The grand old hall of the Palladium felt like a suitably restrained place for Lola Young to return. This is a 25-year-old Londoner who has experienced all the highs and lows at once in the past few months. In September last year, suddenly huge after her autobiographical 2024 single Messy became a sleeper hit, Young collapsed on stage, five songs into a concert in New York, and cancelled the rest of her US tour.

Since then she has won awards at both the Grammys and the Brits while building a reputation as someone who is prepared to lay out every issue, from addictions to bad boyfriends to serious mental health problems, in pop songs that have their appeal in being so unguarded. The challenge was in Young balancing her clear talent and charisma with the pressures of exposure, but this concert proved to be a well-judged coming in from the cold.

“It’s a bad game of love we’re in,” sang Young, playing solo piano, on Bad Game (3am), mining the lonely spirit of Joni Mitchell while throwing in some Mariah Carey-style vocal gymnastics for good measure. From there, she came across as being in control of the situation: here was someone who can open up and bleed in song, but align that with a professionalism that brings its own form of protection.

“So I’m back,” she said, as a pianist joined her for Why Do I Feel Better When I Hurt You, which displayed her lyrical speciality: going deep into relationship problems without supplying any answers, probably because, being only 25, she hasn’t got them yet. “Life’s a game and I just can’t win,” she lamented on Penny out of Nothing; Sad Sob Story was one big gripe about an old boyfriend. The zest with which the female-dominated audience sang the words back to her illustrated how closely they related to them.

Young was also entirely capable of maximum rudeness. One Thing was a catchy pop singalong about having zero interest in some guy’s mind but a lot of interest in his body; Post Sex Clarity evoked the feeling of pure attraction in the face of reason. Drugs featured too, with D£aler equating addiction to substance abuse and marrying the two. Dancing before the crowd, making the fans sing the choruses, she seemed almost carefree. But the songs themselves revealed the troubled waters within.

“I guess you know what’s coming,” she said in the encore. “This song changed my life.” That led the way for Messy, in which she listed all the criticisms levelled at her: smoking like a chimney, not being skinny, pulling “a Britney every other week” (ie, having a meltdown). The messiness is what makes Lola Young stand out, of course. If she can continue to hold it together, as she did at this appealingly compact concert, and transplant the chaos into song rather than let it take over her life, she’ll be fine.

★★★★☆

Set list

Bad Game (3am)
Spiders
Walk All Over You
Why do I Feel Better when I Hurt You
Sad Sob Story
Penny out of Nothing
Conceited
Post Sex Clarity
D£aler
One Thing
Big Brown Eyes
You Noticed
Not Like that anymore
Messy