Holly Humberstone only has two songs officially released under her name, which makes it all the more impressive that she’s making waves all over the world. Earlier this year, those two tunes — “Deep End” and “Falling Asleep At The Wheel” — launched the U.K. singer-songwriter onto the radar of pop and indie fans alike.
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Like many new artists these days, Humberstone is all about embracing an intimate and profound level of emotional honesty in her music. “Falling Asleep At The Wheel” is a fantastic example of this. The song features Humberstone trying to make sense of the loss of passion, the degradation of emotional momentum. The end result is a vulnerable, but empowering, number that feels as personal as it does universal.
“I wrote this song with my friend Rob Milton sometime last summer,” Humberstone told American Songwriter. “We had set aside a week to write tunes at my home, which is in the middle of nowhere, is very old and characterful and is falling down a little. I was going through a really exciting time of my life and was really inspired. I was being quite experimental with my songwriting and was trying to find some kind of identity within music. The song was a bit of a revelation for me and I think it was the first time I really knew who I was within the music I was creating. I think something about writing in the house I grew up in made it come really naturally and immediately feel very authentic. It was so much fun to write and I think you can kind of hear the weird and wonky sounds of the house within the track.”
Musically, “Falling Asleep At The Wheel” is somewhere on the pop spectrum in between the sound of Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker and the sound of Lorde and Billie Eilish. The subdued, yet driving, backbeat creates a nifty little groove for Humberstone’s expressive vocals to glide over. About two-thirds of the way through the tune a synth melody enters stage-right drenched in wet reverb, illuminating the song like a headlight illuminates a dark, moonlit road. In all, the emotional impact of the song is perfectly matched by the intentionality of the tasteful arrangement.
“I just hope this tune brings people a little bit of joy in this weird time,” Humberstone said. “The song itself is making light out of a dark situation so I feel like that’s particularly relevant right now!”
Listen to Holly Humberstone’s “Falling Asleep At The Wheel” below:
