walking upstream…
Lola Young
photo: jamsterdodger · cc0 ↗Lola Young
Lola Young is a South London singer-songwriter whose raw, conversational lyrics and jazz-inflected, husky voice broke through worldwide with 2024's "Messy," a bruising kiss-off that topped the UK singles chart and won the Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance. Trained at the BRIT School and managed for a time by Amy Winehouse's former manager, she built her sound across a run of confessional EPs and two albums that trade unflinchingly in addiction, mental health, and toxic relationships without softening the edges. Her records sit at the crossroads of soul, indie-rock scuzz, and open-diary songwriting, closer in spirit to the confessional singer-songwriter tradition than to contemporary pop polish.
the sound in question
2024
MessyLola Young
walk the tributaries ↓
SZA2020s · Alternative R&B / Neo soul / Hip hop soul
Young has said that listening to SZA's Ctrl pulled her back into writing as though she were talking to a friend, and reviewers of her later work have heard that same conversational bluntness — venting about wanting and resentment without polishing the edges — as distinctly indebted to SZA.
listen: upstream & here
2017
Drew BarrymoreSZA
2024
Wish You Were DeadLola Young
listen forOn 'Wish You Were Dead,' listen for the almost-blurted directness of the lyric — it reads like something said out loud in an argument rather than crafted into a clever line — the same unfiltered, diary-entry intimacy Ctrl trades in.
Radiohead1990s · Art rock / Alternative rock
Critics have repeatedly heard Radiohead's fingerprints on Young's records: Clash identified the band's influence (alongside Leonard Cohen and Frank Ocean) on I'm Only F**king Myself, and a review of the prior album drew a direct line from the anthemic despair of 'Creep' to one of its own tracks.
listen: upstream & heresource: whynow review of This Wasn't Meant For You Anyway — 'Crush' compared to Radiohead's 'Creep' ↗
1992
CreepRadiohead
2024
CrushLola Young
listen forListen for how 'Crush' builds the same way 'Creep' does — a hushed, self-loathing verse that detonates into a loud, desperate hook — need curdling into self-disgust at full volume.
Joni Mitchell1970s · Folk / Folk rock / Jazz / Pop
Young has named Joni Mitchell as a formative influence since her earliest interviews, and it surfaces less as direct homage than as a shared commitment to plainspoken, diaristic lyrics that name feelings without dressing them up — the unguarded confessional mode Mitchell helped invent.
listen: upstream & heresource: Hunger Mag, "10 Questions with new gen R&B star Lola Young" (2019) — cites Joni Mitchell, Prince, Frank Ocean, Anderson .Paak as influences ↗
1971
A Case of YouJoni Mitchell
2024
Good BooksLola Young
listen forListen for how 'Good Books' strips down to acoustic guitar and just sits with an admission of fault, unadorned — the same nakedness that makes a Mitchell lyric feel less like a lyric and more like a diary entry set to music.