Cruel World…So It Ends Holly Humberstone

• 1 So It Starts... 00:46
• 2 Make It All Better 03:57
• 3 To Love Somebody 03:58
• 4 Cruel World 03:26
• 5 Die Happy 03:50
• 6 White Noise 03:45
• 7 Lucy 02:51
• 8 Red Chevy 02:59
• 9 Drunk Dialling 03:41
• 10 Peachy 02:44
• 11 Blue Dream 03:20
• 12 Beauty Pageant 03:16
• 13 Too Cute To Be Lonely 03:16
• 14 Killing The Mood 03:21
• 15 Terminally Yours 04:04
• 16 Silver Sky 04:11
• 17 Annihilation 03:59
• Total Runtime 57:24

Info for Cruel World…So It Ends

Award-winning singer and songwriter Holly Humberstone releases "Cruel World…So It Ends", a deluxe edition of her critically acclaimed second album, to be released on 13 November 2026. Featuring five brand new tracks, Holly today shares “Too Cute To Be Lonely”, a euphoric, dancefloor-leaning alt-pop song that marks a shift into brighter, more expansive territory. Inspired by ABBA, Madonna and Robyn, “Too Cute To Be Lonely” is a reminder of Holly’s singular songwriting and precise storytelling. The video, directed by Silken Weinberg — who has worked with Holly and her sister Eleri Humberstone on creating the enchanting dark fairytale world of Cruel World — tells the story of the fairytale’s next chapter. As Holly puts it: “To me the fairytale doesn’t end, it just turns a page to a new chapter. Cruel World was a journey of self discovery and finding my confidence in my voice, the songs within So It Ends feel more confident and self assured.”

In April, Holly released her critically acclaimed second album Cruel World, which debuted at No.4 on the UK Albums Chart and has since amassed more than 83 million streams, establishing herself as one of the most distinctive British singer-songwriters of her generation. A richly detailed exploration of love, longing and self-discovery, Cruel World traces the fine line between pain and pleasure, capturing the moments where devotion becomes obsession and comfort becomes chaos. Through razor-sharp lyricism and expansive, cinematic production, Holly maps the emotional terrain of modern relationships with remarkable honesty. Fans were welcomed into Holly’s Cruel World with striking live performances on Later… with Jools Holland, the finale of season one of SNL UK and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, continuing to cement her status as one of Britain’s most compelling live artists. Earlier this summer, Holly released it’s a real Cruel World, a strikingly intimate EP that reimagined four standout tracks from the album, offering a new perspective on some of her most beloved songs. The collection features fresh versions of of fan favourites “White Noise”, “Red Chevy”, the title track “Cruel World”, and “To Love Somebody”.

Nominated for an Ivor Novello for her debut EP and winning the BRIT Rising Star in 2022 — Holly has grown into a global force, whose lucid storytelling resonates far beyond her own walls. Holly’s story began with Falling Asleep At The Wheel, the breakthrough EP that revealed a young woman translating her haunted childhood home and three-sister household into vivid, unforgettable songs like “Vanilla,” “Overkill” and “Deep End.” The intimacy and precision of her lyrics marked her as a diarist of the small details that make up big emotions. That voice quickly carried her from her gothic family home to the international stage: performing “London Is Lonely” live to millions at the BRIT Awards in 2022, supporting Olivia Rodrigo and Girl in Red across North America, and releasing her acclaimed debut album Paint My Bedroom Black in 2023, written partly in hotel rooms while living the dream she had imagined as a girl.

Holly Humberstone

Holly Humberstone
When Holly first brought her intimate live shows to audiences in 2021, fans were already singing every word from her breakout debut EP, “Falling Asleep At The Wheel” released in 2020. A global tour followed, with sell-out shows across the USA including LA’s Roxy to two nights at New York’s Bowery Ballroom, which led to Holly being invited on tour with Olivia Rodrigo and Girl in Red across North America. It was on these trips through soulless hotel rooms from March to December last year that the 23-year-old began piecing her album narrative together. Striking themes of lost loves, family units, and the deep-set fears of youth and growing up intertwined with sparse and expansive sonic production, Holly’s “crazy” headspace led to the foundations of Paint My Bedroom Black. “I have had such a fun, crazy, challenging few years,” Holly says, “I wanted to put absolutely all of that into this album. An album is a much different headspace for me, but it is filled with snapshots of where I’ve been and where I’m at.” 

Snapshots of Holly flit everywhere from last year’s single “Can You Afford To Lose Me”, performed on Late Night With Stephen Colbert, to playing Matty Healy co-written “Sleep Tight” for VEVO, taking festivals by storm from Coachella to her debut Glastonbury performance and Reading & Leeds. Humberstone has become one of the most loved breakthrough artists for her raw, unfiltered, confessional songwriting and distinctive, can-hear-a-pin-drop vocals, picking up fans from Olivia Rodrigo to Phoebe Bridgers, Sigrid to Glass Animals and Sam Fender, and inspiring the next generation of alternative pop acts including Tommy Lefroy, Katie Gregson-Macleod, and Matilda Mann, whilst collaborating with the likes of Jack Steadman in Bombay Bicycle Club and Griff.

Finishing 2022 on a huge high, ending her biggest UK headline tour with 5000 fans singing back favourites “Scarlett” and “Overkill” at O2 Academy Brixton, the physical manifestation of her 242.6M global streams, Holly Humberstone started 2023 with her journal in hand and creative, walled off time, as she locked herself away in Rob Milton’s studio in London, to piece together the pieces of herself she felt like she left on the road, in rooms across the world. Holly has become renowned for painting a picture of a place so viscerally, being rooted in the walls and also people that makes a city liveable, where you can “get drunk with your mates and just forget about work”. From her family home in “Haunted House” to feeling lost and isolated in her London shared flat with The Walls Are Way To Thin, Paint My Bedroom Black is Holly’s fragmented and dark love letter to friends and lovers, a hideaway from the world when her fans need one.

This album contains no booklet.