Singer-songwriter Holly Humberstone released her debut album, Paint My Bedroom Black, on Friday, October 13th. The album has a 13-song tracklist, which includes her single, “Antichrist.”
Holly is set to go on her This Feels Like The Truman Show Tour starting February 2nd in Paris and will end on March 16th in Dublin.
Do you have any memorable moments from making the album?
Holly: I can remember writing a lot of the songs. If I'm having a good day, I can remember the day I wrote all of the songs. I love writing and I love the process of it. The song “Into Your Room,” I remember writing that after having such a mental block for a long time. I'd been on the road on tour and I was in LA. I was sent out there to do this big writing week with all these crazy incredible producers who are all great. I wasn't in the mood, I was exhausted and wanted to go home. I had the weekend off and I was having a horrible time. It was my time off and I wanted to be in London with my sisters and friends. I felt like I had been away for a long time. I reached out to this guy named Ethan Gruska who I've always wanted to work with. He's done a bunch of my favorite stuff, he's got an incredible solo project and a bunch of Phoebe's [Bridgers] stuff and the new Ryan Beatty album. I am obsessed with him and I DM'd him and said can I come right with you and he said, "Yeah, come on down." It was incredible. I had the most fun two days writing in his weird little studio. He has all these things he's found from little shops that make weird noises. We wrote “Into Your Room” on that day. I feel like you can hear it in the lyrics and in the sound, it's fun and freeing. I just remember really needing it and just feeling euphoric the whole day. Writing a song for me after not writing on for a long time, it's my favorite feeling in the whole world. Nothing else can come close to writing a song I love. There were loads, I remember being in New York and writing “Antichrist" and “Paint My Bedroom Black" and leaving the door and skipping down the street and being like, "Yes, I got some more."
Which song did you write first?
Holly: I think that the first song that I wrote off the album was “Room Service,” which is the final song on the album. I think I wrote it before The Walls Are Way Too Thin even came out. I remember writing it and being like this has to be the last song on the album whenever it gets made. It feels like the end of something, even though it's the first thing I wrote. I wrote that song about my friends. A couple of songs are about romantic relationships and stuff. I feel like not enough people write about platonic relationships and sisterhoods. That song is about missing my friends during lockdown. It opened up a can of worms. I love my friends and I'm lucky to have amazing people around me all the time and I just want to write about them all the time. It made me realize how much I love writing about them. It's my favorite one to play live, it's my love song to them.
Is there any artist you'd love to write with?
Holly: There's so many, at the moment there are loads. Firstly, I find songwriting such an intimate thing. I feel like I have done so many writing sessions. As a writer starting out before you release anything you go around to different producers and writers and I struggled with that process. I can't just open up to some 40-year-old man about boyfriends or something like that. It's hard to be vulnerable with someone you don't know. For me, it has to really click and have a proper connection to get a song out of it. I've done so many bad sessions where I've come out of it crying. There's loads of artists, Matt Healy was a great one to learn from. I'd love to work with Justin Vernon one day. He's been one of my favorite artists since I was really small. Ethan was one of my dream collaborations. Frank Ocean is the top of the top.
What is your biggest career goal for the next few years?
Holly: I don't know... I feel like I don't have the ability to see too far into the future. I'm just so focused on how cool it is that I get to do this now. It also scares me a little bit because I'd love to be able to do this forever. Who even knows how long I'll be writing for and get to tour and stuff like that. I don't have any really big goals. I'm really ambitious and would love to do this forever. I suffer from imposter syndrome like a lot of us do. No matter what line of work you're in, everyone has that. I can't even believe that I'm here and I've gotten to release an album. I think that one thing that I want to do is more albums. I want to get as far as I can and be able to be happy and enjoy it as well. I'm still learning how to cope with different aspects of the job that may have more of a toll on my mental health. I'd love to be at a place where I'm more satisfied, happy and looking after myself properly. I feel like I started off there when I first started releasing music. I feel like i've learned so much more now, but I feel like that innocence of starting out you have no care and being this is so sick. I feel like I want to get back to that place.
“Paint My Bedroom Black” is the title track, did you feel like it needed to be more special not only to the fans but to you as well?
Holly: Totally, yeah. For me, there were a few reasons I wanted to make it the title track and the track number 1. Originally, it was gonna be “Cocoon” and the title of the album was gonna be I’m just going through something which is the repeating line in the chorus in “Cocoon.” For me writing I do it for myself and my mental health. I don't really journal. I find it quite hard to keep up with journaling every day. A Lot of the time I'm exhausted by the end of the day and I want to go to sleep or put on a mindless show. I save it all up for the studio and for writing. The album has been really important for me to do the last couple of years just to stay sane and have a moment to touch in with myself and regroup. I feel like “Paint My Bedroom Black” I wrote it and it sounded like not only track number 1 but how I was feeling at the time to a T. I'd been on tour for the past year and as much as it's such an experience and so cool I wouldn't swap it for anything. A lot of it felt like a fake existence and I kinda want to shut everything out and I didn't write it about anybody. It’s kinda just about me and wanting to shut the negativity out. For me, it just felt like when I wrote it, such a relief and it sounded positive and turned something that was bringing me down into an upbeat song. To me, it felt special and that it needed to be track 1 and the title track. It summed it all up for me really.
Listen to Paint My Bedroom Black HERE