101/ Lola Young's 'From Down Here'

I’ve fallen for this new ballad in the month since it showed up, it’s become one of my favourite songs of 2026 so far.

Lola Young returned from her forced break (after collapsing onstage last autumn) with this single, which isn’t wholly specific but seems to be unpacking the harder side of sobriety — the boring grind of staying clean. ‘From Down Here’ gets me hard, and specifically it reminds me of a short but heartbreaking old Amy Winehouse clip, where Amy opens up momentarily about how miserable and especially how utterly bored she is, trying to stay straight:

But it’s my favourite place, so why do I hate it here?

Young’s lyric captures, better than any song I can immediately think of on the topic, that greyscale sobriety grind, laid in contrast with the vivid hues of the high.

The singer’s awkward interview with Jools Holland on Later the other week (aren’t they all fairly awkward?) made me suspect that producers (or someone) told Young she shouldn’t specifically mention booze or drugs, yet Jools then straight out asks her to discuss what the song is about, trapping Young in what comes off like slightly nervous generalising.

It doesn’t matter though, the performance is (for me) outstanding, her vocal is magnificent.

Or, here’s an earlier big stage performance from Radio One’s Big Weekend last month in Sunderland. The audience doesn’t quite connect with the song in the moment (a brand new song debuted ahead of its promo, after all) but that’s their loss.

That line:

Can I make them laugh?
Can I make them stay?

For a split second it reminds one of a narrator hinting at external judgement when Taylor Swift, on the otherwise very different ‘Shake It Off’, sings:

I go on too many dates
But I can’t make ‘em stay

Yet here, it’s not an individual but all of us, the whole audience. It has that hint of the showbiz trouper’s broken heart, even in its generalising. Make em laugh! Make em laugh! type lines, at once both heady and careful.

I also really love ‘From Down Here’ doing sectional modulation from verse to chorus (and back again), so the two distinct sections technically live in different keys, yet the melody line flows smoothly enough between the two to maintain what (to me) feels unusually natural for a song with see-saw modulating chords like that.

I played it through a few times in C before looking it up and realising it’s actually in A (verse is A, Bm, D, then the chorus is Em, A, D, G — no fucking about).

So, a notable point about ‘From Down Here’ is its role as a marker of an increasingly successful life in music production for the hilarious transatlantic television actor, presenter and podcast star (and very online personality) Jameela Jamil.

That is, Jamil working with her pop star partner James Blake as a production team. Lola Young went to them for her new record — and ‘From Down Here’ came from those sessions, with Jamil earning both a cowrite and a co-production credit.

I’ll admit I’ve barely listened to Blake’s music over the years, after finding my first encounters a bit dull early doors, but I will try a deep dive and give him a proper go. Jamil’s contributions to his records stretch back into the late 2010s, since at least Assume Form, his fourth record, where she’s credited on five songs. Of course, Jamil being a woman, and a confident, creative, successful one, probably even moreso a woman of colour, her music production work has attracted a gross, whiffy swirl of Internet misogyny, attempting to underplay her contributions. Blake has defended her work and she’s batted it off with humour and directness.

Personally, I’m all in on the notion of Jameela Jamil as record producer, it makes perfect sense. She’s one of those rare public figures who carries off being wise without being lofty (yeah, a height pun). She’s also exceptionally present — clearly a listener — and she’s always been properly musical — for example moving to Los Angeles not to become an actor (getting cast in The Good Place was basically an accident) but to work as a DJ and write screenplays.

Anyway, hats off to her, as well as Blake and Young, this piece is a beautiful doozy.

icymi —

• No, I’m not linking to Angine de Poitrine on Later. Yes, I loved it.

• If I had the cash (and wasn’t too scared to visit the USA right now, given my social media history with Mr President) in August we’d be well into Olivia Rodrigo’s new Daisychain Fields festival, just south of Los Angeles, with its excellent all-woman lineup blending O Rod’s faves, from Chappell and Doechii to Bikini Kill and Garbage (and Stevie Nicks!) all waiving fees so that 100% of net proceeds go to a series of women’s causes. Also ace to see Rachel Chinouriri on that lineup.

• Westside Cowboy on the iPlayer from TRNSMT Festival, playing in front of a small crowd. Starts a touch squonky, but as they get going (from the second or third song in) they’re sensational and just keep winding it up. They’ve also acquired a delightful, drawling, don’t-give-a-shit-ness (I suspect) from the Geese tour. Unprepossessing, as only proper magical indie bands can be. I already wrote somewhere: Frightened Rabbit songwriting at Senseless Things tempo. Unusually for a TV broadcast, you can hear bleed from the bigger stage. If it’s coming out on the livestream, you can be sure it was loud enough to be annoying in the field. God, honestly, every year TRANSMT looks so rubbish, at least on telly.

• With Andy Burnham’s current ascendence, in case you fancy judging the man via his music taste his edition of The Quietus ‘Baker’s Dozen’ feature is doing the rounds again. Burno’s insight that Adrianne Lenker has something of the Tracey Thorn about her vocal originality is solid stuff.

• I recommend the great prose stylist Michael Bracewell’s small, unusual new book The Smiths: A Novella. He’s having a purple patch since 2024’s excellent London-themed prose poem Souvenir.

Thankyou for reading, it means a lot.

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