Songs in the key of sex

Lola Young faces down her monsters in typically bold and blatant style, while Kojey Radical returns displaying an all-encompassing creative approach

- Roisin O'Connor

Given the number of pop stars who have been open about their issues with drug addiction, it's surprising there aren't more songs about breaking up with dealers. So hats off to Lola Young for owning her mixed feelings over the arcade game beat of “D£aler”, the third single from I'm Only F***ing Myself.

This is the third LP in as many years from the 24-year-old pop-rocker who hit the mainstream last year when her anthem “Messy” went viral on TikTok. Kylie Jenner was among the 250,000 people lip-synching along to the snaggy hook: “Cause I’m too messy, and then I’m too fucking clean.”

The sound of I’m Only F***ing Myself continues that song’s chaotic theme, bouncing between the basement grunge of “Fuck Everyone” and “Can We Ignore It” and the cleaner-cut pop of “One Thing” or “D£aler”. There’s an autumn leaves-on-the-pavement vibe to the way Young mixes up the bright red and golds of synths with the darker, sludgier guitar sounds.

The south Londoner embraces a proper melting pot of genres, vocally hopscotching from a ragged Cerys Matthews-style howl on the shoegazey “SPIDERS” to the Raye-indebted glottal-stopped semi-rap of “One Thing”, then to the sweet, vulnerable crooning of “Post Sex Clarity”. Over the muzzy electric strum of the latter, she tells her lover: “I want you to trickle right down my throat.”

The warning word “explicit” appears in brackets next to eight out of I’m Only F***ing Myself’s 12 tracks. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Young explained that writing so openly about sex was her way of “masking” her emotions. “It’s kind of, this is my alter ego, the sex thing - but underneath it is pain and aggression and things I was going through that were more difficult,” she said.