London-based singer-songwriter Cat Burns released her sophomore album “How To Be Human” on October 31, 2025 via Since 93 and RCA records.
This marks her first album in over a year since the 2024 debut album “Early Twenties”.
The album comprises 16 track, produced by Ed Thomas, Humble the Great, Jonah Summerfield, Jordan Riley, Kurisu and Rob Milton.
The record captures a turbulent year in Cat Burns' life, marked by the loss of her grandfather and the end of a long-term relationship.
Cat Burns said of the album, “How to be Human’ is about the last year of my life. I experienced the death of a loved one and my first relationship heartbreak at the same time and genuinely had no idea how I would get through the situation. Making this album was my introspective and neurodivergent way of navigating heartbreak and the loss of my Grandad who I was extremely close to - it’s my comfort album. While making it I realised how many people it could help, I know there are so many people going through similar struggles. I hope it provides them some comfort too and shows how you can pick yourself back up.”
Cat Burns shared on social media, “I left a very big piece of me on this project, going through grief and heartbreak at the same time really re wired my brain chemistry, and I noticed when people try and give uplifting messages about getting through the hard times they never really go into detail about how they got to the end of the tunnel or even what the tunnel looked like, so I REALLY wanted to do that with this album and document the trenches of processing your emotions.”
She continued, “It's very honest and it's very vulnerable (perhaps too vulnerable with the voice memos of me crying) but I truly believe art should cost us something so the fact that I'm so nervous putting this out means it's gonna hopefully resonate with you all.”
She added, “I could only have written such a personal project with my nearest and dearest writers who just always make our sessions such a safe space, it's literally like therapy for me and I'm so grateful to you all for helping me bring this album to life.”
“Come Home” “Lots of my favorite artists have a song dedicated to a family member who's no longer with them. Ed Sheeran's got 'Supermarket Flowers' and Tori Kelly has a song called 'Your Words.' I knew once my grandad passed away, I wanted to make a song that reflected how he viewed life and death. He was a very religious man and viewed passing away as the universe and God calling you back home once you've done everything you need to do on this Earth. So I wanted to pay homage to him, with the first verse showing how his passing was for us, but in the second verse I'm telling the story of him coming over from Jamaica. I wanted the start of the album to throw everybody in at the deep end.”
“Can Time Move Faster?” “I talk to myself a lot, so I made videos of me at different points in my grief journey to see where I was at. This has a voice memo of me crying. We always hear from people when they're out of the storm, and they say, 'Don't worry, you can get through it and everything's going to be fine.' But I wanted to document the process. People need to know they're not alone in feeling what they're feeling. I always say the day after the funeral is the hardest because that's when people think you don't need them anymore. You're supposed to go back to normal, but I wanted to show how hard it is. This is when I wanted to skip to the point where time would heal me because I felt so heavy all the time.”
“I Hope It's Me” “'I Hope It's Me' favors my hopeless romantic side. I have a massive heart and I love people intensely. This was written fresh after a relationship ending. I wasn't processing it yet, but seeing reminders of that person everywhere I went. I think a lot of people hope they can reconcile with their first love and this song feeds into that. Even when I hear this song now, it's uncomfortable to listen to because I'm in such a different place. But it had to be on the album because that's how I felt in the moment. So many people are at that stage of their breakup where they're like, 'That's my person and I don't care what happens, we're going to find our way back to each other.'”
“Sad Forever” “This was written a few weeks after my grandad passed away and everything was in turmoil. I was crying every day and in a hard place. I went into my mum's room and she hugged me and was there for me and calmed me down. She told me about her first heartbreak. I wanted to explore that in a song: I was going through this hard time and the only person I could look to for comfort was my mum because she knew just what to say. The chorus is like affirmations you can say to yourself. You're not going to be sad forever, but you have to feel it now and trust it will get better. These feelings will pass.”
“All This Love” “I realized that crying all the time and having all these emotions are not negative things. This is what love is. I have love for these two people and I can't give it to them anymore. How do I navigate this? As soon as I started to accept that grief was love with no place to go, I found it way easier to handle. I talk about starting to go out more and trying to enjoy my life. Sometimes, you can think you're not allowed to feel happy when you've lost somebody. Over time, I tried to find new places to put this love—and that's more into my friends, more into myself, and more into my dog. She's a cavapoo and she's the light of my life.”
“GIRLS!” “With 'GIRLS!' it was towards the end of the summer and I was starting to feel a bit more confident in myself. I realized I'd written love songs in the past, but I'd never made a fun, flirty pop track about my love of women across the board. And I was feeling more confident in myself and noticing an attraction from women towards me, especially because this was my first time being single after a long-term relationship. So I was experiencing being single in my mid-twenties and thinking, 'Wow, this is fun.'”
“There's Just Something About Her” “This is a lovely pop song about that first stage of really liking somebody. A lot of my queer friends feel it. They'll message me and they go, 'Oh, I've just met somebody and it's a whirlwind. I can't work out why I'm so obsessed with them.' I wanted to make a song about that, when you meet someone and you love everything about them. It's like this person's laced with something! I've always wanted to make songs about specific scenarios that are relatable to everybody, and I'm a detail-oriented person, so I love writing songs about those moments we all experience.”
“Please Don't Hate Me” “'Please Don't Hate Me' is about the guilt you can feel for moving on. When you come out of a relationship, especially if it was long-term, you feel a level of loyalty towards that person. Sometimes, you can feel like, if you move on, you're cheating on them, because you've been with them for so long. Allowing yourself to be loved by somebody else and to love somebody else can make you feel guilty. With people's first loves, you think you're going to be with that person forever and that's why your heart breaks. I'm saying, 'I don't regret our relationship' because I'm writing from an ending where no one did anything wrong and it was just life.”
“I Wish You Well” “This is one of my favorites. It's a conscious decision for me to always make higher vibrational songs with an element of hope. I believe that songs are spells—and if you put negative energy out into the world, that's what will come back to you. I'm lucky enough that I haven't experienced hard things in relationships, so I choose not to have a victim mindset. I'm not going to act like we weren't together and we didn't have a lovely relationship and we didn't try, because we did. Even though we're not speaking, I'm always sending good vibrations your way because I always want the best for you.”
“How to Be Human” “If you've got ADHD or autism, or both, like me, I've always felt like there's hidden cameras everywhere and someone's about to go, 'Stop. You've said that wrong,' or 'You're doing life wrong.' And I wanted to explore that idea in a non-cringey way. I remember going into the session thinking I want to make a song about being neurodivergent and what that means to me. So that's why the first verse is saying I learned how to speak, socialize and exist from the media and TV shows, and I'm a sponge. I wanted that song to wrap up the whole album and end it there because this is a very neurodivergent way of processing grief. It ends with the vocoder to play on the idea of people seeing neurodivergent people as a bit robotic, not showing that much emotion, when there's so much going on under the surface.”
