Lola Young isn’t one for pleasantries. “I just wanna fuck guys who don’t like me they don’t mind/Saying goodbye,” the rasp-voiced South Londoner declares on “FK EVERYONE,” the woozy, bratty first song on her clamorous third album. Lines like that — where bravado and insecurity are locked in an endless battle of witticisms and pointed observations — abound on I’m Only Fking Myself, an unflinching look at disorder that uses the fuzzed-out riffs and goopy choruses of golden-age alt-rock to cushion, but not blunt, its points.
In a way, the chaos is appropriate: Young’s latest release comes in the wake of “Messy,” the muscular, downcast cut from her 2024 album This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway, becoming a breakout hit online, thanks to its chorus (“’Cause I’m too messy, and then I’m too fucking clean”) sounding tailor-made for accompanying videos of life’s more awkward moments. Stardom might cause some to clam up about their life; while Young did clean up, checking into rehab as a way of dealing with a cocaine addiction as “Messy” was blowing up last winter, I’m Only F**king Myself shows that she won’t stop letting it all hang out anytime soon.
The combination of Young’s ripped-from-the-text-bubbles lyrics — two of this album’s songs have emoticons appended to their titles — and sour-bubblegum alt-pop is a fairly potent one, amping up the album’s more unguarded moments. “I guess life sucks dick, but especially if you sniff it all away,” Young singsongs on “Not Like That Anymore,” the sinewy quasi-title track where she asserts herself to be free of past vices; “I’m fucking myself, but not like that anymore,” she shout-sings with a wink after declaring that she’s over a former situationship. “You loved me for your ego; I loved you for you,” she spits at a man who’s been treating her “like shit on your shoes” on the glimmering “Walk All Over You,” her multi-tracked voice wrapping its poison-pen sentiments with a bright red bow.
That’s not to say that the more emotional moments don’t hit: On the wrenching ballad “Spiders,” Young fights against the current in a doomed relationship that’s clearly wrecking her; when she bellows “Get in your car/ Don’t cause a scene/ Make me feel like I’m not incomplete for once,” she does it with West End-level power — she, like Adele and RAYE., is a BRIT School alum — that sounds oddly sublime alongside the track’s woolly rock backing. “who f**king cares?,” the album’s last proper song, is also its most white-knuckle; Young wrote and recorded the voice-and-guitar cut as a voice memo, and its lyrics capture the going-in-circles thoughts that often come right before someone completely gives in to anomie.
I’m Only F**king Myself is carried along by Young’s stark candor, which is balanced by her appealing personality all the way to the album’s end, when she signs off with a cheery “anyway, that’s the end of the album, goodbye!” after being sent over the moon by a pal’s freestyle. It unspools like a long afternoon at a pub with a friend whose detail-rich stories are as plentiful as the goodwill she engenders just by being herself — and whose savvy command of the jukebox gives her perfect counterpoints to her unvarnished tales.
