Lola Young on ‘Messy,’ Her Recovery, and Winning a Grammy

L
ola Young is sitting in front of a grand piano at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, her hands hovering over the keys. It’s been five months since she was last onstage, and everyone in the room has their eyes locked on her. She waits for a second and then begins, the bruised melody of a stark, stripped-back version of her megahit, “Messy,” filling the arena. It builds slowly, laying out the runway for the disarming power of her voice. Someone quietly whispers “Wow” as she slides into the first verse, her timbre raspy, aching, and breakable. Then, she launches into a soaring, antigravity belt, and the sound is deep and soul-stirring and—

“My pack’s going crazy, sorry guys!” Young yells out, interrupting her own song with her glottal south London accent and adjusting the mic pack on her waist. “It’s, like, making noise and noise.”

Reinforcements arrive. A couple of tech guys saunter onstage to help her out because this is, after all, the time to figure everything out. It’s Young’s rehearsal slot, just days before she performs at the Grammys, as part of a medley showcasing all of the Best New Artist nominees. Young is one of the contenders this year, and she’s working out every detail of her performance. The stage is designed exactly the way it will be at the awards show, and below, tables are set with cutouts of Lady Gaga and Chappell Roan and Bad Bunny as placeholders for the stars who will pack the venue come Sunday.

Any first-time nominee would be nervous, but this moment represents something bigger for Young. The 25-year-old is an unflinching, painfully honest songwriter who doesn’t shy away from struggles or insecurities in her music, so what she’s been through recently is not a secret. The raw details are right there, between lyrics about sex and heartbreak and romance: “I’m a dumb little addict so I’ve been tryna quit the snowflake,” she trills on the upbeat pop rock of “Not Like That Anymore.” “I spent all day tryna be sober,” she sings to open “Dealer,” a sunny melody masking musings about self-destructive behavior. “’Cause it’s been days, but I’ve been busy getting high/And my doctor said, ‘You’ll get sick again, you can’t mix these meds with white lines,’” she confesses on the gut-wrenching “Who F**king Cares?” If the track makes you feel like you’re eavesdropping on someone’s most intimate thoughts, it’s because you are — it’s a first take Young recorded on her iPhone.

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Although Young has been open about all of it — the ups and downs of sobriety, self-image, isolation, and the complexities of the schizoaffective disorder she’s had since she was a teenager, plus a more recent ADHD diagnosis — the realities of her life took a brutally public turn last year. On the one hand, it was that magical breakthrough every artist seems to chase after: Her career was taking off, turbocharged into wild heights because of the success of “Messy,” a gutting but relatable ode to feeling like too much and not enough that found a viral audience on TikTok before going stratospheric. In early 2025, “Messy” hit Number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100, and eventually soared past 1 billion streams. For Young, who’d been working toward this kind of moment since she was a precocious 14-year-old busker on the streets of London, it was almost unbelievable: “It’s something that I kind of dreamed about and you never really think it’s gonna happen.” The world was catching up to who she is, discovering what so many of her longtime fans always saw: a strikingly sincere, exceptionally talented artist who uses her remarkable voice to broadcast deeply private feelings that many people are afraid to even utter out loud.

Elton John, who became a huge fan, puts it succinctly: “There’s a rare honesty in her voice that just stops you in your tracks — it’s raw, soulful, and completely unfiltered,” he writes in an email to Rolling Stone. “Musicians like Lola don’t come around very often, she is incredibly special.”

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“It was a whirlwind of a year,” Young says of her 2025. “It was so mad and beautiful and exciting, but it was also, at times, very sad.” Yet the music industry can move at an unyielding clip, particularly when artists are rocketing to stardom like Young was.

Young was in demand, shuttling from one corner of the world to another, with massive performances, including Glastonbury and Lollapalooza Paris, loading up a packed schedule. Her days started moving at warp speed, the hours hectic and endless and exhausting. All the while, she had gotten help for an active addiction to cocaine and worked with a sober coach who traveled with her for a lot of 2025. But as the year progressed, things got heavier and harder.

“It was a whirlwind year,” Young says of 2025. “It was mad, beautiful, and exciting, but at times, very sad.”

