![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/8DF52DAF-9F20-4A05-9381-D54734D343DE.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nhemlocke springs doesn\u2019t like \u201cthe beginning of the end.\u201d The song dates back years, to when she was getting her bachelor\u2019s degree at Spelman College. \u201cI made it on the bathroom floor in a library that nobody went to, singing into a headphone mic,\u201d she laughs. \u201cMaybe I just didn\u2019t see people there, because I was so honed into my own thing when I should have been doing biology stuff, but it\u2019s fine.\u201d The demo sat dormant for half a decade until she and producer BURNS resuscitated it while working on the apple tree under the sea together. Now, it\u2019s her debut album\u2019s focus track\u2014a twisting, starmaking drama.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow was that for you, going back to a song you came up with before anyone knew about hemlocke springs?\u201d I ask her.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest, it was horrible. I don\u2019t like the song.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI KNOW! I know, I know. The label liked it. My management liked it. BURNS liked it. I was like, \u2018I don\u2019t know what you guys see in this song but, okay, whatever.\u2019 I cried over this song, because it was so long ago. But everybody really liked it. That\u2019s gonna be my first and last time relenting.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you gonna do for your tour? I\u2019m sure there will be some hemlocke fans coming out for \u2018the beginning of the end\u2019 specifically.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve gotten some comments like, \u2018Can\u2019t wait to sing along to \u201cThe beginning of the end\u201d!!\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018Y\u2019all know how I feel about this song.\u2019 I have to get into my emo rock voice and I\u2019m just not there yet. I have a version of me singing it in my head, and then what comes out is not that version.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m chill. That\u2019s what the Band-Aid is for. I\u2019m gonna put it right back on!\u201d<\/p>\n
BORN ISIMEME UDU AND KNOWN by her friends as Naomi, hemlocke springs has been on an ascent since 2021, when she started putting demos on SoundCloud. But her music-making journey goes back to around 2013, when she befriended a freshman named MJ during her sophomore year of high school in Concord, North Carolina. \u201cEverybody was in their cliques, and it was just literally us two,\u201d Udu remembers. \u201cWe were like, \u2018Well, hey.\u2019 They made music on GarageBand and they showed me it.\u201d She started messing around with the software too, on an iPad that\u2019s no longer with us. Music was never a priority. She studied biology at Spelman and got her master\u2019s degree in medical informatics from Dartmouth.<\/p>\n
Dartmouth is where her love-hate relationship with SoundCloud began, when she got into a groove of posting dozens of demo tracks and then unposting them out of embarrassment. \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, I was trying to be a singer.\u2019 Nah, fam. I don\u2019t know what I was doing,\u201d she says. Under the banner of the random-name-generated handle hemlocke springs, Udu put \u201cJacob\u201d online and then shared \u201cgimme all ur luv\u201d after that. Unlike \u201cthe beginning of the end,\u201d she still finds the doo-wop-meets-electropop latter to be endearing. \u201cI was sick and I hated my Machine Learning teacher,\u201d she recalls. \u201cBut, you know, he got me here\u2014so thank you, in an indirect way. But I was like, \u2018I don\u2019t know how to do this homework, I\u2019m gonna make a song.\u2019 I\u2019d just discovered TikTok. Why not? And then it did what it did. I look back and I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s kind of cute.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cgimme all ur luv\u201d is still Udu\u2019s favorite song, because it came out \u201cbefore everything got more complicated.\u201d Don\u2019t get it twisted: Udu loves her team, and she loves being able to make music for a living. But circumstances were different back then. \u201cI was just rippin\u2019 around and I didn\u2019t have to depend on music for monetary stuff.\u201d Grimes co-signed \u201cgimme all ur luv\u201d and the single\u2019s lived on the internet ever since. Udu released the idiosyncratic pop banger \u201cgirlfriend\u201d in late 2022 and got even more popular (NME named her an \u201cessential emerging artist\u201d for 2023 in the wake of the song\u2019s virality). hemlocke springs wasn\u2019t some hobby project spilling out of a Dartmouth girl\u2019s bedroom anymore, and the success Udu found was confusing and stuffy. \u201cI don\u2019t think I dealt with it well. I think I was really excited at first, but then everything started taking a toll,\u201d she admits. \u201cThat\u2019s when I decided, \u2018Okay, well, I\u2019ll go the artist route.\u2019 But I went in with no preparation, so I felt dissonance in myself.\u201d She kept on releasing songs after \u201cgirlfriend,\u201d but only after taking a step back. \u201cI don\u2019t think I was ready, but moments happen for a reason.\u201d<\/p>\n
