- 2021-11-16
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MUSIC
Holly Humberstone Releases New EP “The Walls Are Way Too Thin”: Streaming
British singer-songwriter Holly Humberstone released her sophomore EP “The Walls Are Way Too Thin” along with a new music video for “Friendly Fire” on November 12, 2021 via Interscope Records, Darkroom Records and Polydor Records.
The 6-track EP comprises four previous singles, including co-writing with The 1975's Matty Healy, and two new songs.
The EP represents the feeling of being lost and questioning who you are and where you belong.
Holly Humberstone said of the EP, “This EP represents a feeling of being lost. It's the kind of lost that makes you question who you are and where you belong. So lost that someone might need to find you again because you can't find yourself. That's how it felt to move to Liverpool, then London, and be in transit between cities and never settling.”
The EP was written by Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Holly Humberstone, Matthew Healy, Rob Milton and Sarah Aarons. Produced by Matthew Healy & Rob Milton.
She shared on social media, “the walls are way too thin ep is yours❤️🩹I wrote this ep about feeling lost. I had just moved away from home to London and I was so far away from anything that felt familiar that I just didn't feel like me anymore. these songs were my only way of making sense of anything and writing them made me feel whole again. I hope they can mean something to you too x”- RJYB3bNYCps
- RJYB3bNYCps
The accompanying music video was directed by Louis Browne.
She said of the video, “The video for Friendly Fire came together literally 4 hours before it was shot! It was closing in on Halloween and we were wide eyed looking at all the streets dressed up. A lot had been going on that day and I wasn't really ready to shoot a video but we were staying in Brooklyn, New York and found out we could get on the rooftop of our building, so we had to shoot something. We called our friend who is a great director and photographer, went down the shop to buy as much Halloween props as we could find for $500, took it up the roof, plugged it in and I performed the song amongst the madness. It was hilarious, people in the building kept coming up getting freaked out and running back downstairs.”
Holly Humberstone explained track-by-track for the EP via Apple Music.
“Haunted House”
“We were told that we had to leave our childhood home. This house is the only place I'll ever consider as my real home. It's so quirky—it's this really old house in the middle of the countryside that I think my friends at school were terrified of. But I feel so safe there. I feel it's raised me in a way. An elderly family member had also died. I just felt all of the really sacred, precious things from my childhood were slipping away from me all at once. I was so emotional writing the song—it just felt like I really needed to write it. Writing it helped me to understand that change is really hard, but it's really necessary for us to evolve and to grow.”
“The Walls Are Way Too Thin”
“Going into the studio and making sense of everything that was going on was my salvation. The flat where I was living in London was the worst of the worst. I wrote this with [frequent collaborator and songwriter/producer] Rob Milton in Nottinghamshire and it was such an amazing excuse to leave London. Like a lot of the songs on this EP, there's quite a depressing meaning behind them, but it was important not to make it sound depressing. This was written over a long period of time, and I remember being just obsessed with synth for ages. I wanted to write stuff that sounded fully '80s: cheesy cringe music.”-
“Please Don't Leave Just Yet”
“I wrote this with Matty Healy in between the lockdowns in 2020. The 1975 was such a huge musical influence for me—Matty wrote the soundtrack to my teenage years. I hate writing with new people, it's my worst nightmare, but he just created such a comfortable, chill environment. I wrote this when I was living in London and I didn't have any friends. Every time I'd go and visit people or someone would come to visit me, it always felt like I couldn't really enjoy it because I was thinking, 'You're going to have to leave soon. I'm going to be on my own again.' I would do anything to make them stay. I wanted to mirror that in the production. I wanted to make it really conversational as well and have the lyrics almost like a phone call.”
“Thursday”
“I was thinking 'I'm on Fire' by Bruce Springsteen with this, with that driving kind of rhythm. I was writing about my friend Scarlett, but also dwelling on my own experiences with having somebody break up with me and feeling completely rejected. This song was written a couple of months before 'Scarlett' and it was when she was in the midst of the breakup. It was really hard to watch her being in denial about everything. She would do anything for this guy and he was just completely uninterested. I really like the lyrics in this one—they're so relatable.”
“Scarlett”
“This song is different from the other tracks, because it's like, 'Actually, I'm so much better off without you. I'm not dependent on anyone.' I wrote this when Scarlett was starting to feel hopeful and see herself the way that I had been seeing her the whole time: as her own person without this relationship. The sonics and the production of this song just felt uplifting to me and like the high point of the EP. I think Scarlett feels quite empowered by it.”
“Friendly Fire”
“My relationship—like a lot of people's—broke down during the pandemic. It was my first proper relationship and I really cared for this person. But, especially with being really busy with my music, I didn't have any spare emotional energy. I wrote this song a few weeks before I ended it, and it made me realize what I needed to do. I often just feel really confused about stuff and I find that writing a song helps me to figure out what I need to do. The message is: 'I really care about you. And I'm really sorry if, somewhere down the line, I break your heart. It's nothing personal, it's my own issues.'” - source : Apple Music