Lola Young - I'm Only F**king Myself
The British star’s third studio album refuses to compromise: a raw, distortion-soaked testament to addiction, desire, and the jagged search for identity.
2025 has been nothing short of a breakthrough for Lola Young. Her runaway single “Messy” proved impossible to ignore — saturating TikTok feeds, flooding radio playlists, and crystallizing her presence as more than just another pop voice. Part of it was inevitability: Young’s magnetism made her impossible to sidestep. Memes, looping GIFs, and viral edits only amplified her aura.
But Lola Young has always offered more than virality. I’m Only F**king Myself, released via Island, signals a decisive shift away from the tidy world of chart pop into terrain where she feels startlingly at home: abrasive, guitar-heavy rock. That pivot is announced instantly with the album’s first full track, “F**K EVERYONE” — a brazen self-portrait laced with biting jokes about having sex with someone’s father and messy declarations of selfhood. It’s a punk-indebted anthem, driven by serrated riffs and a kind of swagger that feels both reckless and deliberate.
Young doesn’t shy away from heavier confessions here. On “d£aler”, she spins a diamond-hard ode to substance dependency, confessing she misses her dealer and dreams of vanishing into a haze of smoke. Sung by a pop star, such admissions could feel jarring, but that’s precisely the point: I’m Only F**king Myself thrives on its refusal to sand down the edges. Mainstream listeners may struggle to find glossy, radio-ready polish, but indie purists will revel in the grunge callbacks, ’90s alt textures, and nods to classic indie rock. On “CAN WE IGNORE IT? :(“, her vocals fight to claw their way out from a swamp of distortion, embodying the desperation of someone dodging her own reflection.
The record is full of detours that keep it unpredictable. “Penny Out of Nothing” plays like nothing Young has attempted before: an acid-laced bossa nova where she brags about outwitting anyone who crosses her. Its sly charm underscores her gift for persuasion—you believe whatever she says because she delivers it with unflinching conviction. “Walk All Over You” follows, a jangly ’90s revival that finds her playfully warning an ex that every bad deed will eventually circle back.
Sex pulses throughout much of the tracklist. On “F**K EVERYONE”, she unpacks her bisexuality with defiance, while “One Thing” — arguably the album’s lone straight-up pop song — reads like a candid inventory of positions and fantasies, hinging on the insistence that all she really needs is “one thing.” But sex, as Young reminds us, is never just one thing. “Post Sex Clarity” captures the strange vulnerability of intimacy with someone transient: that sobering moment when you realize you still care, even after the high fades. The tenderness lies not in erotic detail, but in her insistence on being seen, wanted, and understood.
The euphoria comes on “SPIDERS”, the best song of Young’s career — a heavenly imperfect masterpiece that swallows her voice in distortion until it bursts in the chorus. It condenses every fear and self-loathing she’s carried, only to meet them head-on. In its most cathartic passages, the song suggests that what terrifies us is rarely as lethal as it feels.
With I’m Only F**king Myself, Lola Young bares it all: the humiliations, the escapes, the insecurities reframed as punchlines. What makes the record remarkable is not just its raw honesty, but how accurately it mirrors the erratic trajectory of real life — a path that never moves cleanly forward. It’s easy to moralize about what one “should” or “shouldn’t” do. It’s infinitely harder, and far braver, to admit the mess and claim it as your own.
7.9/10