She posted for a year and a half while keeping her celebrity at arm\u2019s length, in an effort to manage the overstimulating engagement. \u201cCompared to other songs that have gone viral\u2014like, really viral, with hundreds of millions of streams\u2014I wonder how those artists dealt with such success, because I\u2019m struggling with this amount. Like, how are you doing? How are you okay? But I love that people gravitated towards the song.\u201d She pauses for a moment. \u201cI\u2019m grateful for it, because it led me towards becoming hemlocke springs.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
UDU EVENTUALLY LEFT THE SOUTHEAST for Los Angeles, where she currently resides, but she hates it here (she says she \u201ctook the wrong turn down Hollywood and now I\u2019ll turn forever\u201d in her song \u201csense(is)\u201d). \u201cI did need to switch it up there, I can tell you honestly,\u201d she clarifies. \u201cI think I\u2019m still finding my footing. I want to say that, as the years go by, maybe I\u2019ll find my group, but I feel like that\u2019s describing Stockholm Syndrome. This is just not my place.\u201d I ask her if geography plays a factor in her work, having made her Going\u2026Going\u2026Gone! EP in North Carolina and her debut album, the apple tree under the sea, in California. Specifically, I ask if LA, for better or for worse, has influenced this chapter.<\/p>\n
\u201cLow-key\u2026 for worse,\u201d she replies and I don\u2019t doubt her, \u201cbut I feel like it\u2019s because of the music environment here. Everything\u2019s just so fast-paced. Even writing songs, sometimes I find myself thinking, \u2018Oh, is it catchy? Is it commercial? Will it make me money?\u2019 in a way I didn\u2019t think about when I was anywhere else. I wasn\u2019t really surrounded by anybody in the music industry. But now? Yikes. It\u2019s a matter of acclimating to how it is. I\u2019ve made sure to set my boundaries. I put my phone on do-not-disturb. I take some walks. Then things get a little bit calmer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been getting ads on Instagram for that BRICK phone blocker, while I\u2019m on my phone,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in a simulation. I need those ads, low-key.\u201d<\/p>\n
North Carolina, California, whatever\u2014Udu is able to link up with BURNS anywhere and make good shit with him. The producer has a history with Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, and Ariana Grande, confirming him as one of pop music\u2019s most formidable builders. With a project as narratively expansive as hemlocke springs\u2019, he\u2019s Udu\u2019s perfect foil, matching her curiosity with rich, exciting doses of strings, choral sections, big guitars, and even bigger rhythmic fills. I ask Udu if she has to step up her game when she\u2019s with somebody like him, a producer who\u2019s so instrumentally ambitious. The question hits a nerve, but only initially. \u201cStep up my game? I brought the demo, Matt!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cC\u2019mon, you know y\u2019all feed off each other,\u201d I insist.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m dead. We do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Udu says BURNS\u2019 approach means building a world within a song. She starts her demos on Logic, putting them in one- or two-dimensional spaces, and then \u201che\u2019s able to really put the 3-D in there,\u201d she elaborates. \u201cThat\u2019s something I envy about him.\u201d Udu isn\u2019t the type to sit on a couch and let a producer fiddle with her art across the room. Instead, she\u2019s up at the boards with BURNS, fingers all over the buttons and eyes glued to every monitor. Her musical vocabulary allows her to have full control over the basics. \u201cI can get a demo up to a certain point, but BURNS can really bring the life out of shit,\u201d she says. \u201cI wish I could do that. It\u2019s a skill, because he\u2019s been in the industry for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hemlocke springs catalogue is full of generation-spanning pop-culture reminders: Janet Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Enya, Santogold, to name a few. It\u2019s catchy knowledge Udu gained from studying the artists who came before her, but that\u2019s where the tribute stops. \u201cWhen creating a song, I try not to go that route of \u2018Okay, this needs a Phil Collins drum,\u2019 you know?\u201d she explains. \u201cIt takes the surprise out of where the song could go.\u201d Maybe that song does need a Phil Collins drum, but it\u2019s important to Udu that she isn\u2019t just listening to music she loves. \u201cI\u2019m making sure I\u2019m not stringently just in one area. When I\u2019m working on a song, I don\u2019t really know what I want. That\u2019s what producing is\u2014figuring out what I want. The song will tell you what it needs.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not always Cyndi Lauper fills and Ray of Light tempos. That first hemlocke springs tape, Going\u2026Going\u2026Gone!, had a fascinating bounce. In 2023 I wrote, \u201chemlocke springs might be the first internet rock star who sticks around long enough to turn virality into sold-out tours, charting hits, and industry-wide acclaim,\u201d and she\u2019s nearly there. Gigs with Chappell Roan, Doja Cat, and Conan Gray and big-name festival slots across the globe have primed her intoxicating, celestial adventures and \u201cawkward Black girl anthems\u201d for realtime clout.<\/p>\n
