Tag: Lola Young Not Like That Anymore

In 2016, Lola Young played one of her earliest live gigs at a pub called The Bedford in London. She was sixteen at the time, and had no idea that, while she was singing at that very moment, Nick Shymansky would walk in. As in, the man who became Amy Winehouse’s first manager, shepherding her along for the majority (of the most successful parts) of her career. Young’s comparisons to Winehouse (in addition to Lily Allen [before she was Lily Dabblin’]—for it can be said she’s both British chanteuses rolled into one), both vocally and “emotional rawness”-wise have only added to the uncanniness of Shymansky managing her, and yet, there’s no doubt that one of the reasons he was drawn to her in the first place—having previously insisted he was done with managing—was because he had to do a double take to make sure it wasn’t Winehouse herself. At least from an auditory perspective (though she is currently rocking a similar “skunk blonde streaks” look as Winehouse did at one point).

As for his first impression of Young, he told Anthony Mason of CBS Mornings, “I was completely seduced by Lola’s talent and character.” Enough to take her on as the client that brought him out of retirement. Young, likewise, was insistent that out of all the managers she had met with, Shymansky was the only one she liked, the only one she felt could understand her and her vision. To add to the full-circleness of their partnership, he began managing her when she was sixteen, the same age Winehouse was when Shymansky first entered her life (then nineteen himself—a teenager managing a teenager). Unlike Winehouse, however, it seems that it’s her third album, I’m Only F**king Myself, that’s going to serve as her true international breakthrough (though “Messy,” from 2024’s This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway, was the launching pad with “Rehab”-level clout).

And yes, with three albums already under her belt at just twenty-four, her musical output already outweighs Winehouse’s when she was the same age (Back to Black, her second and final studio album, arrived the same year that Winehouse turned twenty-three). Indeed, perhaps learning from Winehouse’s mistakes, a key theme throughout I’m Only F**king Myself is her recent lifestyle amendment: going sober.

Which is why choosing to open with an interlude called “how long will it take to walk a mile?” has more than a slight touch of double meaning cachet. Because, often, the struggle to get sober can feel like an endless marathon—even if it’s “only” a mile in other people’s (read: non-addicts) minds. But it isn’t Young who speaks the interlude that kicks off the record; instead, she pulls a bit of an Ariana Grande by employing one of the recorded messages of her friends. In this case, artist Mandisa Apena, who sweetly chirps, “But I’m actually really grateful for life. I’m grateful for you and grateful that I’m here and I’m makin’ art. And I’m grateful that, you know, uh, that there are cows. I’m grateful that the grass is still green here. And that the air is still really clean. And all my friends and family are safe and well. I’m really, really grateful, I’m grateful for you, Lola. So, yeah, this is a bit of blabber but give me a message. How long will it take to walk a mile? Like what, forty-five minutes? I’m gonna walk a mile. Okay, I love you, talk to you soon, bye.”

From there, Young takes us into the more jarring sound of “F**K EVERYONE,” which she described to Apple Music as a “kind of punky, early-2000s, but heavily alternative with distorted, crunchy guitars.” This sound, produced by Solomonophonic and Manuka, perfectly complements the edge of Young waxing on about her self-destructive need to “fuck guys who don’t like me and don’t mind” and “fuck girls who don’t love me, they don’t mind.” This declaration speaking to her recent “coming out as bisexual” moment (which, in contrast to Billie Eilish, she at least got to do on her own terms, even if only via a cheeky TikTok comment). As for the title of the song, it, too, is ripe with a double meaning (just as the opening interlude and the title of the album itself). And while she might be boning everyone to fuck the pain away, she is also saying “fuck everyone” by refusing to engage beyond a (very) surface level in relationships.

Singing, “I’ve been right down in the gutter, blood on my knees/And I don’t have a lover, and I don’t need one/I’vе been fucking like no other and I don’t cry,” there’s an obvious tinge of self-preservation to the practice. As though Young is doing this whole nympho bit to “protect her heart,” if you will (or, as she phrased it to The Guardian, “Sex was my way of masking pain and aggression”). Which is also very much in the Lily Allen wheelhouse (hear also: “Everything to Feel Something”). And yes, even in Winehouse’s, as evidenced by her self-admonishment, “I should just be my own best friend/Not fuck myself in the head with stupid men.”

