Messy made her pop’s next big thing. Her new album charts the chaotic aftermath

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Lola Young, I’m Only F---ing Myself

Last year, Lola Young blew up. The 24-year-old singer had been chipping away at a career in the music industry for close to a decade. The BBC predicted she’d be one of the breakout stars of 2022, but it wasn’t until the release of her second album This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway last year, whose standout track Messy went viral via TikTok, that the “next big thing” tag came to seismic fruition.

But just as she started to go gangbusters, Young was nearly derailed by a cocaine addiction that sent her to a treatment facility last November. Her new album I’m Only F---ing Myself explores her drug dependency, as well as her action-packed sex life and ongoing mental health struggles (these were the main focus of her previous album; Young was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder as a teenager and was recently diagnosed with ADHD).

Many comparisons have been made between Young and the late crooner Amy Winehouse, another luminescent talent who flew too close to the sun. It’s not just addiction and a manager (Nick Shymansky) that the women have in common. Like Winehouse, Young is also a brilliant, raw, funny songwriter, a foul-mouthed South Londoner on the precipice of superstardom.

The 24-year-old was in rehab for a cocaine addiction when her smash Messy was blowing up on TikTok. On her new album, she explores her ongoing struggles with drugs, sex and mental health.

On I’m Only F---ing Myself, Young’s sexual frankness reaches new heights. Over distorted bluesy riffs, she leans into her recently announced bisexuality on F--- Everyone. “I just wanna f--- guys who don’t like me and don’t mind/I just wanna f--- girls who don’t love me, they don’t mind,” she belts in the grungy, surefire scream-along of a chorus.

Initially, the lyrics come over a little immature, but it becomes apparent that most of the sex on this record is a dissociative substitute for, or an alternative, to drugs: gratifying in the moment, but perhaps not in the long run. One Thing is even more brazen, an ambling, reggae-tinged pop song in which Young owns the archetype of the single-minded male with lascivious abandon.

In her more vulnerable moments, Young expresses affection in sometimes unexpected places, telling her candy man she’ll miss him in the merry melodies and darker lyrics of pre-rehab kiss-off Dealer; admitting to a lover, “I’m not a woman if I don’t have you,” on the downbeat ballad Spiders; and experiencing an oxytocin-induced rush of emotion in Post-Sex Clarity. “I still love you and don’t know why/’Cause every other man didn’t mean a goddamn to me/When I finish it’s not the end of you and I,” she sings, on a song that sounds like it might have the same impact as Messy with its chorus of lilting, overdubbed harmonies.

Elsewhere she’s feistier, as on the lovely, Kate Nash-esque Walk All Over You, where Young warns, “Just ’cause you’re a man, don’t mean you can sit there and treat me like shit on your shoes/’Cause do me wrong, I’ll put ’em on and I’ll walk all over you.”

Almost all tracks on the album are produced by Solomonophonic, Manuka, and frequent collaborator Carter Lang (fresh off his work on Justin Bieber’s Swag and its sequel), a trio displaying the same range, alchemy and knack for catchy hooks as on Young’s previous record.

The album ends with a powerful one-two: Not Like That Anymore, containing the titular (and promising) “I’m not f---ing myself any more” and some of the record’s best lyrics; then chased by the nihilistic anhedonia of Who F---ing Cares. The sequencing is curious, bucking the trend of the upbeat closer, but it’s typical of the realness and unflinching honesty that Young’s growing army of fans clearly crave.

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