There are a lot of shiny \u201880s R&B and squelchy synth-pop ideas fluttering through Udu\u2019s work. Steve Lacy labeled \u201cgirlfriend\u201d a classic, and Doechii even called it a song that \u201csurpasses this time.\u201d But Udu\u2019s sentimental urges are subconscious. If something is retro, historical, and palatable in her springy vocals and kitchen-sink production, it\u2019s because she\u2019s 27 years old and \u201chip to the times.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a really deep, rich pocket up in here,\u201d she beams. \u201cI think that I don\u2019t think, and that\u2019s what makes it the best type of music for me. Sometimes I\u2019ll just let the song take over. And then people can say great things about it and how they interpret it. And then I can be like, \u2018Oh, yeah, I\u2019m smart. Look at me!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Udu is bubbly and nonchalant during our call. She makes up words and her laugh spans the entire screen. But in her music she boasts a serious, encyclopedic command of pop music on top of that Disney kid-like excitement. That comes from years of tinkering, figuring out what she likes. \u201cIt\u2019s a strenuous, hard process,\u201d she reveals. \u201cBut it\u2019s also a fun process. My likes change, so it\u2019s finding a way to acclimate to that. \u2018I like this in this song today, but today that just sounds like shit.\u2019\u201d She grabs a nearby makeup brush and says it could make a sound that ends up in a song. \u201cTry it and see. If you don\u2019t like it, then you don\u2019t like it. Now you have a thing to cross out from an infinite number of possibilities. That infinite number can be very daunting, but it\u2019s also like, wow, the world is literally my oyster.\u201d Udu rummages around her desk before picking up a cup of Chipotle queso. \u201cLet\u2019s see if that makes a sound that I can put in a song. Why not? Who\u2019s gonna stop me?\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/165586FB-D6AE-4BAB-AAE5-B582489E51EB.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
THE DEBUT HEMLOCKE SPRINGS ALBUM, the apple tree under the sea, began unknowingly in 2023, when Udu released \u201csever the blight,\u201d a Kate Bush-recalling, damsel-in-distress single set in a magical, storm-ridden forest. The track didn\u2019t show up on Going\u2026Going\u2026Gone!, much to the chagrin of her fans (which she affectionately calls \u201clockets\u201d), but it didn\u2019t need to: \u201cgirlfriend\u201d is still the most popular hemlocke springs song, sitting at 56 million total streams, but \u201csever the blight\u201d is beloved. \u201cThat\u2019s the song that a lot of artists who I look up to are like, \u2018I love that song,\u2019\u201d Udu confirms, grinning wide. \u201cThe amount of positivity that stemmed from that song, it was definitely a moment of \u2018Oh, this tapped into something that\u2019s confumling and I want to explore that feeling, less so the genre.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
She was going to take that song\u2019s medieval ideas and record an entire album of them, but it didn\u2019t end up happening. Udu thought making several iterations of \u201csever the blight\u201d would become redundant, and she was daunted by the possibility of it happening. But that song\u2019s feeling gave her ample material to pull from. \u201cFocusing on that, we got a record. That was partly the reason why it didn\u2019t end up on the EP. I felt like it was tapping towards another dimension, and I just love this dimension that I\u2019m in here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Medieval influences get woven into the apple tree under the sea\u2019s tracklist, but the album runs more like a digital age fairytale untangling Udu\u2019s Christian upbringing and Nigerian family tree. hemlocke springs gravitates toward fantasy because Udu considers herself to be a boring person who needs \u201ca world where things are not boring.\u201d the apple tree under the sea opens with \u201cthe red apple\u201d and an image of Udu wandering through a barren desert. The song\u2019s purpose correlates with her relationship to religion changing during adulthood. \u201cI want to say that I have a good amount of trauma with religion but, if anything, I think it was an OK experience,\u201d she tells me. \u201cBut sometimes I listen to the record and I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, maybe you\u2019re downplaying it.\u2019 I repressed myself a lot during that time in a way that I don\u2019t anymore. I listen back and I\u2019m remembering how I was then in comparison to how I am today. I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, I get why people describe you as this quirky, whimsical person.