Cruel World, British singer songwriter Holly Humberstone’s third studio album was released on 10th April 2026 building on the excitement of her acoustic European tour. 

This project saw Humberstone lean more into the pop sound she has been exploring with an added dreamy touch. It still, however, features her iconic synth moments and experimentations with distorted vocals. 

The album invites you into its darkly enchanting, melancholic world with the appropriately titled So It Starts… An orchestral opening with plucky strings that feels like leaving this universe for a gothic fairy-tale. 

Title track and single Cruel World is upbeat and synth-heavy, juxtaposing the hopeless lyrics exploring the messy and gloomy navigation of reality after the ending of a relationship. The lyrics hold the specificity that made me fall in love with her music and seem to just go on and on in a perfect expression of yearning, with lines changing at every chorus. 

Tracks like Blue Dream and Make It All Better are feverish with an intense young love that was introduced with the lead single. “You got a twenty-five-minute ETA / that’s twenty-five more than I can take” This line reminds me of Maisie Peters’ The Good Witch. 

White Noise, my personal favourite, is a relatable groove leaning into the sleek pop sound, seeming to be set in a club during heartbreak, longing for the DJ to play mellow songs you can sink into. This concept parallels a line in the album’s title track, “And I’ll be going out tonight / I don’t know what else to do with myself.” And again, in Drunk Dialling with the line, “I’m gonna put on my New Rocks and get into the groove”.

Crossovers like this ground the world of the album into a full-scale illusion, an entire new universe you can fall into after hitting play, which I think is one its greatest strengths as a record intending to stand the test of time. 

Lucy features layered harmonies and haunting chorus melodies reminiscent of Lizzy McAlpine’s You Forced Me To. It is the lullaby of the album, drawing some sad overviews about being a woman in today’s relentless society, while the overall message is uplifting. The name comes from one of her sisters, whom Holly shares a birthday with and has described as a twin-like figure in her life. Humberstone said in a Genius interview that her sisters were a big inspiration for this album, with To Love Somebody, being about a breakup one of them went through. 

Drunk Dialling details the universally relatable experience of desperately reaching out to someone you should not. The recklessness of the decision seeps into every line. The complicated feeling of knowing a choice is poor but not quite having the strength to avoid making it is one that fans can latch onto in their own dark moments. 

Closing the Beauty Pageant, Humberstone laments the complicated rollercoaster of fame. This meaning is cemented with the purposeful contraction in the lyrics from, “I click my heels and wish for home,” to the determined “I won’t stop until you love me,” being the second to last line in the entire project. 

This song also opens with the lyrics “So it starts,” taking you back to a song at the beginning of the album. A simple touch that shows the care that went into the telling of this story. Cruel World is Holly Humberstone’s most honest and authentic work to date, exploring themes of the nuances of love and the experiences of a growing popstar, and as soon as it ends, you will want to hit play again.