LOLA YOUNG ISN'T AFRAID TO GET ‘MESSY'

She has a viral hit with her song about embracing contradiction, but she's so much more than just a moment

- AUDRA HEINRICHS

Lola Young never intended to be a TikTok phenom. And yet, if you thumb through the app right now, there's a solid chance your entire timeline will be deploying her 2024 megahit “Messy” to soundtrack their daily moments of mundanity. What makes a soul-pop song by a 24-year-old from South London resonate with anyone from a viral hairstylist from Las Vegas to a Houston-based baker to a nepo baby in Los Angeles?

Perhaps it's simply that her breakout single is shitting all over the self-help industrial complex that powers so many other clips on the app. “OK, so yeah, I smoke like a chimney/ I'm not skinny and I pull a Britney every other week/But cut me some slack, who do you want me to be?” she vents, ramping up to the catchy, expletive-laden hook that's catapulted her here: “A thousand people I could be for you, and you hate the fucking lot.”

In 2024, Young secured a second BRIT Awards nomination, a Number One hit on the U.K. charts, and a prominent guest appearance on Tyler, the Creator's Chromakopia. Less than a decade earlier, she was an earnest teen armed with an acoustic guitar and her own writing at open mic competitions. Young easily set herself apart from more than 9,000 others at Open Mic UK, a national live music contest, with an original song entitled “Never Enough” in 2016. Three years of performing in similar contests and local gigs later, she was signed by Island Records after graduating the BRIT School, where past alumni includes Amy Winehouse and Adele — two artists to whom her cavernous vocals, lyrical candor, and endearing cackle have long invited comparisons. It's no wonder Winehouse's former manager, Nick Shymansky, left retirement to represent her, and Nick Huggett, who signed Adele, followed suit.