Though this façade is obviously a form of armor, Young reemphasizes her sexual prowess on the Afrobeat-infused “One Thing,” which marked the first single from this album. Subverting the usual adage about how “men only want one thing,” Young not only willingly offers that one thing, but also suggests that she’s the one who only wants that that one thing from a man (“If a man can say he’s only here for one thing, so can I”), confidently declaring, “Break your bed and then the sofa/I wanna pull you closer/Everybody wants to know ya/But me, I only want one thing/I don’t even want your number/Don’t care if you got another/‘Cause tonight, I’m your only lover/And I’ma give you that one thing/I’ma give you that one thing.” Whether or not she’s drunk and high off her tits while making this offer is left to the listener’s discretion. Which brings the listener to the subject of the next track (and third single), “d£aler.” Speaking on her desire to “get away, far from here/Pack my bags, my drugs and disappear,” Young suggests that the only way to really put a stop to her addiction (specifically, cocaine) is to be cut off at the source: her dealer (as though she couldn’t find one in another town).

So it is that she adds, “Tell you, ‘No,’ make it clear/I’m not comin’ back for fifteen years/I wanna write a note/Leave it with my next door neighbor/Who don’t give a shit/I wanna get away, far from here/Pack my bags and tell my dealer I’ll miss him.” Though, naturally, what she’ll really miss are the drugs he provides. The levity, sound-wise, of the track is in contrast to the fact that, as Young put it, “It’s an uplifting song, but it’s got a sad message. It’s definitely one that goes a bit deeper for me.” The same goes for “Spiders,” the subsequent song (and most recent single)—except there is no “uplifting” note to it. Neither musically, nor lyrically. And as Young grapples with some of her biggest fears, she belts out an admission that a woman isn’t supposed to say out loud anymore, namely, “Make me feel like I’m not incomplete for once/‘Cause I’m not a woman if I don’t have you/I’m not a woman if I don’t have you/And you’re not a man if you don’t have me.”

This confession to the type of codependency in relationships—particularly for women—that can so easily arise, even to this day, is part of Young’s fear on multiple levels. On the one hand, it speaks to her fear of being vulnerable with another person; on the other, it’s about facing that fear (the “spiders,” so to speak) head-on (hence, the literalism of the accompanying video). In Young’s words, “[The song] encompasses all the pain and fear I have ever felt towards myself, and it’s about wanting someone to love me beyond all of that. Sometimes you want to kill what you’re most scared of in life, but when you actually face up to it, it’s really not as scary as you thought it would be.”

And neither is creating a “Penny Out of Nothing,” yet another visceral, 90s alt rock-esque type of song (as is “Spiders”)—with a dash of Adele panache on “Set Fire to the Rain” (which makes sense, since Adele [along with Winehouse], like Young, also went to the BRIT School). Though Young insists the track is “a different vibe for me,” it has the same hard edge as some of the previous songs on I’m Only F**king Myself, including “F**K EVERYONE” and “Spiders.” Though she’s not wrong in classifying the chords as “kind of bossa nova, but a bit psychedelic.” Even so, what stands out the most about the track is Young’s casually passionate delivery of the chorus, “So I’ll create a penny outta nothing/Take the bullet out a gun/I’ll make a fool out of a man/I’ll make a man fall out of love/Make an atheist forgive, get on his knees and pray to God/I’ll make him think I’m fine when I’m not.” In short, she’ll spin gold out of straw. Even though, at first, that level of “confidence” isn’t exactly apparent in the opening verse, “Pains under my skin/So where do I begin?/There’s so much I wanna give/But life’s a game and I just can’t win.” Even though, obviously, she’s won big time. This due to, as she says, being able to “create a penny outta nothing.”

As for the line about making someone think she’s fine when she’s not, well, it ties in nicely to the bridge that repeats, “I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna cry” (neither does Mariah). But that really is true on the following song, “Walk All Over You,” which once again channels Young’s inner Lily Allen as she takes the piss out of some shithead guy. Indeed, it has shades of Allen’s “Not Big” and “Shame For You” as Young chastises, “I’m quite amazed you think I’m/Just gonna pick your shit up, love you like a dog/When you can’t fix up, go get a life and get a job [how very Billie Eilish on “Lost Cause”]/And do you know the difference between me and you?/Well, you loved me for your ego, I loved you for you/So don’t say you don’t understand/Just ‘cause you’re a man don’t mean you can sit there/And trеat me like shit on your shoes/‘Causе do me wrong, I’ll put ‘em on and then I’ll walk all over you.”

