The Mess That Won a Grammy
In February 2026, Lola Young stood at the Grammy podium - an F-bomb on her lips, a golden gramophone in her hand, and a room full of people who'd watched her go from TikTok footnote to global superstar in the space of about fourteen weeks. The journey to that moment was anything but smooth. Which is, of course, entirely the point.
Young is 25 years old, born and raised in South London - Croydon first, then Beckenham, which she cheerfully describes as "the deep south of London." She is the granddaughter of a Jamaican-Chinese father and the great-niece of Julia Donaldson, author of The Gruffalo. She has schizoaffective disorder, ADHD, a Grammy, and strong opinions about jacket potatoes (tuna and cheese, always). These details are not contradictions. They are a portrait.
Her second album, This Wasn't Meant for You Anyway, dropped in June 2024. It charted at UK #16. Its lead single, "Messy," spent six months in the mid-range of streaming playlists - a good song, doing fine. Then, on November 28, 2024, two friends named Jake Shane and Sofia Richie posted a TikTok. They did a small dance: finger guns, a half-shimmy. Nothing choreographed. Nothing intended. Within two weeks, US streams of "Messy" had gone from 3.9 million to 9.1 million. Kylie Jenner lip-synced it. 250,000 TikTok videos used the sound. The song hit UK #1 and stayed there for four weeks.
Young, who was in a rehabilitation facility for cocaine addiction at the time, found out about the viral moment from inside treatment.
I think that's the whole purpose of why I make music - to make people feel like they belong somewhere. I understand them, and millions of other people do, too.
- Lola YoungWhat "Dark Soul-Pop" Actually Means
The genre tag is accurate and insufficient. Young's music sits somewhere between Joni Mitchell's confessional precision, the punching-bag emotional directness of SZA's Ctrl, and the melodic structure of an Arctic Monkeys record. She cites Prince, Frank Ocean, Anderson .Paak, and The Cure in the same breath - not as influences to imitate, but as proof that rawness and craft can coexist.
Her songs are not polished breakup anthems. They are closer to voice memos you didn't mean to share - which is exactly why people share them. "Messy" is an anthem for anyone who has ever felt like too much: too loud, too chaotic, too complicated for whoever they were trying to be enough for. Young wrote it partly as a response to her ADHD diagnosis, but it landed as a universal anthem for imperfection. That gap between intention and reception is the whole story of her career so far.
This Wasn't Meant for You Anyway was produced with Jared Solomon (known for work with Remi Wolf and BROCKHAMPTON) and recorded in Los Angeles. It is more confident than her debut, My Mind Wanders and Sometimes Leaves Completely (2023) - less tentative, more committed to the bruise. The album title is, itself, an act of defiance: a record that pretends not to want you, right up until the moment it absolutely does.
The BRIT School, Open Mic Nights, and a John Lewis Advert
Young started writing songs at eleven. By fourteen, she was performing at open mic nights around South London. In 2016, at fifteen, she won the Open Mic UK under-16 category. The BRIT School in Croydon - which has also produced Adele, Amy Winehouse, FKA twigs, and Rex Orange County - took her in from Year 10. She describes it as a place where people who couldn't be themselves anywhere else could finally be themselves. For a teenager with undiagnosed schizoaffective disorder and ADHD, that framing matters.
After signing first with Capitol Records (2020), then Island Records (2021), her first major moment of mainstream visibility came not from a hit single but from a Christmas advert. In November 2021, she covered Phil Oakey and Giorgio Moroder's 1984 synth-pop track "Together in Electric Dreams" for the John Lewis Christmas campaign. The advert put her alongside a prestigious line of previous performers: Ellie Goulding, Lily Allen, Tom Odell. She was nominated for the Brit Award for Rising Star and placed 4th on the BBC Sound of 2021 list. The infrastructure was in place. The breakthrough would take three more years.
The Part She Didn't Have to Tell You (But Did Anyway)
Young was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder at seventeen - a condition she has connected to heavy cannabis use following a trauma she has chosen not to detail publicly. She has spoken openly about the diagnosis in interviews, including in Newsweek, noting that she spent years confusing it with depression and bipolar disorder before getting the correct label. She sees talking about it as part of the job.
The ADHD diagnosis came later, after writing "Messy" - a song she subsequently called "an ADHD anthem." There is something fitting about that: the diagnosis arriving through the music, not the other way around.
In November 2024, she spent five weeks in inpatient rehabilitation for cocaine addiction. The TikTok moment happened while she was in treatment. She has spoken candidly about it since, including at the 68th Grammy Awards, where the F-bomb that slipped past CBS censors was interpreted by many as characteristically unscripted honesty. She attended AA meetings after treatment. In September 2025, she collapsed on stage at the All Things Go Festival, attributed to her ongoing recovery, and announced a three-month hiatus from performing.
In May 2025, she came out as bisexual via a TikTok comment. Her statement: "Love and sex shouldn't have any constrictions." No announcement tour. No magazine cover. Just a comment.
For me, it's a daily struggle, but I've learned that the most important thing is to stay true to who I am, even if it is super 'messy'!
- Lola YoungUncle Steve, Tyler the Creator, and a Song That Peaked at #29
Before the TikTok moment, before the Grammy, the most significant outside validation of Young's talent came from Tyler, the Creator. For his 2024 album Chromakopia, Tyler wanted a feature for a track called "Like Him" - a meditation on fathers, identity, and generational patterns. He messaged Young on Instagram under the username "Uncle Steve." She didn't know who it was.
When she figured it out, she agreed. Her haunting, restrained vocals on "Like Him" were widely praised - the record went double platinum in the US and charted at Billboard Hot 100 #29. It was the kind of co-sign that doesn't need a press release. In an industry where collaborations are frequently arranged by committee, this one read as a genuine artistic choice by one of the genre's most deliberate curators.
The Unfiltered Version
"I think it's the idea that you don't have to be this thing that stereotypers want women to be. Everyone can feel like they're not enough for somebody. 'I want to be me, is that not allowed?' - that's a great lyric! I'm very proud of it."
"I feel a bit sick, so if I do throw up, I apologise - please don't post it on the interweb."
"Smoking is bad, but it's more sexy than vaping."
"Tuna and cheese is the only way I feel I can have a jacket potato."
"A few of my exes have love bombed me. I love bomb, too."
"Female GOAT and British icon."
I'm Only F**king Myself and the Cost of Honesty
Released in September 2025, Young's third album - the title self-censored only in marketing materials - is her most autobiographical work yet: thirteen tracks, most written during and after her time in rehabilitation, covering addiction, identity, and the particular kind of recklessness that comes from finally having nothing left to prove. Critics described it as brashly confessional pop. The collapse on stage at All Things Go Festival, which happened during the album cycle, prompted a three-month pause that she has framed not as retreat but as maintenance.
She has signed with the same management team that previously worked with Amy Winehouse and Adele - a lineage that is either a comfort or a pressure, depending on the day. She appears to treat it as the former.
Her aspiration is not complicated: keep making music that makes people feel less alone, stay sober, and continue building a body of work that is honest enough to be useful. The Grammy doesn't change that. The Grammy is a side effect.