Pop artist Holly Humberstone reveals that she frequently struggled with an identity crisis as she navigated the pressures of the music industry. While she has earned endorsements from high-profile artists like Taylor Swift and Sam Fender, she describes her life away from the stage as surprisingly domestic, including a playful admission of unintentionally stealing a neighbour’s cat. Really struggled with in the early days and it’s something I’ve really had to unlearn, it’s something I really.
During a video call from her home in New Cross, south-east London, the singer explains that she and her partner have been coaxing a small black cat into their garden with treats. He’s a tiny little black cat who’s come into our garden and simply chosen us. Oh, she knows some secrets!” laughs the singer. “I’m so glad she can’t talk. But she’s a countryside cat and she hated it so much, we actually tried to bring her to London with us. To remind myself of who I am,” she says, it’s a place I always felt I could go back to.
Although they have grown fond of the animal, she insists they regularly encourage him to return home. We literally push him out every night.
The incident follows a period of significant personal change, as her parents relocated from their long-time family home in Lincolnshire to Wales last year, taking her pets with them. One of those pets, a cat named Tsuki, features in her song Lucy as a non-judgmental confidante.
The move by her parents was a disruptive period for the singer, as the house outside Grantham had been a creative hub for her early work. She spent much of 2025 clearing out the property, a process she found unsettling as she faced the prospect of leaving her childhood behind. This experience of uprooting her life directly informed the writing of her second album, Cruel World, which reached number four on the UK charts. Their house, a “freezing cold, falling down” property 20 minutes outside of Grantham, played a huge part in the singer’s success. The 2021 single Haunted House is even dedicated to the “friendly” spirits who inhabited the property. Instead, she spent 2025 “packing up 23 years of stuff my family and I had accumulated”, from her old ballet shoes and poetry books to forgotten bits of jewellery.
Humberstone notes that composing the album served as a safety mechanism, allowing her to process her feelings through a blend of fantasy and reality.
The tracks, such as To Love Somebody and Die Happy, showcase her ability to tap into raw emotional themes. Honey, ” she sings on To Love Somebody, external, soothing her elder sister as she endures an agonising break-up, to lose somebody is to know you’re only human. She throws herself headfirst into a new affair on Die Happy, external, declaring: ” Hit the gas, I want it fast, want it reckless, undeterred by that heartbreak. Humberstone’s biggest songs include Falling Asleep At The Wheel, The Walls Are Way Too Thin, Die Happy and Scarlett. I pray that one day I’ll turn and face the mirror with a smile,” sings Humberstone. In such a pretty dress,” she teases the object of her affections, don’t leave a girl upset. When Humberstone realises she’s fallen head-over-heels in love, terminally Yours takes place a couple of weeks later.
However, it is the album’s closing track, Beauty Pageant, that addresses her struggle with the rigid beauty standards placed on female musicians. However, her story crumbles like a biscuit in a hot cup of tea, under the slightest scrutiny.
She admits that the song draws from a competitive mindset fostered during her time at an all-girls school, where academic and social success felt like a zero-sum game.
Following her 2022 Brit Award Rising Star win, Humberstone felt the weight of being compared to larger artists on her label’s roster. Despite her success, she found the constant benchmarking against peers to be a source of significant anxiety. She has since reached a turning point, choosing to move away from setting external goals. She emphasizes that her priority is now to remain authentic and produce music that helps others feel understood, rather than chasing an elusive sense of having finally made it. Writing about other people often feels easier than turning the magnifying glass on yourself. After winning the Brits Rising Star award in 2022, Humberstone found herself competing with megastars, even though her music leaned towards the alternative side of pop. Nowadays, Humberstone has stopped benchmarking herself against her peers, recognising that the need for validation never fades.
This shift in mindset is reflected in the expanded edition of Cruel World, which features five new tracks written after the initial record was completed. Inspired by a playlist that included Robyn, Madonna, and Abba, the new songs exhibit a more confident and playful tone. Tracks like Too Cute To Be Lonely and the self-critical Terminally Yours highlight this evolution in her songwriting. Inspiring the “wonky sonics” of her indie-leaning pop sound, her early EPs were all written there. When you’ve got that in your back pocket, there’s room to experiment and break some of your usual parameters, i was super proud of Cruel World and.
One notable addition is Silver Sky, an acoustic ballad written during a trip to Nashville. She recalled crafting the song in a garden alongside co-writer Maddie Diaz, surrounded by singing red cardinals. For Humberstone, this creative expansion represents a newfound freedom to move beyond her usual focus on mental health struggles and embrace a broader range of artistic expression.