“If I’m gonna be honest with you, the enjoyment was deteriorating,” she says. “Just small things that I had to do: an interview, a piece of promo. I just didn’t know all the stuff that comes with it. But I wasn’t in a good place, and there’s two sides of the coin …” she trails off. “You want to say yes to everything because everything’s on the table, but then you also have to balance that with your mental health, and I’ve been super open about my mental-health condition that I suffer from, and also about all the other stuff that’s going on for me.”

That summer, Young’s manager, Nick Shymansky, told The New York Times that Young had relapsed and gone back to treatment. She returned to public life a few months later, releasing her third album, I’m Only F**king Myself, on Sept. 19. The LP, razored, chaotic, and edgier than her past releases, chronicled her experiences with love, isolation, and recovery, set to upbeat sounds. Once the record came out, it was back to promo; she did Fallon and a YouTube interview and a performance for the Grammy Museum Foundation. On the outside, it seemed she was in a good place, but behind the scenes, she’d been barreling toward crisis.

People saw the breaking point in unforgiving real time. On Sept. 27, Young was onstage in New York, at the All Things Go festival. Young prefers not to talk about the specifics of that day, but audience video showed what happened: She was in the middle of singing her song “Conceited” when she turned to the side, as though she wanted to say something to someone standing there. She stumbled briefly, and then seconds later, her eyes closed and she went completely rigid, falling backward. Almost immediately, the digital age’s most pernicious habits took over: The clip ricocheted across the internet, propagating over and over across every social media platform, a person’s worst moment on constant repeat. Hundreds of videos followed, with fans worrying about Young’s health, speculating about the pressure she was under. The crueler ones accused her of faking the whole thing and staging the incident for attention.

There was noise and concern and uproar in the months that followed, but none of it reached Young. A week after she collapsed, she posted a message on Instagram: “I’m going away for a while. It pains me to say I have to cancel everything for the foreseeable future. Thank you for all the love and support.” She checked into a facility and went on lockdown for two months. She had no phone or access to the outside world. She was in there while people speculated about her incessantly. She was in there when news of her two Grammy nominations arrived: Best New Artist, and Best Pop Solo Performance, for “Messy.”

A ton of artists supported her: Katy Perry sent her a message; Charli XCX wrote her an email. Kesha and Elton John both reached out. Lady Gaga texted. “That was pretty mad,” Young says. “And that made me feel safer.” She credits her fans and how incredibly supportive they were throughout the past several months.

Still, coming out of that has been a careful process, with her health at the center of it all. Young says that, unlike previous recovery attempts, the approach is different this time: The facility she visited is holistic, centering on therapy and psychology instead of solely treating addiction. Since leaving, she’s been attending AA meetings and has a sponsor.

Young says her relationship to work has also changed. “One thing that’s really helped me is slowing down, mentally, taking time to process,” she says. “Days off, that’s really important. Enjoying time with friends, people that love you.” But, she’s had to navigate both tough moments and criticism, especially after canceling shows and appearances. “There was a bunch of hate, but you know what? Fuck it,” she says. “When you’re doing something, there’s always going to be a couple motherfuckers talking shit. But at the same time, it was a decision, like I said, that I had to make, and it was sad that I had to do that. What else was I going to do, die? That was the reality of where my addiction was heading.”

That viral clip caught up to her, too. “I have watched it, yes,” she says stoically. “I saw it once or twice, and I haven’t really gone back to it since. Obviously, I’m not going to be searching it.” She lets out a dry, pained laugh. “It’s not something I’d like to search.” Her voice gets a little quieter. “But I am very grateful that it happened because it was, what do you call that? Like, a breaking point which allowed me to then be able to be here today, allowed me to be better for my fans, better for the future, and better for myself.”

“[Going Away] was a decision i had to make. What was I going to do, die?”

All of it brings us back to the Grammys, back to rehearsals, and back to the path toward recovery and healing she’s been on. She seems at peace; she’s serene and self-possessed as she makes her way from the stage to the monitors. She tilts her head to the side, watching her performance thoughtfully. Nearby, her team looks on, and by the time the rehearsal is over, there’s more excitement than anything else. “I’ve been away, I’ve taken some time out, and this is a beautiful comeback,” Young had told me earlier. “It feels like a moment I’ll remember, and maybe other people will remember, hopefully. It feels like the right thing to come back to.”

A few days later, Young steps onto the Grammys stage again. She plays the intro to “Messy” on the piano, and this time she keeps going and hits every note. She gets a standing ovation. Several people watching at home tell me the performance brought them to tears.

