Lola Young’s ‘I’m Only F–king Myself’: All 14 Songs Ranked

This is the only song here where Young doesn’t appear. Instead, a pitched-up voice opens the record with a lengthy gratitude list: they are thankful for cows, life, art, green grass, clean air, family, and, most importantly, their pal Lola. “This is a bit of a blabber,” they say, before asking how long it would take to walk a mile. Their estimate of 45 minutes may be way off, but they keep talking anyway, making for an endearingly funny voice note.

Where This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway closed out with a poem from Young that reckoned with her sexuality and mental health, her new LP is bookended by two spoken-word sets.  While it’s not as immediately impactful as the new album’s punchier numbers, “Ur An Absolute C Word” does provide a sense of closure. “To feel is to be open,” begins a heart-rending soliloquy from one of Young’s friends, which ends in ripples of laughter from the pair.

Young often illuminates details of a doomed, toxic love in sharp detail, but “Why Do I Feel Better When I Hurt You” uses imagery so sweeping as to be ambiguous. She’s exhausted from not just a verbal fight with a partner, she tells us, but from keeping her feelings locked up in her head; this mental strain is played out via lightly electronic layers that burble and sigh like soft waves.

A proud rebuttal to the viral ‘clean girl’ aesthetic, “Not Like Anymore” sees Young crawl out of layers of self-sabotage, choosing to “quit the snowflake” in search of balance and clarity in her wellbeing and relationships. “I’m f–king myself, but not like that anymore,” she repeatedly exclaims in the final chorus – a funny and self-referential refrain that perfectly encapsulates Young’s smart, gutsy nature.

Young’s control of her vocal tone has only continued to mature as she has grown in her career, and on “Walk All Over You,” she skillfully paints feelings of fatigue, apathy and yearning. “You love me for your ego/ And I love you, for you,” she sings in an especially cutting chorus, and the intentionality of her vocal choices deepens the sombre mood. She challenges herself to delve into the intricacies of a love that has evolved past serving either party.

If social media discourse is anything to go by, Young has grown accustomed to being told to dim her light for the sake of others. Thankfully, the haters haven’t seemed to have knocked her, and this track — which has shades of The Cure in its sinister bassline — only grants her more power, via a stirring lyrical exploration of overcoming turmoil. Such a fighter’s spirit is endearing, and, to an extent, genuinely galvanizing.

Waking up next to a person who has started to give you the ick. There are probably countless journal entries and paragraph-long texts written about the simmering anxiety that scenario might evoke. Atop roomy atmospherics that mirror the empty space that Young is wading through here, she sings with real fire and force, her distinct accent and inflections forcing each syllable into a snap.

Ruminating on obsession and sleepless nights, there’s tension between the brooding intensity of Young’s lyrical concerns and this track’s brightly metallic guitars. She pleads for rest, to think of anything but a past relationship. Sonic unpredictability has long been an enduring strength of Young’s, an attribute that shines vividly as she plays around with pop-punk stylings before building towards a howl.

“The biggest smash I’ve heard in years” is how Elton John described “D£aler” when he interviewed Young on his Rocket Hour show back in the summer. Though this track didn’t quite reach the chart-scaling highs of some of her other material (No. 27 in the U.K.; absent from the Hot 100), its knockout chorus is up there with Young’s very best: a stirring document of a recovery that exudes both muscular drama and skeletal grace.

Though the wandering keys and hazy production are warm and relaxed, here is another salvo in Young’s seemingly eternal war against narcissistic men. The best revenge is none, some might say, though Young has another idea that could be much more effective: make a defiant, gorgeously melodic song that’ll funnel its way into his brain, no matter how hard he tries to resist.

Devotees of Olivia Rodrigo’s messier side are going to embrace “F–k Everyone,” in which Young scoops up a grungy bridge that’s particularly Guts-esque. Her delivery is as playful and free-flowing as ever, littered with lines that make your ears perk. For our author, the animating query at the centre of this song is essentially: Why shouldn’t I do whatever the hell I want? A good time doesn’t always need to be deep, she reminds us.

On an album largely about the joys of being unattached to a lover, a city or a fixed mindset, “One Thing” offers a fleeting nuance: actively making the choice to be attached to someone – just not forever. Young turns seductive mischief and her malleable voice into a sing-song hook – “Everybody wants to know ya/ But me, I only want one thing” – that scales up and down infectiously, teasing a partner for wanting to pursue anything more than some sex-fueled shenanigans. It’s a giddy come-on, made all that sweeter after a couple of rum punches.

Even for a songwriter that has built much of their artistic identity on emotional bloodletting, “Who F–king Cares?” is as raw and affecting as they come, a song that feels like a scattered internal monologue blown to epic proportions. Delivered with the intimacy of a phone call and the intensity of a therapy session, Young depicts hours spent crying to Radiohead while imagining what an ex’s life looks like without her. It perhaps wouldn’t be remiss to assume that, after her breakthrough year, Young’s team may have considered polishing her sound up as an attempt to make her more marketable; this arresting track throws up a defiant middle finger in the face of that idea.

Having experienced and survived years of the music industry’s vacillating fortunes, it is thrilling, and deeply moving, to hear Young give her most powerful vocal performance to date on “Spiders.” The image she paints repeatedly throughout – “Make me feel like I’m not incomplete for once” – looms like a shadow. Yet the gut punch of the song is that despite her exhaustion, she sounds optimistic, willing to battle to stay present in the moment even when her brain is fast-forwarding to collapse. When a whisper of a beat propels these conflicting feelings into focus, Young’s voice aches, soaring with resolve before a gravitational pull gently brings it back down.