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“I’m literally just a girl from Croydon,” says an overwhelmed Lola Young, eyeballing the 2,700 fans on their feet inside London’s Royal Festival Hall. “This is insane.” Moments before, the 24-year-old alt-pop singer had arrived on stage – dressed decidedly Y2K in an animal-print bra, forest green capri pants and lace-up trainer-style heels – appearing extremely nervous. It was only two days ago that tears filled her eyes on stage at the Capital Summertime Ball, when her in-ear monitors failed mid-performance. Tonight at the Southbank Centre’s Meltdown Festival, curated by rapper Little Simz, Young coyly introduces herself to the crowd, pacing the stage while staring at the floor.
Any uneasiness quickly thaws away, though, when the crowd arises for “Wish You Were Dead”, a rock-inflected blow-by-blow account of a fight between lovers from last year’s debut album This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway. She belts out grand, bodacious riffs as she twists her arms into choreographed poses. That skittish pacing has transformed into decisive, commanding struts as she cockily drags the microphone behind stand her as if it were an expensive puppy.
Young, both tonight and in her career, is finding her footing. She signed to Island Records in 2019 and appeared to be on the nondescript pop star major-label trajectory (she provided vocals for the 2021 John Lewis Christmas advert). But last year, reemerging with facial piercings, a shaggy bleached mullet and an increased online presence, Young lept onto the charts with her single “Messy” – an angsty, self-aware celebration of her flaws highlighted to her by an ex-lover – which hogged top spot for four consecutive weeks. She cemented her claim to pop-stardom with her fierce performance at the Brit Awards, in which performed “Messy” with a hoover in tow, belting the chorus: “‘Cause I’m too messy, and then I’m too f***ing clean.” As an artist, she’s inevitably drawn comparisons to Adele and Amy Winehouse, thanks to her straight-talking sardonic personality and an acrobatic voice that can be both sonorous and quietly vulnerable. She’s also been oddly controversial, having faced overreaching “nepo baby” and “industry plant” accusations due to her great-aunt being The Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson.
Young’s quick-witted personality is certainly in the room with us tonight, and this performance is nothing but genuine. After delivering an expletive-heavy sentence, she clocks two giddy tweens wearing matching “Lola Young” T-shirts and bows in their hair, bouncing like Duracell bunnies on the balcony. “Kids, you can swear… but only do it when I’m here,” she winks. She’s also painfully aware of how her most successful song, “Messy”, is what everybody’s waiting for. “No, this next song isn’t ‘Messy’, you lil’ f***ers,” she teases. She’s a natural.
Young skanks and snakes her waist to the peppy love song “Big Brown Eyes”, about the irresistibility of her lover’s “sexy arse big brown eyes”, with the audience chanting back the earworm lyrics: “I could’ve called Chris, James, Nico/I could've called Sam.” Young performs two unreleased songs: one upbeat punky number called “Spiders” that will feature on her unannounced next album, and a fervent, acoustic song dedicated to her younger sister, who Young says is struggling with not going to school. “I wrote it yesterday in 30 minutes… it doesn’t have a name yet,” she tells the crowd, spotlit on a stall with only her guitar. It’s hard to believe it was written just 24 hours ago, given that it sounds like it’s been masterfully produced and meticulously combed through. Yet that’s a testament to Young’s preternatural talent.
All roads, inevitably, lead to “Messy”. But not before an encore. We leap out of our seats again, for the bubbly “Conceited”, a retrospective letter to an excessively vain ex with a roaring Arctic Monkeys-style guitar chorus. She croons from her gut as her voice creeps further down into mind-blowingly voluminous, deep notes. When she returns from the faux-encore exit, she admits she finds them embarrassing. “I hate encores because I have to leave the stage even though everyone knows I haven’t played ‘Messy’ yet,” she says. When we do eventually hear that viral hit live, though, I sense she’s somewhat over it. Young seems most comfortable performing her unreleased songs, those that nobody knows the words to, those that feel the closest to her. Nothing about this performance feels inauthentic.
