British singer Holly Humberstone’s second album, “Cruel World,” will be released on April 10th.
This is the new album by the 26-year-old artist, considered a voice of her generation. She has made an album about the struggle between pain and pleasure, chaos and acceptance. She is known for her vivid and captivating songs. She has said that the album is a dark fairy-tale world of her own creation, featuring childhood items, monsters, and memory.
‘Cruel World’ is a follow-up to her 2023 debut “Paint My Bedroom Black.” While the first record is about turmoil and longing, “Cruel World” is about healing and remembering. While there is turmoil and longing on the first record, there is repair, belonging, and rediscovery on “Cruel World.”
Alongside the album’s announcement, Humberstone has released the first single, “To Love Somebody”, a soaring track with a music video directed by Silken Weinberg, who has worked with Ethel Cain.
The music video, influenced by Victorian theatre, the Brothers Grimm, and the silent horror classic “Nosferatu,” begins the gothic visual world of the album.”
“The record looks at love as something beautiful but also painful,” Humberstone explained.
She wrote “To Love Someone” because her close friend went through a heart-wrenching breakup.”
“It’s better to have loved and lost, even when it hurts, because feeling everything is part of being human,” Humberstone said. “Loving hard is painful, and those two sides of love exist in the same space for me. They are all real, tough, and vulnerable experiences.”
In the last two years, Humberstone has been reconnecting with her past and feeling more grounded, after being in the public eye since she was 20. Humberstone, along with her sister Eleri and creative director Weinberg, also created Crue World’s visual world, inspired by trinkets Humberstone found as she left her childhood home.
Included in these were ballet shoes and Alice in Wonderland books, along with references to movies such as Edward Scissorhands and James and the Giant Peach. Recalling all of these things made the ghosts of her past play and magical.”
The record was written during daily sessions with his longtime producer and writing partner, Rob Milton. The record is about various types of love. He explains that because he grew up around strong women, this record is about how women are encouraged to see other women as competitors and how to move past that.
Gothic love songs such as the previously released “Die Happy” deal with love, risk, and desire and draw inspiration from fairy tales, the story of Dracula, and the ache of the changing seasons.
Since the 2021 EP “Falling Asleep at the Wheel,” she has developed a cinematic, intimate style of work that has seen her grow from her family home in Grantham, England, to significant events such as Glastonbury, Lollapalooza, and Wembley Stadium, where she has opened for Taylor Swift.
She also took home the BRIT Rising Star award in 2022 and was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award for her song “Haunted House.” She also gained recognition for her song Paint My Bedroom Black in 2023. Humberstone is set to headline several small headline gigs in Europe, tour the UK this Spring, and perform at large festivals this year at Coachella, Governors Ball, and Bonnaroo.
