Sound of 2021 list and things only snowballed from there; picking up plaudits from The Guardian + NME, being selected as Apple’s Up Next artist, performing on Jools Holland and James Corden, collaborating with Matt Healy, and even being nominated for a prestigious Ivor Novello award.
As she prepares to release her second EP ‘The Walls Are Way Too Thin’, Philip Giouras caught up with Humberstone to discuss writing with The 1975, preparing to perform her first headline tour, playing packed out festival stages and her death-defying music videos.
“I find it really hard to believe that there are actual physical people out there that are fans and that like my music because I haven't seen them. It's really weird,” Holly Humberstone tells me over Zoom. Such is the life of a pop star in a pandemic that despite hundreds of millions of streams, high profile TV performances and a series of shows that have been sold out for months (if not over a year in some cases) she has yet to see a fan in person. This is because as she explains to me she’s “never done a headline show before. So I've never seen any proof that these people really exist”.
That however is all about to change because as you read this Humberstone will be in the middle of a four night run at London’s strikingly beautiful and snug Omeara, an intimate venue that perfectly encapsulates her dark, atmospheric, and poetic brand of Pop. The venue and upcoming tour may be the first and last chance fans get to see Humberstone playing such tiny locations as she’s already got significant slots at upcoming festivals, a headline show at Shepherd’s Bush and even a support slot for London Grammar next week, as well as one with George Ezra at Finsbury Park next year pencilled in.
The much anticipated live shows are in support of Humberstone’s upcoming EP ‘The Walls Are Way Too Thin’ due to be released on November 5th. It was announced last week alongside the release of new single ‘Please Don’t Leave Just Yet’. A track Holly tells me she “wrote during a time I was kind of lonely. I was living in London in this little flat, I didn’t really have many people there that I could rely on, and I had left all my friends, family and my sisters further up north… London is just so full of people, it’s so chaotic and I just remember becoming quite introverted. Every time I saw somebody, like one of my friends I’d latch on to them and not really want them to leave because of that feeling after somebody goes and you’ve had such a nice time with them, then suddenly it’s silent and you’re kind of alone with your thoughts… it just wasn’t really a good time”. She took those feelings with her when she went into the studio and channeled them into the track, something that became a healing process for her “I went into the studio and we wrote this song and I remember it just being such a sigh of relief to put all of those things that I was going through into a song that I really loved, and something that I really liked the sound of. It was just seriously massively therapeutic for me”.
“ I remember it just being such a sigh of relief to put all of those things that I was going through into a song that I really loved”
The track itself, which Humberstone says is “one of her favourites” was co-written with none other than The 1975’s Matt Healy, someone who Humberstone credits as “writing the soundtrack to a lot of what I was listening to growing up”. Whilst the saying ‘Don’t meet your heroes’ can be all too common in the music industry, for Humberstone it couldn’t have been further from the truth describing Healy as “so lovely and a cool guy…. He was just down to come into the writing room, collaborate, experiment and work together. It was such a fun day, he’s so nice to work with, it was an amazing experience to be a part of his creative process”.
‘Please Don’t Leave Just Yet’ is the third release from the EP, following on from titular song ‘The Walls Are Way Too Thin’ another track to come out of that dark period in London in which Humberstone was left feeling isolated within a small room. The song describes how it ‘rains inside’ and despite the house being bustling and full she still felt ‘so alone’ hearing everything happening around her “I basically just wanted to put everything into the song, all of the frustrations that I was going though because I felt like I was in a weird stage of life… there wasn’t anything in London that was really very familiar, nothing I could latch on to, or anyone who was there to comfort me… I was in a strange city with loads of people and chaos going all around me, this tiny little flat in southeast London was quite a drastic contrast to growing up in rural Lincolnshire… I realised that coming into the studio to write ‘Walls’ was my only constant that I had, my comfort zone I could come into, vent and get everything off my chest before going back to my room”.
Interestingly, Humberstone notes that the song was actually written pre-pandemic, before lockdown and isolation became commonplace across the country. “It’s really weird because I wrote it before the pandemic and the lockdown. So, I feel it’s funny now, because the song took on a different meaning for a lot of people that were physically trapped in tiny flats unable to leave even if they wanted to, maybe they are in awkward house shares or with family that they don’t get along with, and I just think that the same anxieties that I was talking about in the song and that I was going through during that time, people have probably experienced this year… all of the other stresses and mental anxieties that come with going through a global pandemic on top of being trapped inside”.