To that point, of all the “official videos” (not “official visualizers,” mind you—even though that’s exactly the vibe they’re serving) that Young released to accompany the songs on I’m Only F**king Myself, the one for “Walk All Over You” is the most literal. This in terms of Young hovering over the blow-up doll created in her image (you know, the one that’s also featured on the cover)—the POV shot making it look as though she could step on the viewer as much as she could the “doll”—while she warns, “I’m gonna walk all over, I’m gonna walk all over you/I’m gonna walk all over, I’m gonna walk all over you.”

Elsewhere in the song, she proves Sabrina Carpenter right on “Tears” by speaking to how “wet” it could make a woman to, as Carpenter says, “just do the dishes, I’ll give you what you, what you want/A little communication, yes, that’s my ideal foreplay/Assemble a chair from IKEA, I’m like, ‘Uh.’” Young has similar feelings beneath her criticism, “You’ve told me plenty of times that I’m needy, and I’m greedy, and I’m unreasonable/So you can stop now and you can clean up the kitchen.” Though, of course, the bloke in question is likely thinking, “As if” to such a suggestion. Hence, Young’s “Post Sex Clarity” (a continuation of “Lily Allen-ness” that even Allen herself couldn’t ignore, posting an image of Young’s album artwork soundtracked to this particular song). That title being another troll of a common sex-related phrase—“post-nut clarity”—by flipping the script on it (much like what she did in the lyrics to “One Thing”). Or, as Young captioned a post about the song, “There is freedom and liberation in flipping the male-centric phrase post-nut clarity.” So it would seem, with Young bringing her blow-up doll into the “official video” for this as well, cradling, er, herself in her arms as she soothes, “When I’m lyin’ in bed, got post-sex clarity/I still love you, and I don’t know why/‘Cause every other man didn’t mеan a goddamn to me/When I finish, it’s not the еnd of you and I.” In effect, Young is, rather than experiencing sex in the “male way” by treating it essentially like a “grooming exercise” (designed for “relief”), presenting it as the very thing that reminds her why she’s so “attached” (because, as Billie Eilish would point out, it’s the oxytocin).

As “Post Sex Clarity” transitions out in a very “Blur circa 13” kind of way, the song abruptly cuts off before the listener is transported to the dreamier, gentler-sounding “SAD SOB STORY! :).” Of course, Young is anything but gentle as she goads her ex, “And I’m so glad we’re over/No more trying, then fighting, then fighting again/And you can keep the damn sofa/‘Cause I never liked the orange, but you hated the red.” Once again appearing with her blow-up doll in the “official video,” she joins it in a white bed while directing her admonishments at it. Critiques that amount to a lyrical and thematic tincture of Billie Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever” and Selena Gomez’s “Lose You to Love Me.” Both songs evident in the chorus, “Guess I had to let you go to know that I didn’t need you in the first place/Life’s about learning and it can show you that the hard way/But I don’t stalk your Instagram ‘cause I don’t care to know, mate/Who you’ve been sleeping with is no longer my business/And, damn, it feels good, it feels great, I’ve moved on but I just wanted to say/Best of luck to ya and I hope you’re happy someday/But keep your sad sob story ‘cause I won’t read it anyway.” Ah, if only Amy Winehouse had come to this realization about Blake Fielder-Civil before it was too late.

Instead, Winehouse chose to ignore the many red flags (generally via copious amounts of drugs, alcohol especially). Something Young also wants to do on the avoidant person’s anthem, “CAN WE IGNORE IT? :(”—which amounts to her version of “Rehab.” This achieved through the themes addressed and lyrical turns of phrase used (though certainly not through the rock-à-la-Soundgarden-oriented sound). As for the first pair of lines, however, it’s all Lily Allen on the mic as Young sets the stage, “I play with fire, kinda like the way I feel when it burns/If I’m bein’ honest, I’ll take anything as long as it hurts.” This once again echoes Allen’s similarly alluded to “pursuits” on No Shame’s “Everything to Feel Something” when she sings, “I’ve tried everything/Everything/Everything/To feel something/But nothing.” However, Winehouse reemerges in the “scene setting” of the next “couplet,” “I need a doctor, got a sickness, and it’s just getting worse/I said, ‘I think I’m dying’ he said, ‘Darling, you’ve been dying since birth.’” This manner of describing a back and forth (with a doctor no less) dialogue also recalls Winehouse on “Rehab” when she sings, “The man said, ‘Why you think you here?’/I said, ‘I got no idea’/I’m gonna, I’m gonna lose my baby/So I always keep a bottle near/He said, ‘I just think you’re depressed’/This me: ‘Yeah, baby, and the rest.’”

