Critically acclaimed and award-winning singer songwriter, Holly Humberstone has officially announced her highly anticipated debut album, Paint My Bedroom Black, out October 13th, 2023 via Darkroom / Geffen / Polydor Records. Possessing a talent for capturing and characterizing our most tumultuous moments in her songwriting – as the bad friend trying to make good, a lost soul propelled through post-breakup mania, the buzzkill, the one afraid of coming on too strong – the 23-year-old artist from Grantham, UK has become one of the most exciting alternative pop stars of her generation, already winning the BRIT Rising Star in 2022, receiving nominations for two Ivor Novello awards, and coming runner up in BBC Sound Of 2021.
Alongside the announcement, Holly also released her double A-Side singles, “Antichrist” and “Room Service” as the first tastes of Paint My Bedroom Black. With brutally honest storytelling at the heart of her craft, the pair of tracks find Holly reflecting her introspection and extraversion, two opposing artistic multitudes that inform her lyricism and sound. “I feel like two different people half the time,” she adds. “I love everything I’ve released, but the biggest challenge is always to make something I feel I haven’t done before, that reflects new parts of me.” The new parts of Holly appear on “Antichrist”, an exposing image of her last break-up set against propulsive pop, juxtaposed against the romantic “Room Service”: two starkly different tracks that act as a revolving door into the visceral new worlds for Holly.
Holly will perform songs from Paint My Bedroom Black in the US for the first time ever at her recently announced show at The Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles on August 11th, as well as performances at Lollapalooza, Osheaga Music and Arts Festival and Outside Lands Festival this summer.
“This album is an exploration of the two sides of myself that coexist,” says Holly about the album. “One side, the introvert who wants to board the windows up and shut the world out, writing about wanting to escape my surroundings and the confusion of life on the road last year. The other side of me, the extrovert, writing about a budding relationship, deep connections and love. I spent most of last year on the road, and although I kept busy and enjoyed touring for the most part, I found myself retreating back to empty hotel rooms in foreign cities every night while watching my life at home carry on without me through my phone screen. Late at night, I felt the panic of being left behind the most. Yearning for home, I never felt like I was totally present wherever I was in the world. It all felt like some weird dream; like a fake existence that I was alone in. The only way I knew to find clarity was to write.”
About “Room Service” and “Antichrist”, Holly adds, “I wrote “Room Service” a little while ago when I’d just started touring full time. I was finding myself constantly stressed out and although I was having fun, I was really missing home and my friends. There was this swelling feeling that I was growing apart from that world that I was missing so badly, and I just didn’t want to be forgotten. AlI I wanted to do was to get a hotel room with my best friend, lock the world out and do stupid stuff like order room service. To me, this song is a simple love song to the people I care about the most, and the seemingly basic experiences you share together that can so often be taken for granted. “Antichrist”, on the other hand, is about a break up I went through a couple of years ago. I genuinely cared about this person and wanted so badly to make it work, but I knew something wasn’t right; that my heart wasn’t fully in it. At the time I wrote the song, I remember feeling like I was constantly letting those around me down. Like I was falling short of being there for anyone I cared about. I basically felt like the worst person in the world; like the Antichrist. I really felt that I was toxic to be around, and the guilt and self-loathing that came with that manifested itself in this song.”