{"id":394639,"date":"2026-04-12T11:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T11:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/394639\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T11:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T11:35:12","slug":"i-have-to-look-nice-or-my-album-isnt-going-to-sell-the-same-rules-dont-apply-for-dudes-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/394639\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I have to look nice, or my album isn\u2019t going to sell. The same rules don\u2019t apply for dudes\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Holly Humberstone talks about her childhood the way some people enthuse about a beloved horror movie. It was, she says, eerie \u2013 but in a good way. <\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up in this old, crumbling house,\u201d the singer explains. \u201cThere was nobody else really around apart from my three sisters and me. My parents are both working for the NHS and very busy. So it felt like we raised each other in this spooky, weirdly comforting house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those memories came rushing back as she recorded her new album, Cruel World, a collection of dark and stormy electro bangers and gothic power ballads. Just how dark is made clear in the video for its lead single, To Love Somebody, in which Humberstone sings through a nosebleed and is pursued by a shadowy vampire straight out of FW Murnau\u2019s silent classic Nosferatu.<\/p>\n

These creepy images were inspired by a visit to her family home, just outside Grantham, in Lincolnshire, a few years ago. She\u2019d gone back to rummage through her old belongings in preparation for a permanent move to London. The experience was both hugely poignant \u2013 who doesn\u2019t feel a quiver when digging through the detritus of their past? \u2013 and slightly unsettling. Above all, it brought her back to her idiosyncratic upbringing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember one of my earliest memories at Christmas \u2013 my favourite present that I think I ever received was this book of Brothers Grimm fairy tales. I remember it being so unlike the stories that I was told before. They were so dark and macabre. I had this weird fascination with them. Some of those things were so disturbing that you can\u2019t really look away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Humberstone was still at school when she was discovered by her local radio station, BBC<\/a> Lincolnshire, in 2017. This led to a slot on the BBC Introducing stage at the Glastonbury festival two years later, followed by a Brit rising-star award (an accolade previously won by Adele and Florence + The Machine). Everything snowballed from there: she went on tour with Lewis Capaldi and had a UK top-five hit in 2023 with her debut album, Paint My Bedroom Black.<\/p>\n

An ambitious artist, she has put a great deal of thought into how she presents her music. Cruel World comes with a carefully curated look, developed in collaboration with her sister Eleri and the creative director and photographer Silken Weinberg \u2013 best known for her work with the goth-pop sensation Ethel Cain. <\/p>\n

Together they have come up with an aesthetic that might be described as artisanal goth\u201d. In the video to the title track, for instance, Humberstone is done up as an emo Joan of Arc dancing in a graveyard and miming to a tune that suggests a folk-horror Taylor Swift<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Holly Humberstone: \u2018There\u2019s a generation of young female artists who are all about oversharing\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a striking look that captures much of the feel of the record (though not all of it; many of her lyrics orbit the more traditional subjects of heartbreak and being adrift in your 20s). Every pop star needs a vibe or an era, whether it\u2019s Harry Styles going electroclash in Berlin or that time in 2023 when Ed Sheeran pretended he was Bon Iver. If there\u2019s a downside it\u2019s that putting yourself out there draws the haters with a vengeance. <\/p>\n

\"HollyHolly Humberstone says she noticed early in her career that women in music are held to different standards than men. Photograph: Silken Weinberg <\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like it\u2019s one of those things where you can\u2019t win. Recently, I\u2019ve been posting clips of my new song and video that I\u2019ve been obsessed with and so excited to share. I feel it represents me so much. And 90 per cent of the comments are just lovely. But there\u2019s always [one or two]\u2026 no matter what I do, people are, like, \u2018Oh, you\u2019ve just copied her.\u2019 No, they already did that the best. What would be the point in me trying to create someone else\u2019s thing?\u201d<\/p>\n