In the accompanying “official video” for “CAN WE IGNORE IT? :(,” Young is once again shown in a car with her blow-up doll the way she is in the “d£aler” visualizer. Only this time, she’s the one in the driver’s seat, no longer in the back while she lets the blow-up doll “drive.” This perhaps being a slight metaphor for gradually taking charge of her life.

Then again, the driving visual is more than likely about Young’s desire to simply run away from her problems, playing into the chorus, “Can we ignore it, baby, even for just one day?/Don’t wanna talk about it, I just put on my face [a very drag queen-meets-twentieth century woman thing to say]/And if you love me like you say, you’ll let me escape.” Of course, that’s the “trick” of the proverbial test she’s giving: seeing if the person who says they love her actually won’t “let” her run away. Even though there’s always that element, in each of these songs, of her actually talking to herself (this notion underscored by Young screaming at the blow-up doll with her face on it in many of the “official videos”).

Alas, Young’s faith in being “vulnerable” has only been further frayed by being “shut down in therapy, he said there’s people who need real help (I need you to need me, darling)/What a waste of my fucking money, I’ll just do it myself.” Here, too, the Allen influence shines through, with shades of “Everything’s Just Wonderful” when she resignedly chirps, “I wanna get a flat, I know I can’t afford it/It’s just the bureaucrats who won’t give me a mortgage/It’s very funny ‘cause I got your fucking money/And I’m never gonna get it just ‘cause of my bad credit/Oh well, I guess I mustn’t grumble/I suppose it’s just the way the cookie crumbles.”

Allen stylings win out over Winehouse ones on “why do i feel better when i hurt you?” as well, with the title alone suggesting the influence of the former. In addition to once again alluding to the fact that maybe Young has just been talking to herself all along (beneath the guise of mainly ribbing an ex). For it’s easy to believe that all of her negative internal self-talk could lead her to the question, “Why do I feel better when I hurt you?/Always try to put you in the worst mood” (not unlike JADE singing to herself, “You’re just a glitch/Get out of my head, get out of my fuckin’ skin/You’re telling me lies, telling me how it is/Sick of you talking to me like I’m your bitch/When I’m that bitch” on “Glitch” from That’s Showbiz Baby).

 The themes of “CAN WE IGNORE IT? :(”—a.k.a. the intense desire to ignore glaring issues and realities—also endure in “why do i feel better when i hurt you?” Particularly when Young declares that talking about a problem at hand is so much less pleasant/helpful than just ignoring it. So it is that she reminds of the value of ignoring, “There’s no other way around it/‘Cause I know, when we talk about it/It’s always the worst that we could do/Real love, no, we haven’t found it/Let’s not even talk about it/That’s nearly the worst thing we could do.” In the “official video” for it, Young appears in yet another different “scenario” with her blow-up doll, actually blowing it up from its deflated state (just as she does in the teaser for the album) while wearing a shirt that reads, “I Just Freaking Love Lows.” Because, if nothing else, at least they’re inspiring—allow for something akin to an “emotional breakthrough.” Sort of like the one Charli XCX has on Crash’s (the deluxe edition) “Sorry If I Hurt You” as she comes to terms with her own toxic/abusive behavior by announcing, “I’m sorry if I hurt you/I only make it worse.” As for Young, the lone person she might say that to on this record is herself. Even if only in a roundabout manner that hints at a path toward self-forgiveness, therefore self-love.

