Lifted from her personal iPhone notes: “Superbloodmoon in the sky, can you see it from where you are?”, Holly Humberstone today releases “Superbloodmoon” featuring d4vd, the third song taken from her highly anticipated debut album Paint My Bedroom Black, out on 13 October 2023. A Super blood moon is when the Earth’s moon is in a total lunar eclipse and the sky becomes red, and Holly loved the idea of how rare it was. She met billion streaming American singer and songwriter d4vd in London at longtime collaborator Rob Milton’s studio, and they both wrote the song in a few hours, imagining two people staring at the rare lunar eclipse from opposite sides of the world. Always inspired by her environment and how that affects her sense of self and identity, from her parent’s Haunted House to flatshares in London with The Walls Are Way To Thin, “Superbloodmoon” reflects the landscape surrounding Holly, travelling the world, taking a flight last year on tour and trying to find an anchoring and missing loved ones.
“Holly and I met in London and wrote this song in just a few hours. It was really effortless and special. We both loved the idea of a Superbloodmoon and two people witnessing the same thing no matter where they are in the world. We also got to perform it together at my show in London a couple months ago, which was the first time I’ve ever gotten to collab with someone onstage like that and it was really fun. I’m very grateful to Holly for having me on this song.” – d4vd
“I had been a huge fan of d4vd’s work for about a year and was lucky enough to catch him whilst he was in London. We went into the studio and wrote Superbloodmoon. It came pretty naturally as we had both been touring for what seemed like forever, and wanted to write about the feelings that come with leaving your home and the people you love behind. I had the title for the song on my notes, and it just stemmed from there. We wrote about witnessing the same thing from opposite sides of the world and feeling lonely but connected through that experience at the same time. I love the song and I’m so grateful to d4vd for bringing it to life with me.” – Holly Humberstone
Holly Humberstone’s debut album Paint My Bedroom Black represents her coming of age, growing from an unknown singer at her parent’s piano to the most exciting alternative pop stars of her generation. The dark and otherworldly space Holly has built and invited fans into, both sonically and visually, has been lucid and visceral, with the camera always on her shoulder, a lens into her chaotic thoughts and deep feelings. Already nominated for two Ivor Novello’s, winning the BRIT Rising Star in 2022 and coming runner up in BBC Sound Of 2021, Humberstone’s bear-all storytelling is the heart of her craft. The rising star dropped “Antichrist” and “Room Service” last month, the double A-Side singles that reflect her introspection and extraversion, two opposing artistic multitudes that inform Holly’s lyricism and sound. “I feel like two different people half the time. My biggest challenge is always to make something I feel I haven’t done before, that reflects new parts of me.” The new parts of Holly appear on “Antichrist”, an exposing image of her last break-up, a heartbreak ballad of self-loathing, set against propulsive pop: “Am I the Antichrist? How do I sleep at night?”, juxtaposed against delicate “Room Service”, an ode to locking yourself away from the world. The introduction of these two starkly different tracks act as a revolving door into the visceral duality of Holly Humberstone.
PRE ORDER “PAINT MY BEDROOM BLACK”
LISTEN TO “ANTICHRIST”LISTEN TO “ROOM SERVICE”
With a talent for capturing and characterising moments that are both uncomfortably intimate and brutally revealing in her songwriting and creative – most of Holly’s 2022 was spent in hotel rooms, stuck between places, watching life from afar rather than being totally present in it. Lacking real connections and missing loved ones, the stirring official video for “Antichrist”, directed by Jean-Charles Chavarin, tells the story of the self-flagellation that comes with hurting someone you love, as you run away from yourself, trying to escape from room to room, until your reflection turns away from you. Last week, Holly dropped the “Room Service” video, shot in room 627 on a webcam, the same room that Holly invited 80 fans to hear songs for the first time from Paint My Bedroom Black. Inspired by early zoom calls where Holly’s world felt blurry and faraway, the video captures a day in the life of Holly on tour, trying to find normality and home in the mundane, locked away from the world in a hotel room.
WATCH “ANTICHRIST” HERE
WATCH “ROOM SERVICE” HERE
PAINT MY BEDROOM BLACK TRACKLISTING
1. Paint My Bedroom Black
2. Into Your Room
3. Cocoon
4. Kissing In Swimming Pools
5. Ghost Me
6. Superbloodmoon (featuring d4vd)
7. Antichrist
8. Lauren
9. Baby Blues
10. Flatlining
11. Elvis Impersonators
12. Girl
13. Room Service
When Holly first brought her intimate live shows to audiences in 2021, fans were already singing every word from her breakout debut EP, “Falling Asleep At The Wheel” released in 2020. A global tour followed, with sell-out shows across the USA including LA’s Roxy to two nights at New York’s Bowery Ballroom, which led to Holly being invited on tour with Olivia Rodrigo and Girl in Red across North America. It was on these trips through soulless hotel rooms from March to December last year that the 23-year-old began piecing her album narrative together. Striking themes of lost loves, family units, and the deep-set fears of youth and growing up intertwined with sparse and expansive sonic production, Holly’s “crazy” headspace led to the foundations of Paint My Bedroom Black. “I have had such a fun, crazy, challenging few years,” Holly says, “I wanted to put absolutely all of that into this album. An album is a much different headspace for me, but it is filled with snapshots of where I’ve been and where I’m at.”
Snapshots of Holly flit everywhere from last year’s single “Can You Afford To Lose Me”, performed on Late Night With Stephen Colbert, to playing Matty Healy co-written “Sleep Tight” for VEVO, taking festivals by storm from Coachella to her debut Glastonbury performance and Reading & Leeds. Humberstone has become one of the most loved breakthrough artists for her raw, unfiltered, confessional songwriting and distinctive, can-hear-a-pin-drop vocals, picking up fans from Olivia Rodrigo to Phoebe Bridgers, Sigrid to Glass Animals and Sam Fender, and inspiring the next generation of alternative pop acts including Tommy Lefroy, Katie Gregson-Macleod, and Matilda Mann, whilst collaborating with the likes of Jack Steadman in Bombay Bicycle Club and Griff.
Finishing 2022 on a huge high, ending her biggest UK headline tour with 5000 fans singing back favourites “Scarlett” and “Overkill” at O2 Academy Brixton, playing to 100k people at Sam Fender’s St James’ Park Stadium show last month, the physical manifestation of her 242.6M global streams, Holly Humberstone started 2023 with her journal in hand and creative, walled off time, as she locked herself away in Rob Milton’s studio in London, to piece together the pieces of herself she felt like she left on the road, in rooms across the world. Holly has become renowned for painting a picture of a place so viscerally, being rooted in the walls and also people that makes a city liveable, where you can “get drunk with your mates and just forget about work”. From her family home in “Haunted House” to feeling lost and isolated in her London shared flat with The Walls Are Way To Thin, Paint My Bedroom Black is Holly’s fragmented and dark love letter to friends and lovers, a hideaway from the world when her fans need one.
UK Live Dates
26 Aug – Reading – Reading Festival
27 Aug – Leeds – Leeds Festival