This was meant for you.

If you had been anywhere near TikTok during late spring of 2024 you might have come across the audio from a song titled Messy.

Yeah, that song.

Now, I caught wind of the artist behind that song during the previous year, 2023, due to another popular audio from a sing titled Don’t Hate Me. A song accompanied by a video of a confident and expressive woman on a swing set holding a microphone singing away.

That woman being Lola Young.

Now, anyone close to me has heard about me talk about Lola numerous times, but I’m here today because I just can’t simply talk about her work enough. I’ve described Lola as a cross of Adele and the late Amy Winehouse.

Adele brings grace and truth, Amy brings grit and realness.

Going through Lola’s music videos you can get a sense for this cross. Singing into a doorbell camera, swinging away on a tire swing, and getting all up in our faces. She sings about toxic relationships, familial expectations, casual encounters, and everything in between. She is singing about what so many of us experience every single day in the world of online dating, the world of constant and instant connection. We use and get used. We expect and are expected. We live and let live.

At the end of her album This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway, Lola leaves us with an outro. She leaves us with the message that this album was about being able to find love within herself, not needing a shoulder to cry on, becoming herself within her own skin.

With that I just wanted to leave you with this, keep on eye on Lola and embrace the message she has for us as listeners. Love yourself.