Holly Humberstone announces new album ‘Cruel World’
Written during a period of constant movement, Holly Humberstone’s second album arrives this spring with love at its centre, and consequences close behind.
Photo: Silken Weinberg
Since winning the Brit Award for ‘Rising Star’ in 2022 and releasing her debut album Paint My Bedroom Black in 2023, Holly Humberstone has steadily built a reputation as one of the UK’s most compelling songwriters. Now, she returns with Cruel World, a record shaped by contradiction and intensity.
Humberstone has described the album as exploring desire as something both “beautiful and inherently painful” — a tension that runs through the music released so far and sits at the heart of the record’s title.
Two singles have already offered an early glimpse into that world. Die Happy leans into heightened emotion and romance, written around a vivid, almost storybook image. Humberstone has described the song as being about “the danger in loving someone so much you’d do anything for them.” She’s spoken about writing it with a clear visual in mind — “a fairytale at night,” somewhere between driving fast with the windows down and wandering through a crumbling old house — a sense of romance that feels thrilling precisely because it’s a little unsafe.
More recently, To Love Somebody pulls the focus back to the album’s core idea. “To love somebody is to hurt somebody and to lose somebody,” Humberstone has said, reflecting on the unavoidable cost of connection. The song sits with that discomfort, acknowledging that joy and loss are often inseparable, and that one doesn’t exist without the other.
Together, the singles suggest an album built around love, risk, and what happens when the two collide — one we’re looking forward to hearing in full.
The release of Cruel World will be followed by a run of UK and European tour dates, including a headline show at O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire in early April, before Humberstone heads stateside for major festival appearances at Coachella and Governors Ball as the year unfolds.
Cruel World is out April 10th via Polydor Records. Pre-order the album here.
