{"id":568695,"date":"2026-03-29T13:30:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T13:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/568695\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T13:30:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T13:30:16","slug":"recovery-is-a-process-im-doing-a-hell-of-a-lot-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/568695\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Recovery is a process \u2014 I\u2019m doing a hell of a lot better\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Lola Young stepped on stage at the London Palladium at the beginning of March<\/a>, she didn\u2019t quite know what to expect. \u201cI was slightly nervous since I\u2019ve been away,\u201d she announces casually. You can file that under \u201cunderstatements of the year\u201d. The husky-voiced Gen Z pop sensation had been effectively MIA since she collapsed on stage at a New York festival in September of last year. All her gigs \u2014 including a 21-stop North American tour \u2014 were cancelled. \u201cI really hope you\u2019ll give me a second chance once I\u2019ve had some time to work on myself and come back stronger,\u201d she posted on Instagram. Then her socials went dark. What went through Young\u2019s head as she walked on stage that night at the Palladium, right before she launched into her first song, a bruisingly tender deep cut called Bad Game (3AM) from her 2021 EP After Midnight at the Palladium? \u201cOh my gosh,\u201d she replies, \u201cI\u2019m back.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we speak on video call a few days later, Young sits on the sofa in her white-walled flat, her chunky silver necklace and facial piercings winking in the light of an uncommonly sunny March afternoon. A baby grand piano peeks out from behind her.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time we\u2019ve spoken \u2014 back in autumn, before she collapsed, I caught up with her in person on the set of her Style shoot in a disused pub, before the launch of her new album, I\u2019m Only F**king Myself<\/a>. In a furry tracksuit and black New Rock boots, she was frank and funny company, slagging off the \u201cf***ing gentrified Boxparks\u201d that had replaced the Camden Market shop she\u2019d purchased the boots from and puffing on a mint vape.<\/p>\n

\"LolaVintage Gucci blouse and Herm\u00e8s glove, Cassie Mercantile. Joggers, Lola\u2019s own. Diamond rings, Lucy DeliusPhotographs: Ewen Spencer. STYLING: Michele Rafferty<\/p>\n

\"LolaCardigan, Aries Arise. Diamond rings, from \u00a36,700, Lucy Delius. Vienna Opera Ball tiara, Swarovski. All other jewellery, Lola\u2019s ownPhotographs: Ewen Spencer. STYLING: Michele Rafferty<\/p>\n

Today Young is more reticent and takes her time when it comes to how to answer the obvious question: what happened? \u201cUm, so yeah, I think I would rather for the sake of my privacy not say too much,\u201d she replies cautiously. \u201cBut what I would say is that recovery is an ongoing process. I\u2019m not the finished article, but I\u2019m doing a hell of a lot better.\u201d By recovery, does she mean drugs? \u201cI mean drugs recovery, yes. When you\u2019re in recovery\u2026 that doesn\u2019t necessarily need to mean drugs \u2014 but me specifically, yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before her self-imposed break, Young had everything that a young singer on the ascendant could wish for. Her anti-clean-girl ode Messy was racking up millions of listens and would become the UK\u2019s most streamed track in 2025 by a British artist. With her Brit School pedigree, she was drawing inevitable comparisons to alumni like Amy Winehouse or other straight-talking London singers like Lily Allen, who is now a friend. \u201cShe said to me, \u2018If anyone comes up to you wanting a photo, ask them what three songs they know of yours?\u2019 I was like, I can\u2019t do that, Lily!\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m Only F**king Myself was well received by critics \u2014 brash, filthy and frank in equal measure, alternating between swaggering bravado on horndog anthems like One Thing and raw melancholy on the grungy Spiders. Elton John told her that D\u00a3aler \u2014 an infectious pop vow to leave a drug dealer on \u201cread\u201d \u2014 was \u201cthe biggest smash I\u2019ve heard in years\u201d. But Young\u2019s raw musical honesty, which makes her such an antidote to the bland, polished pop of some of her peers, also lays bare the source of her troubles. She sings openly about cocaine addiction, describing herself caustically as a \u201cdumb little addict\u2026 trying to quit the snowflake\u201d on tracks like Not Like That Anymore, and has been to rehab twice. In fact she recorded I\u2019m Only F**king Myself at the end of 2024 after a five-week stay.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a lot of things going on for me personally \u2014 I was going through a lot of mental health issues, a lot of battling with addiction,\u201d she said of her time in the recording studio. Today, when I ask Young where she has been for the past few months \u2014 back to her mum\u2019s in London? Staying with friends? \u2014 she says, \u201cWhat I can tell you is that I was being looked after.\u201d I later find out that she checked into a \u201cholistic facility\u201d that deals with addiction and mental health, and she is now attending AA.<\/p>\n