But the more memorable moment comes later in the show, when Charli XCX presents the Best Pop Solo Performance award, a stacked category that includes Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. “I very much relate to this song,” Charli says and announces Young as the winner for “Messy.” Young’s jaw drops; she bolts from her chair and rushes to the stage. “I don’t know what I’m going to say because I don’t have any speech prepared!” she shouts into the mic. “Obviously I don’t; it’s messy!” She thanks her team and her family; an accidental f-bomb makes the whole thing even more endearing. Then she walks away, full of joy and lighter than ever.

YOUNG IS THE KIND of artist you root for. She’s a musician’s musician who plays a bunch of instruments and can effortlessly go from a power ballad to a trap track (she’s rapped in the past, and Tyler, the Creator recently hit her up for a collab). “I don’t think you’re just born with a voice and then you just refine it. I think the voice is carved over time because it’s a physicality,” says the singer and producer James Blake, who’s been working with Young recently. “Whenever I hear her voice, I’m like, ‘This is more than the sum of its parts.’”

Her tastes are wide-ranging: At one point, when we first meet on the sunny patio of the Chateau Marmont, she walks me through her recent Spotify listening history: Doechii, Victoria Monét, Death Cab for Cutie, Minnie Riperton, the Shrek 2 soundtrack. Young’s style and personality feel just as eclectic and complex. Her eyes are a piercing green, framed by doll-like lashes, and right now her hair is dyed black — a new look compared with the long brown and blond extensions she had last year. In person, she’s funny and blunt and witty, frequently deploying a delightfully disruptive laugh. But she’s also contemplative and self-aware, and there’s a world-weariness and wisdom that takes over when she’s talking about things like the pressures of the industry and the current state of the world.

People often mention how multifaceted Young is. It would be one thing if she were just a powerhouse singer with stunning range, or just a sharp-witted lyricist who can blend comedic self-deprecation and crushing vulnerabilities. But part of what makes Young stand out is that she does all of it. The writing, especially, feels innate; she’s been doing it since she was a kid in Beckenham, a suburb in south London. Young is the second-eldest of four girls; her stepfather was a session bass player, and her mom, who worked at a nonprofit, has a beautiful voice. As a kid, Young took piano lessons and taught herself guitar.

She unlocked something profound when she started writing songs in middle school. “If it was a school day, I’d just come home and be like, ‘I was really inspired by that,’ or ‘That really affected me,’ or ‘I didn’t like what they said,’ or da da da. Then I’d just try and create something. And do you know what? It would make me feel proud. I’d feel like I’d achieved something,” she says.

As Young entered high school, she auditioned for the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon, not far from her neighborhood. (Young had been on a couple of TV shows by then, and auditioned by sending in a video of herself singing Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You.”) The list of notable BRIT alumni is long: Amy Winehouse, Adele, FKA Twigs, and Olivia Dean, whom Young overlapped while studying there (they knew of each other, but have gotten closer since). But a lot of those formative years were spent toiling in London’s open-mic scene and busking on the streets. “I remember when I made, like, a couple hundred pounds,” she recalls of that time. “I was like, ‘Shit, I’m not too bad. I can do this, because people are putting tenners in, and it’s like, Right! You guys got money!’”

Eventually, the strength of her live performances led to bigger opportunities. When Young was 16, she was at a gig when she was approached by Shymansky, the same manager who had signed Winehouse when she was 16. (Winehouse famously wrote “Rehab” after Shymansky urged her to go to treatment.) By then, Young had sparked the interest of lots of managers and labels, and at first, she was unsure about Shymansky: “I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Then he goes, ‘Oh, I used to manage Amy,’ and then I started listening.”

But beyond his résumé, there was a deep connection that made Young feel he was the right fit. “We met up in Victoria station, I don’t know when this was, but he just listened. He just listened to what I had to say,” Young remembers. “Nick just has so much interest in other people, but particularly with me, he just got me, he understood me, and we’re still in sync.”

Shymansky has been with Young throughout all of the ups and downs; he was her manager when she was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder; he’s been there through vocal-cord surgery; he was there when she got signed to Island Records in 2019. (Young was jointly managed by Nick Huggett, who signed Adele, for a time before he left the team.)

“I want to write music people care about. Write music people cry to, laugh to, break up to, fall in love to.”

