My songs are as real as it gets

South London singer Lola Young’s unflinchingly honest hit Messy has reached number one in the UK after a two-month climb, and she’s been nominated for a Brit Award. Now she’s made a breakthrough, this could be her year.

Lola Young jumps into a car, laughing uncontrollably as she flashes a brand new set of shiny gold teeth.

“I just got grills fitted,” she explains once she’s regained her composure. “But they’re like so intense, so you’re rocking with this today, and a lisp.”

She’s been running a few minutes late for the interview and this explains why – so she can finish getting her dental jewellery accessories fitted, with which she seems extremely pleased.

The screen suddenly freezes. The car she’s in is somewhere in the US and the reception has cut out.

Young made her US TV debut on Jimmy Fallon’s talk show the night before, which followed a whirlwind trip to Australia, and she’ll soon set off on a sold-out European tour. She’s talking on Zoom as her manager drives her to the next stop on her schedule.

Travelling the world and in high demand, but making time to get a full set of solid gold teeth grills fitted – she’s living a proper pop star’s life.

And she is now a proper pop star. After several years of almost making it – she sang on the 2021 John Lewis advert, was on the BBC Sound of 2022 list and had glowing reviews for her two albums – Messy has given her a bona fide hit.

The song became inescapable at the end of 2024 and completed its climb to the top of the charts on Friday.

The 24-year-old is the first current British artist to have a UK number one since Chase and Status and Stormzy in August, the youngest to do so since Dave in 2022, and the youngest British woman to score a chart-topper since Dua Lipa in 2017.

Her number one came a day after she was nominated for best pop act at the Brit Awards.

“The response has been amazing and it’s been really exciting to see all the love that Messy has been receiving,” says Young, speaking earlier in the week.

“I love the song, it’s a song I wrote that’s really personal and really important to me. So I’m really happy that it’s resonating so much.”

Messy was released on her second album This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway last May.

Its trajectory was supercharged when superstar US influencers Sofia Richie Grainge and Jake Shane posted a 14-second TikTok clip of themselves dancing to its chorus. Young’s song has now been used in 1.3 million videos on the platform – from Kylie Jenner lip-syncing as a dog, to a viral clip of an old woman vaping and holding a pint alongside the caption “94 and still messy”.

The singer would like to point out that the track’s success is not simply down to TikTok, however.

“That’s not necessarily how it blew up. I would like to say that the song was blowing up before TikTok, and it was having its moment elsewhere. A lot of things contributed to the success.

“The TikTok thing is great. I don’t make music for Tiktok. I make music for myself and for my fans, but the Sofia Richie thing is just one element of how well it did in every aspect.

“But yeah, it’s been great to see every side of it.”

The track was indeed starting to gain traction before finding TikTok virality, and has only done so well because it is more than a mere meme.

Its lyrics, about never being good enough for someone whatever you do, have connected deeply with fans. “I want to be me, is that not allowed?” she implores.

“I guess it’s because the song speaks to so many people in terms of, I’m talking about the idea that there’s two sides of a person, the contradictions,” Young says.

The song captures how it is “to basically feel like you’re not enough for somebody and also in turn not enough for yourself”.

Amid the craziness of its success, there’s some relief that she has now reached the next level in her career.

“I mean, I feel like it’s the right time,” the 24-year-old says after reconnecting the call. “It’s been a minute, but also it does feel like the right time for me.”

Like Messy, many of her tracks are one-sided conversations – mainly with an unseen, unreasonable and unsuitable man (or woman).

When it was released, the Observer said the album had “a winning combination of zingers and vulnerability”, and the Telegraph said it showed “all of the grit and charisma of a seasoned artist”.

Other songs continue the theme of double-edged romance. Wish You Were Dead is about a relationship that veers between being affectionate and volatile; while in Big Brown Eyes, Young gets weak-kneed when a lukewarm love interest insults her.

Unlike some artists, there’s little need to ask Young what her songs are about – the stories are laid out in her raw and razor-sharp lyrics.

But how real are the situations and scenarios about which she sings?

“Pretty real. As real as it gets, to be honest,” she replies.

“I just write from my own experience and they’re very real. They’re all the things that I’ve been through, all situations I’ve had, and all experiences I’ve had.”

The honesty of her songwriting sets her apart from many other artists, but she says she knows no other way.

“I don’t think about it. Music is the only place I can be dead honest,” she says. “Not that I’m a liar…

“But I feel like that’s my outlet, the place I can be the most honest. I never really think about it. It doesn’t feel like a difficult thing to do, or something that feels like I’m baring my soul or anything. It’s just I’ve always done that in my music.”

The album ends with an equally candid spoken-word outro, in which she says the LP was written to help her accept and love herself, and to realise she doesn’t need “no ugly man (or woman)”.

“I haven’t got there yet but I will,” she says on the track.

Young is managed by two men who separately worked with Amy Winehouse and Adele, and Young has something in common with those two artists in her combination of fragility and front.

To that, she adds the conversational tone of Lily Allen and the modern pop sensibility and chaotic energy of Charli XCX.

Young’s breakthrough coincided with the reign of Charli’s Brat ethos, which she defined as “a girl who is a little messy, likes to party, maybe says dumb things sometimes, feels herself, and has a breakdown but parties through it”.

Young feels an affinity with that. “I massively do, and I think it’s that thing of empowered women who like to party and be themselves, and that’s really important to me,” she says.

“I guess I come from a different angle – of a less heightened version of that, I guess. It would be more like, ‘I don’t really give a [care], but I also really do’. That’s what I guess I stand by a little bit more.”

Bratpop season will stretch further when Young releases her next album later this year. It is nearly finished and will “dig deeper” than the last, she says. How much deeper can she really dig?

“Quite a lot,” she says. “There’s quite a lot more to say. There’s a lot of other topics and things that have happened to me, and things that I’ve gone through that I want to discuss with people.

“But also things that are a little bit less about love, and about other things that I’ve gone through.”

Now that Messy’s cleaned up, we can expect to see more of Young, and her shiny teeth.