When we met last year Young was noticeably tired, stifling yawns in between vape tokes. \u201cI\u2019ve been up since 6am,\u201d she told me casually from the make-up chair on set. She had just flown back from LA after performing at her first VMAs, where she couldn\u2019t quite muster the courage to speak to fellow attendees Lady Gaga and Mariah Carey \u2014 \u201cLegends, you know?\u201d Part of Young carefully inching her way back into the spotlight this spring involved performing in front of some of those very same celebrities at the Grammys, where she won the award for best pop solo performance for Messy. She received the gong from yet another homegrown queen of pop: Charli XCX. \u201cCharli sent me a really sweet message during my break,\u201d Young says, smiling at the memory. \u201cShe just said that she supports me and she\u2019s there for me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Grammys were the first time Young had been seen in public since her collapse. Even though her signature skunk-stripe mullet had been replaced by an all-brunette blowout, her acceptance speech was classic Lola: namely, she hadn\u2019t prepared one, and she swore on stage while winging it. \u201cThat\u2019s me!\u201d she says now. \u201cI\u2019m weird, I\u2019m a bit kooky. The way I received that award meant people maybe got to understand me a bit better \u2014 that I am just a f***ing weirdo.\u201d A few weeks later she won the Brit for breakthrough artist and took care to prepare a speech, which she read off a lime green phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was shitting myself,\u201d she says of her Grammy win. \u201cI was in shock to be there, I was in shock to have won.\u201d When she got off stage, she barely registered that one of her musical heroes, Carole King, had come up to congratulate her. \u201cShe held my hand and said, \u2018It\u2019s OK, sweetie, it\u2019s Carole King.\u2019\u201d Did Young always plan to make her first public reappearance at the Grammys? \u201cIf I\u2019m honest with you,\u201d she says haltingly, \u201cI think I didn\u2019t know. You never know when the right time is, as an artist, when you\u2019ve taken a break. It was a hard decision to make \u2014 I cancelled a whole tour that I was really excited to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LolaVienna Opera Ball tiara, SwarovskiPhotographs: Ewen Spencer. STYLING: Michele Rafferty<\/p>\n

Born in Croydon and brought up in Beckenham, southeast London, Young describes herself as a \u201cnaughty kid\u201d. She was mainly raised by her mother, who is white and works for the mental health charity Mind; her father is Chinese-Jamaican. \u201cIt\u2019ll always be a part of me,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m mixed race and it\u2019s part of who I am.\u201d Her stepdad is a session musician and she is one of four sisters \u2014 the youngest is 15 and the others work in musical theatre and for EarthPercent, Brian Eno\u2019s climate foundation for musicians. The siblings grew up in each others\u2019 pockets 24\/7. \u201cI remember this little fridge magnet that I got my sister,\u201d Young recalls, \u201cof two goldfish in a bowl saying, \u2018It\u2019s hard to miss you when you\u2019re always around.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Young played the piano as a child and taught herself guitar, listening to folky singer-songwriters such as Paolo Nutini and Joni Mitchell alongside old-school hip-hop by Biggie Smalls and Tupac. She fell in and out of house parties, busking and performing her own songs at open-mic nights (the album is bookended by a voice note and a poem from friends she made at that time). In year 9 she successfully auditioned for the Brit School, though she\u2019s at pains to stress that it isn\u2019t the all-singing, all-dancing Fame academy of yore. \u201cYou still did all your lessons. I mean, I didn\u2019t listen to anything because I\u2019m terrible \u2014 I was so ADHD, it went through one ear and out the other.\u201d She toyed with the idea of going into songwriting for other artists but ultimately vetoed it: \u201cThese songs feel so personal that it made sense me singing them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LolaYoung performing at an open-mic night in Croydon, where she went to school, 2016shutterstock<\/p>\n

\"LolaAt the Vanity Fair Oscar party this monthChristopher Polk\/Variety\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

A year before she graduated she met Nick Shymansky, Amy Winehouse\u2019s former manager, at an industry showcase. The 45-year-old hadn\u2019t managed an artist since the pair parted ways over Winehouse\u2019s substance issues in 2006. Watching Young was enough to pull Shymansky out of retirement. \u201cHuge character, massive voice, incredible lyricist,\u201d he told me last year of her appeal. \u201cI\u2019m very picky about what I do. Everyone was kind of shit after Amy. I felt the opposite with Lola \u2014[here\u2019s] someone who\u2019s good, even better.\u201d Young was signed to Island in 2019.<\/p>\n

Over the next few years Young refined her initial approach to music and started dressing for herself \u2014 mullet, baggy tracksuits, drawn-on freckles \u2014 and singing in her natural south London accent. Then she met the SZA producer Jared Solomon (aka Solomonophonic) and recorded Conceited, a spiky, King Krule-esque barnstormer about a toxic relationship that set the tone for much of her current output. \u201cI was growing up,\u201d she said. \u201cI was like, you know, no longer 18 and freshly signed and didn\u2019t know who I was. I was a little bit more headstrong. I knew what I wanted to say.\u201d It\u2019s a broad sentiment that Young returned to repeatedly over the course of our first conversation, sitting opposite me in the backroom of the pub.<\/p>\n