“the song took on a different meaning for a lot of people that were physically trapped in tiny flats unable to leave even if they wanted to”
If you’ve been following Humberstone up to this point you will have seen a few of her innovative music videos throughout lockdown that have accompanied her EP’s and singles. It’s fair to say each video is getting more cinematic, elaborate and dangerous. Whether that be setting cars alight in the emotive ‘Deep End’, the Blair Witch stylings of ‘Overkill’, exploring her family's rural Lincolnshire home in ‘Haunted House’ or most recently escaping an exploding vent like John McClane in ‘The Walls Are Way Too Thin’ which Humberstone describes to me as “very intense”.
Talking me through the conception of the video, she says “The ‘Walls’ video seemed like a bit of a step up because I just really loved the song and it was one of the first big songs from the EP to be released so I wanted to go all out with the video... I think it encapsulates the feeling of how I was claustrophobic in that room in London. I love the video and I wanted people to get stressed out and feel the tension when watching it as well”. That tension comes from Humberstone’s very real fear of the dangers she placed herself in as she describes “I think I come up with these videos, and every single video has got more and more dangerous, and I've come a little bit closer to seriously hurting myself. Which is kind of funny, but I think quite a lot of the emotion in the videos is because I'm literally scared that I'm going to be lit on fire or I'm gonna die of pneumonia… with ‘Walls’ that was actual fire shooting up the tube at me, we had to have a stunt guy in to try that first and I was like ‘I can't believe that I'm putting myself through this yet again’ but I'm here to tell the tale”.
Undeterred however, the plan seems to be that the videos are only going to continue to get bigger “I’ve got another video shoot planned for next week and it’s a step-up more dangerous again, so we’ll see if I’m there to tell you about that after… if I haven’t died in the process of making the video or something”. I dread to think what’s more life threatening than being nearly set alight but it's fair to say keep your eyes peeled for whatever Humberstone has visually in store next.
“I think quite a lot of the emotion in the videos is because I’m literally scared that I’m going to be lit on fire or I’m gonna die of pneumonia”
As previously mentioned, this weeks Omeara residency marks the start of Humberstone’s first ever headline tour of her own. However, she’s no novice to performing to a crowd and has had a recent warm up in the form of appearances across the summer festival scene at the likes of Stanton Calling, Latitude and Boardmasters in recent weeks. So after telling me she’s yet to witness a fan in real life, I had to ask what the experience of going out on stage and playing to the first festival crowds in years felt like “Amazing, so bizarre, so weird” Humberstone says before continuing “like I said I’ve never seen any proof that people really exist apart from statistics or YouTube comments. I was so excited to be at the festivals, and I was just happy to be there and to be booked let alone expect a lot of people to show up… Latitude was probably the most memorable one, It’s something that I’ll remember forever because I didn’t think people would really come to my set but then I stepped out and saw the whole of the second stage tent absolutely packed to the back, it was just like “Oh my gosh, this is so weird” I’ve gone from zero to 100 with all of these people at once, it was a real life affirming moment and just really wholesome to see a few people at the front singing the words”.
Finally, I couldn’t end our chat without learning more about Humberstone’s unique Fifth Sister Swap initiative that she’s bringing to her headline shows at Omeara. An ingenious alternative to a merchandise stand that’s named after how growing up Humberstone and her three sisters would constantly be borrowing and swapping their own wardrobes. Now with Fifth Sister fans can participate as well by swapping pieces of their own wardrobe with other fans, and even Holly herself. Describing it to me she said “I’ve been swapping old clothes on the internet with my friends all year, and i’m just at the moment figuring out how I can bring it to Omeara, I think it’ll be a bit of a surprise and a trial but I’m going to bring along some of my old clothes that I want to swap, I’m going to tell fans that if you have an older item of clothing either wear it or bring it along in your bag and we can swap clothes, because the whole reason I’ve set up the Fifth Sister Swap shop was so that I didn’t have to be constantly going online, buying new stuff. Every time I had worn something once for a photoshoot, it just seemed like a bit of a waste and not ethical or friendly to the environment to be buying brand new items every single time I needed something. So hopefully I'll come away from OMEARA with a whole new wardrobe and other people will be coming away with some little bits from mine”
Despite the “very surreal” but “amazing experiences” for Holly over the last year she still believes the best is yet to come, and that’s sharing all of this success with her fans “I think that the good part is going to be this next chapter, getting to play shows and see some of these people who have been supporting me and listening to my music, it’s going to be amazing”.
A few tickets remain for Holly Humberstone’s upcoming winter tour, not to mention there’s still a selection of large summer support slots and festival appearances she will be making. A list of dates and how to purchase tickets is available on her site here.