At once soft and hard, fiery and vulnerable, Lola Young’s precise, revelatory songs thrive in their multi-facetedness. The introspective but musically adventurous This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway – the south Londoner’s first full-length album, which dropped last June – served as an uncompromising portrait of inner turmoil, detailed with 808s and scratchy guitars that bore out Young’s tales of pain and frustration. Lyrically, here, she came to the conclusion that she bottles up all of her most fretful emotions and can only exorcise them through her music.
On record, we don’t often get to witness Young working outside of statement-piece urgency. It’s this clear commitment to her craft, however, that has pushed her to vie for main pop girl status in recent months. Initially released last summer, her single “Messy” has proved to be a watershed, enjoying a slow-burn rise to the top of the Official U.K. Singles Chart and peaking within the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100. A grab bag of star-making television appearances have also stationed her on the cusp of household-name status in the U.K.
So where does Young see herself right now? After landing a BRIT nomination and touring the states to the point of exhaustion, she’s standing in her accomplishments. On stage at London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town on Monday night (March 3), Young discussed how she’s elated to be at such a successful point in her career, but also admitted to facing the pressure of calculating her next move.
The gig had already been upgraded from a smaller venue due to demand; Young has only ever performed a handful of headline shows in her hometown, having initially struggled to build a fanbase via the more palatable or commercial-facing projects of her early days (2019 EP Intro or follow-up, Renaissance – neither of which feature in her current setlist). “This isn’t about blaming anybody, but nothing was really clicking at the time. Now, I have creative control alongside an understanding of who I am,” she told Billboard U.K. in November, making her struggle to get here clear.
This perseverance translates into her stage presence: Young is a focused performer, with a bold delivery that underpins her growing confidence. This monumental show proved that she’s spontaneous and self-reliant, a firecracker beneath her signature lashes and heavy fringe.
Check out the top 5 moments from the gig.
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Fashionably Late
Twenty minutes after she was first due to grace the stage, Young walked out to fans chanting her first name as the peppy melody of “Good Books” began to unfurl. In the interim, the crowd were the very picture of Gen Z London, filling the air with the residue of fruit-flavoured vapes, wearing baggy sweaters, using AirPods as earplugs, taking pictures on film cameras or FaceTiming their friends from the pit.
When she arrived, Young began to stalk up and down the wide Forum stage, rocking a bustier top and her now signature mullet. Behind her, Love Hearts-style visuals adorned a large LED screen, changing in colour and intensity to mimic the track’s gorgeous, swelling rhythmic peaks.
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Hometown Love
Having found fans in the likes of SZA, and Tyler, The Creator, Young spent much of 2024 performing at theatre-sized venues across the U.S., building on momentum as she grew a dedicated fanbase across the pond. It was a smart decision – she will play Coachella for the first time next month – but one that also made this London show high-stakes, given that it has been an entire year since she last performed live here.
A lot was riding on this performance, but in a live setting, few can match Young’s fearlessness. She riffed and ad libbed with abandon during Lil Yachty collab “Charlie”, celebrating the liberation in forging one’s own path – powered by pure charisma and lung power. “I’ve been to a lot of places now, but there’s nowhere like London,” she smiled at one point.
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Comedy and Candor
Given Young’s fierce artist persona, it’s easy to forget how nimble and delicate her voice can be. While her south London twang has been key to her spikier songs, her balladry – primarily, the searing “What Is About Me,” performed acapella tonight – sets her dark revelations about trust and mental health battles into even starker relief.
On the flip side, her witty freshness peaked out in between songs. At the age of 24, Young has already lived many musical lives, and is now seeing her self-belief be rewarded. She playfully dismissed 2023 viral smash “Don’t Hate Me” as a track she’s now “bored” of, letting fans sing the refrain instead. Much of the set held up this exchange between artist and audience as Young let her guard down, in hopes people would meet her on her terms.
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A Change of Fortune
“And you said, ‘You’ll never break through in pop music anyway’/ And that really got to me, to be honest,” so goes the second verse of the deceptively bright ska bop “Revolve Around You,” first released two years ago. Since then, Young has skyrocketed to the forefront of British pop, and is now able to perform this track with a mixture of I-told-you-so delight tempered with a level of resolve.
The show also felt like the end of an era. Young may never grace a London venue so intimate ever again – something she appeared to be aware of. Before launching into the riotous “Wish You Were Dead,” Young shared a poem she’d written “minutes before coming on stage”, one that charted her rise to date and detailed what it means to be living in the moment.
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Full-Flow Moments of Togetherness
It’s what the majority had been waiting for: “Messy,” an empowering anthem which has subsequently grown into Young’s calling card. During this closer, as fans held their phones aloft and sung at the top of their voices, Young delivered the chorus as though bellowing through a megaphone, lifting it up into an unequivocal rallying cry.
As the song built up to its final refrain, Young led a mass primal scream – augmented by a bellowing drum pattern – before leaping in the air as the cathartic crescendos landed again and again.
