Holly Humberstone explains why rushing her upcoming album didn’t work

Holly Humberstone has explained why rushing her creative process on her upcoming debut album did not work for her.

While speaking to NME backstage at Lollapalooza 2023 ahead of her set, Humberstone opened up about her upcoming album ‘Paint My Bedroom Black’ and her creative process behind it.

“I did try to rush and write stuff but it just didn’t really work,” explained the singer. “My music has always been really personal to me and going into the studio and writing about stuff that has been going on is always really crucial to my mental health so I discovered that it is part of the process to take your time with things. I couldn’t have done it any faster if I tried.”

She continued: “I wanted it to be my favourite thing that I’d done to date. I feel like with so many of my favourite artists, their debut album has always been the most iconic piece of work so I wanted it to represent me to a ’T’ and I wanted it to just feel like it’s really come from my heart, it sounds really cringe but I did. It’s just something I feel like you can’t really rush.”

Humberstone also shared that she explored new places within songwriting that she has never explored before while writing the bulk of the LP on tour.

“I feel like I felt things last year that I’d never really experienced before because it’s all still really new to me. I discovered that I had two different sides to myself so the album is split in half and one half is sort of extroverted part of me that I knew was already there and the other half is this darker, kind of wanting to shut the world outside of me I guess and I went into that,” she said.

She added: “It’s titled ‘Paint My Room Black’ because I felt like that summed it all up. It is more personal than anything I have ever written before and I am really proud of it. I am a bit scared to release it just because I care about it so much so I guess that’s a good thing.”

Elsewhere, Humberstone shared what it was like working with D4vd on her track ‘Superbloodmoon’.

“Working with D4vd was so cool. I’ve been a fan of him forever, since he started releasing music. He was in the UK on tour and I asked him if he wanted to come into the studio and we wrote ‘Superbloodmoon’.”

Humberstone’s debut album, ‘Paint My Room Black’, is set for release on October 19 via Polydor/Darkroom/Geffen. Visit here to pre-order the LP.

Check back at NME all weekend for more reviews, news, interviews, photos and more from Lollapalooza 2023.