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Whimsy be damned, the apple tree under the sea is hemlocke springs\u2019 origin story\u2014a question of \u201cWhy am I the way that I am?\u201d embodied in very good songs like the sophisticated, trip-hop-pilled \u201cw-w-w-w-w,\u201d which she built out of siren, African Seed Caxixi, and lo-fi country drum pre-sets on Logic. Looking for an answer, Udu contacted her past selves. She went back to high school, when she \u201cwore all black, just trying to fit in as much as possible because I didn\u2019t want perceivement,\u201d she says. \u201cMaybe I just wanted to go with the flow. Who knows what I wanted.\u201d The songs she came back with are searching\u2014for something, anything to tell Udu about her life and where it\u2019s supposed to go\u2014and folkloric. \u201cWhat am I supposed to be feeling when I don\u2019t feel anything?\u201d she asks aloud, before catching herself. \u201cThe tortured soul.\u201d Now that she\u2019s not a grad student procrastinating her way into viral hits, hemlocke springs is a pop phenom-in-waiting. She\u2019s taking crumbs of Prince, CHVRCHES, Timbaland, Depeche Mode, and Kate Bush and cooking full meals with them. What I\u2019m getting at here is: the apple tree under the sea could have been a simple, by-the-numbers debut, but with Udu in the driver\u2019s seat, we get sugar plums colored outside the lines by breakbeats, punk streaks, and timeless, playful pop tricks instead.<\/p>\n
hemlocke springs may be Udu\u2019s character\u2014a persona that allows her to explore more exciting fictions in her music\u2014but the apple tree under the sea is her own hero\u2019s journey. Udu possesses a literary talent that lets her musicality time travel. Grief, trauma, and heartache are jolted by bildungsroman sparks and Simlish-style baroque pop. In \u201cw-w-w-w-w,\u201d she\u2019s marrying a racist old man to get her family out of poverty. By \u201cmoses,\u201d she\u2019s commanding the tectonic chaos around her like a sea-parting prophet. Life unspools into discomfort, but hemlocke springs turns it into self-mythology. \u201cWhen it\u2019s happening to me, it\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, this sucks.\u2019 But when it\u2019s happening to hemlocke, it\u2019s lore. It\u2019s a background story,\u201d Udu comments. \u201cI can make it into literally a fantasy, even if it\u2019s a non-fiction fantasy. I love that I\u2019m able to make it that way. It almost allows me to be an audience member as well and peer in. I feel like it can keep me divorced in a good way from what\u2019s going on.\u201d Confidence abounds when imagination disarms the system.<\/p>\n
But Udu has fun giving parts of herself away in the apple tree under the sea, because \u201cit just happens, and I just let it happen. We\u2019re all on the same journey now, huh? You\u2019re stuck with me.\u201d Udu\u2019s an optimist all the way down, even when she\u2019s spiraling on the mic. \u201cIt\u2019s just fun to see where a song takes you\u2014see how much I relate to it, how much I don\u2019t relate to it. And then I let it go in the stratosphere.\u201d Udu makes words like \u201ctenebrous\u201d and \u201cvexation\u201d and \u201ccholer\u201d sound splashy and approachable while chasing after vibrance and bringing turmoil along for the ride. Pop escapism and unpacked consequences sound honest and transformative under her care, in awesome textural monuments like \u201chead, shoulders, knees and ankles,\u201d \u201cbe the girl!\u201d, and \u201csense(is).\u201d the apple tree under the sea is bratty, sticky, fun as hell, and shockingly uncomplicated in its ambitions. You can\u2019t box in an artist like her.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know what a Gen-Z popstar is supposed to look or sound like yet, but I\u2019d like to think hemlocke springs is on her way to becoming one. the apple tree under the sea isn\u2019t so much a coming-of-age record as it is a settling-into-yourself record. Accepting, resisting, imagining. It\u2019s all there, in cartoonish hits spilling out of a queer Black woman\u2019s laptop. But Udu\u2019s story is far from finished, because she doesn\u2019t like finishing anything. \u201cI\u2019m so good at starting stuff\u2014starting ideas, even taking them to the middle,\u201d she confirms. \u201cBut finishing them sucks. Maybe that\u2019s a personal thing. That probably is a personal thing, reflective of myself in some way that I cannot tell you right now\u2014not because I\u2019m not willing to share. Maybe in the next record I\u2019ll find out why.\u201d Maybe by the next record she\u2019ll like \u201cthe beginning of the end\u201d again, too.<\/p>\n
the apple tree under the sea is out February 13 via AWAL.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/5D7392DE-DE63-4D9B-8919-BA63EB9E73A1.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Matt Mitchell is the editor of Paste. They live in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"hemlocke springs doesn\u2019t like \u201cthe beginning of the end.\u201d The song dates back years, to when she was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-294836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}