The rush to judge is especially apparent with female artists, she says. She noticed early in her career that women in music are held to different standards from men.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like it\u2019s something that I\u2019m only sort of comfortable talking about now because I\u2019ve come out the other side. I grew up with three sisters. There was never a competitive vibe internally between us. We just loved each other \u2013 there was never that, you know? It was kind of when we started to get a bit older, all of these external pressures set this competitive vibe.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was compounded by her experiences with the education system. \u201cI went on to an all-girls secondary school. I don\u2019t know how it happened, but I feel like their ethos, their way of making us perform and do well, was just pitting us against each other. I remember coming out of school and going straight into the music industry. I had this really terrible, toxic view of my peers and other girls that were just like me \u2013 who were trying to follow their dreams and be themselves and do the same thing that I was doing. It\u2019s embarrassing to admit, but it\u2019s not our fault. It\u2019s something that\u2019s been drilled into us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Humberstone sings about this on the final song on the record, Beauty Pageant \u2013 a celebration of sisterhood informed by her encounters as a woman in an industry that, even now, is dominated by men.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m in a writing room full of men most of the time. It\u2019s not really the place to bring it up. [But] I feel like it\u2019s a huge part of my life. Girlhood is so core to who I am. And the girls in my life are the most important thing I have to lean on. All these incredible women in my life have defined me \u2013 who I am and how I think. I felt it\u2019s weird not to address this thing we\u2019re all feeling: society putting this strange pressure on us to think there\u2019s only room for one of us to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'It’s‘It\u2019s the same with making music or making art,’ Holly Humberstone says. ‘It\u2019s all chaos, and we have to be there to receive it and just accept that none of us know what\u2019s going on. That\u2019s the beauty of life.’ Photograph: Silken Weinberg <\/p>\n

There is also an expectation that you will present yourself in a certain way. \u201cIt\u2019s this bullshit. Obviously it\u2019s not how it should be. The same pressures don\u2019t apply to men. My beauty regime takes me hours every morning. I do it for myself. But also it\u2019s currency. I have to look nice because otherwise, unfortunately, I don\u2019t think my album is going to sell. It sounds silly, but the same rules don\u2019t apply for dudes.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of these thoughts were pinging around Humberstone\u2019s head when Taylor Swift asked her to open for her at her Eras tour show at Wembley Stadium, in London, on August 16th, 2024. She sees Swift as a role model \u2013 someone who doesn\u2019t put up with any of the industry\u2019s nonsense. Plus it was a thrill to say \u201cHello, Wembley\u201d and perform to the biggest audience of her career.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is so down to support other women in the industry and just championing the girlies. We kind of are running the show at the moment. It\u2019s the time for the girlies. It feels very cool to be amongst some amazing, inspiring women.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 25, Humberstone has also reached the age when you discover that you never entirely outgrow the vulnerable teenager you used to be. It\u2019s one of the things she wrestles with on the album: how to be an adult when inside you still feel like a child.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat feeling of not being in control of your life \u2013 I don\u2019t think that uncertainty ever really goes away. I thought by my mid-20s I\u2019d be so refined as this adult woman. Speaking to my mum now, who\u2019s just turned 60, she says that she still feels like a 14-year-old girl inside. I don\u2019t think that feeling ever goes away. It\u2019s been quite freeing to accept that sense of the unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HollyHolly Humberstone performing on the future sounds stage during BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend at the War Memorial Park in Coventry, May 2022. Photograph: Ian West\/PA <\/p>\n

Life, she feels, \u201cis a series of chaotic events happening to us\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the same with making music or making art,\u201d she continues. \u201cIt\u2019s all chaos, and we have to be there to receive it and just accept that none of us know what\u2019s going on. That\u2019s the beauty of life. That is the through-line of the album to me. Life is an emotional rollercoaster and love is this confusing thing. We\u2019re lucky to be here for this short amount of time. We might as well be open to all of these experiences \u2013 whether they\u2019re good or bad or all mixed into one.\u201d <\/p>\n

Good or bad, Humberstone has poured her life into these new songs and created something dark and mysterious \u2013 a horror movie soundtrack where the jump scares take the form of one brilliantly banging chorus after another. <\/p>\n

Cruel World is released by Polydor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Holly Humberstone talks about her childhood the way some people enthuse about a beloved horror movie. It was,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1578,93,631,61,60,278,6543],"class_list":{"0":"post-394639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-for-you","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-taylor-swift"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394639","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=394639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}