The downside of an artist going viral on TikTok \u2014 even after years of unseen hard work \u2014 is that people assume you were randomly blessed with algorithmic fame and look for every opportunity to stick the knife in. Take, for instance, the accusation that Young has had a leg up thanks to her being related to the children\u2019s author Julia Donaldson. When I jokingly asked in our first conversation if she felt haunted by The Gruffalo, she sighed: \u201cLook, it\u2019s my aunt \u2014 no, not necessarily haunted.\u201d She has since stopped reading comments on her posts. \u201cIt\u2019s just too bad on my mental health.\u201d When did she make that decision? \u201cParticularly around the nepo baby stuff. I keep saying I\u2019m not gonna comment on this again. But like, how dare someone comment on something they know f*** all about? It just is insane to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pressure of being a music star in 2026 is tougher than ever. \u201cSome artists are like athletes in that they can do it all,\u201d Shymansky told me. \u201cLola doesn\u2019t claim to be that \u2014 she needs her space, she needs to live and create. Sometimes things are overwhelming, and we need to really look out for that and protect that.\u201d Indeed, Young is quick to confirm how supportive her manager is. \u201cI classify Nick Shymansky as my family member,\u201d she says firmly. Instead her collapse on stage last year seems to have been the wake-up call that Young and her team needed to re-evaluate exactly how she was riding the white-knuckle rollercoaster of fame. When we first met Young pulled a 15-hour day, running from the Style set to a Channel 4 News interview to an evening album playback party \u2014 I very much doubt she agrees to gruelling days like that now. On our video call Young grows increasingly impassioned on the subject: \u201cAs artists we are public-facing figures. We get scrutiny, we get people calling us out, we get people not liking our bloody outfits \u2014 we have to deal with all of it. And even though from the outside it may look like we are doing fine, sometimes we\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LolaBaby T-shirt, \u00a350, and socks, \u00a320, Aries Arise x Lola. Net skirt, Carolina Herrera Photographs: Ewen Spencer. STYLING: Michele Rafferty<\/p>\n

\"LolaBaby T-shirt, \u00a350, Aries Arise x Lola. Dress, Ashish. Millenia bangle, \u00a3199, and Millenia ring, \u00a3139, SwarovskiPhotographs: Ewen Spencer. STYLING: Michele Rafferty<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to square the slightly reserved figure with the confident showwoman I saw at the London Palladium, where she performed a run of tracks from I\u2019m Only F**king Myself before ending on Messy, which she described on stage as \u201cthe song that changed my life\u201d. Before Young started performing the atmosphere inside the 116-year-old theatre crackled with the nervousness of a big football game when nobody knows how their side will perform. But by the time she slid into D\u00a3aler, the upstairs balcony was groaning under the weight of 500 fans jumping to their feet. The emotional release was palpably joyful, the tracks even more stirring live, and, for an album that has yet to be toured, all the more impressive that a significant part of the audience knew almost all the words. When I turned around to look at the audience \u2014 a motley crew of fans across all generations and genders, including several Lola lookalikes with two-tone hair \u2014 more than one was mouthing along to all the words, tears of mascara running down their faces.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It probably hasn\u2019t unfurled in exactly the way Young wanted, but her absence seems to have allowed her album\u2019s songs to breathe and to take root in fans\u2019 hearts outside of the gruelling 24\/7 promo cycle. (Not that she\u2019s resting on those laurels \u2014 she is already in the studio with the producers James Blake and Mustard, of Kendrick Lamar Not Like Us fame.) After we speak for the final time, she announces six dates in the UK in June, including two at the O2 Academy Brixton in London. Her schedule is pared back by design, she says. Part of being in recovery is \u201cbeing self-aware and knowing when to stop, and knowing when to say no\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am now in a position where I can do things I couldn\u2019t have done before,\u201d Young adds, growing reflective. \u201cDoing it slower, more intentionally, but doing it in a way I feel is good for me.\u201d Does she have anything to say to others who are also in recovery? She pauses for a long time and apologises. \u201cI need to think about this before I speak,\u201d she explains, then gathers her thoughts and says emphatically: \u201cI would like to say that this is an ongoing journey. You have to be kind to yourself. You have to always remember that you are not alone. You are not ever, ever alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think back to an early moment during her Palladium gig, the crowd screaming in appreciation as she finished belting out Spiders on piano. Young shot her audience a look of shy disbelief, as if she couldn\u2019t quite fathom why they had even turned up at all. I hope she understands a bit better now.<\/p>\n

Lola Young\u2019 s album I\u2019m Only F**king Myself is out now. Her UK tour starts on June 10. lola-young.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Hair Angel McQueen Make-up Grace Sinnott at Forward Artists Local production The Production Factory<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Lola Young stepped on stage at the London Palladium at the beginning of March, she didn\u2019t quite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-568695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}