This much is apparent on “Not Like That Anymore” offering the first true taste of the album’s motif (along with establishing what most of all the other “official videos” would look like), which is, in its way, all about “turning a corner” and re-setting herself on a less self-destructive path (something that many wish Winehouse had done before it was too late). Ergo, Young’s “seeing the silver lining” chorus, “And now I’m locked out, got nowhere to go/And my phone got stolen, and my balance is low/But if I look on the bright side/At least I’m not fucking myself anymore, not anymore.” This after referencing her resolve to get sober in the first verse, “I’m a dumb little addict, so I’ve been tryna quit the snowflake/I guess life sucks dick, but especially if you sniff it all away.” Such an attempt hardly being the mark of someone who would shruggingly demand, “who f**king cares?” This being the title of the penultimate track on the standard edition of the album (though an “exclusive version” of it concludes with “Blisters,” a track that finds Young bemoaning, “I’ve got the whole world right in my hands/So why does it slip through my fingers?/I just don’t understand why life keeps giving me blisters even in the best pair of shoes that I have”).  

As the most musically “stripped down” track of I’m Only F**king Myself, it’s fitting that Young should be at her most lyrically frank (which really says something) on “who f**king cares?” Her candor manifest in such lyrics as, “Nowadays, it’s hard to feel alive/When the only way I want to live is to try and slowly die.” What’s more, in addition to having previously channeled lyrical elements of Billie Eilish and Selena Gomez, Young also dips into Olivia Rodrigo territory when she remarks, “In the meantime, I’ll cry to Radiohead, hoping my ex still cares, but/That’s unlikely, he’s probably having great sex/With that girl I knew was an idiot, the one with the bleach blonde hair.” It’s that “coup de grâce” mention of the girl’s blonde hair that especially exudes Olivia Rodrigo on “drivers license” when she (allegedly) shades Sabrina Carpenter with the verse, “You’re probably with that blonde girl/Who always made me doubt/She’s so much older than me/She’s everything I’m insecure about.”

But, as usual, it’s always Winehouse who emerges as the “center of the mood board,” with Young once more singing in the “storytelling through dialogue” style of Winehouse when she adds, “And my doctor said, ‘You’ll get sick again, you can’t mix these meds with white lines.’” Yet another allusion to her hard-to-shake coke habit. At the same time, Allen’s influence continues to vie for attention in terms of Young’s frequent dissection of her insecurities as they relate to her body. Ergo, kicking the track off with, “Nowadays, I don’t really go outside/I don’t even like the way I look, let alone the way I feel behind.” This sentiment recalls Allen’s own body (and emotional) insecurities on “Everything’s Just Wonderful” when she laments, “I wanna be able to eat spaghetti Bolognese/And not feel bad about it for days and days and days/In the magazines, they talk about weight loss/If I buy those jeans, I can look like Kate Moss.”

In the end, however, Young goes back to herself as her “favorite reference” (to quote Charli) with the concluding interlude, which, although spoken once again by someone else (this time, Tia Shek), recalls “Outro” on This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway. In this case, Young bills it as an “interlude” rather than an outro, titling it “ur an absolute c word” in reference to Shek (providing the other “bookend” of the record, as it were) being able to so effortlessly come up with something as brilliant as, “To feel is to be open/And not everyone is broken/But I know that the ones that I chose/Sit here with their hearts stolen/To feel is to be present, deep in adolescence/To be betrayed, losin’ trust by a certain age/And if you must you might feel a type of way/I love to feel, but I don’t wanna die/I’m lonely and I’m hurtin’ and sometimes I feel alive.” This being the first portion of Shek’s “interlude.”

A “positive affirmation” of the kind of self-love motif Young was speaking on during “Outro” when she said, “This album is me discovering and trying to understand/Through my one and only true love that is music/That I can too be my one and only true love/That I can learn to heal alone/I can dance in the mirror and feel seen without being watched by someone/Especially not no ugly man or woman/That I can cry and feel every tear without needing a shoulder/And I haven’t got there yet but I will/And when I do this album will be for me.”

As it stands, I’m Only F**king Myself is very much not only an album that’s instantly “for” Young, but also for anyone else who has struggled with that seemingly cornball concept of self-love and, as a result, had it affect the relationships they found themselves in or the addictions they ended up falling down the rabbit hole of. So it is that Young once again conveys and holds tight to this message she had already imparted by the conclusion of This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway. But, of course, it’s a message worth reiterating. Besides, it’s not like Amy Winehouse or Lily Allen are really “around” to do it anymore.