Holly Humberstone’s Cruel World Is a Homecoming Built from Dark Fairy Tales

Last week, award-winning English singer-songwriter Holly Humberstone released her second album, Cruel World, alongside the lead single Beauty Pageant, a stark, unravelling portrait of womanhood under pressure. 

As the final track on the record, the single confronts the unattainable standards women hold themselves to. It reflects “the moment after the show when you’re taking off your makeup in the mirror, and there are no distractions left. You’re crying alone in your room because you can’t keep the performance going forever,” says Holly. 

Holly’s songwriting has earned her place as one of the UK’s most gifted singer-songwriters. Her second album, Cruel World, explores the line between pain and pleasure, tracing love in all forms as both a source of euphoria and instability. The richly imagined visual world Holly created with her sister Eleri Humberstone and Silken Weinberg (Ethel Cain) draws from rediscovering dark fairy tales and cinema like Brothers Grimm, James and the Giant Peach, Nosferatu, and Black Swan. The album marks a turning point in Holly Humberstone’s writing and a shift from searching for home to finally defining it.

When it comes to storytelling, Holly is anchored by place. From her breakthrough EP Falling Asleep At The Wheel, a portrait of a girl growing up in a “haunted house” in Grantham, to The Walls Are Way Too Thin and Paint My Bedroom Black, Holly documented the dislocation of leaving home, capturing life in fragments: hotel rooms, late-night messages, and new cities. Now at 26, Holly has built a home in Southeast London. Cruel World is anchored in that stability and routine. 

Catch Holly on tour this June across the US and the festival circuit throughout the summer and across Europe this September.