Young is adamant about clearing up accusations that her team mismanaged or overworked her. “When somebody is going through addiction, or struggling in any capacity, it’s hard to know how much a person can do.… It was my work, right? So I wanted to do it. If I was at home, I was in a bad place.” She asserts the backlash Shymansky received was unfair. “Nick is in no way to blame. He’s the most supportive. He’s the one who told me to stop; he’s always the one that told me to slow down,” she says. “I chose to hurt myself and self-sabotage, and I also chose to get onstage and perform. He is an incredible manager, and of course, you know, when you’ve got an industry that is constantly wanting you to say yes, it’s hard to say no. But I was also massively the driving force of saying yes.”

There’s no manual for pop stars dealing with addiction, but Young and her team have found that having her take her time and listen to herself helps most. “We’ve learned that things need to slow down, and that’s really healthy to know that,” she says. “But, no, I don’t think it’s fair that people push blame on anybody when they don’t know the full story.”  

Still, she gives fans who worry about her some benefit of the doubt. “I don’t really blame [those] people either, you know, because they’re protecting me and they care,” she says, adding, “I think it’s sweet that people wanna, you know … but people on the internet, honestly, [they’re] insane, some of them. They’re just pulling something out of nothing and running with it a million miles per hour.”

Focusing on Young’s addiction feels reductive, especially when her catalog is filled with humor and intellect and skill. She bristles at the idea of becoming a spokesperson for sobriety when her own journey hasn’t been easy or linear. And yet so much of her strength as an artist involves being truthful about what’s happening inside her. “I’m just writing what I’m feeling, and then I’ll realize later, ‘Oh, fuck. I shouldn’t have said that I’m a raging drug addict.’ Then I’m like, ‘You know what? I am. What the fuck am I trying to hide?’”

It’s that unwavering honesty and vulnerability that’s traveled so far —worldwide, in fact — reaching people who need to hear her music the most. Anecdotally, she’s heard how her songs have cheered people up, guided them through breakups, reminded them that they’re enough. A fan recently wrote that he was so deeply moved by her music, he taught himself English to understand her better.

And then there are those who’ve told Young that her music saved their lives. “I want to just help in any way that I possibly can,” she says.

TWO WEEKS AFTER the Grammys, Young is still in L.A., still radiating from her glorious win. She’s in her hotel room, doing her makeup in the bathroom, and talking excitedly over Zoom while looking back at the whole night. “I was bad nervous, innit?” Leading up to the performance, the butterflies had ramped up, mostly because she learned some of her heroes — including Joni Mitchell — would be in the audience.

At first, Young didn’t think the performance was as good as her rehearsals, but people’s reactions changed her mind. “Now, people love it, and I’m really happy with it,” she says. The bigger moment, of course, was when she actually won a Grammy. She’d made peace with going home without a trophy, especially when Best New Artist went to Dean. “I was like, ‘I have had a really fucking good time, and I’m just happy to be here.’ So when I got announced, I just jumped.” I tell her it looked like she almost fell out of her chair. “I flew across the room,” she says, laughing. “I honestly flew across the room.”

She hasn’t received her golden gramophone yet, but she jokes about where she might display it when she does. “It’s going to be in the center … maybe when you walk in,” she teases. The thrill of it is palpable as she talks. “I still think about it, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, a Grammy, no one can talk to me anymore, none of those haters matter!’”

The win comes at a particularly bright, productive time. Young has been going to the studio every day, hard at work on new music. There’s no concrete plan yet, but she’s been working with Blake and Mustard in L.A. “I don’t really know what it is yet. But some of it feels minimal,” she says, naming influences like the late Jeff Buckley. “It’s gonna be more positive, but also with … a warmth.”

There’s one song that’s already finished, called “Room for Your Love,” and she wrote it for her two younger sisters. It’s about loving and embracing yourself, but she pauses as she tries to recite the lyrics to me. “Fuck!” she yells, laughing. “Did I even write this song?” The chorus comes to her after a few seconds: “You don’t get to choose who you love, but you can choose who you let in. And you’ve got room, but save some for you.”

Those are the messages she wants to keep leaving for fans. “I want to write music that people care about. I want to make music people can cry to, laugh to, break up to, fall in love to,” she says. “That’s the artist I want to be.” She has a lot more to write, a lot more people to inspire, a lot more to achieve. Right now, the world is hers.

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Photographs by Eliana Shymansky