In the wake of her “personal struggles” (to use a common euphemistic phrase for having a bit of breakdown, oftentimes related to drug use), Lola Young has slowly reemerged after her much-publicized collapse onstage at the All Things Go Music Festival in New York back in September of 2025. Two days before that performance, her manager, Nick Shymansky (who, oh so poetically, was also Amy Winehouse’s manager at the beginning of her career), released a statement after cancelling one of her shows that said, “Lola is very open about her mental health and there are very occasionally days when myself and my team have to take protective measures to keep her safe.”
Alas, those protective measures weren’t enough to prevent what happened at All Things Go. And after the “incident,” Young herself found the strength to know her limits, commenting, “I’m going away for a while. It pains me to say I have to cancel everything for the foreseeable future.” She also added, “I really hope you’ll give me a second chance once I’ve had some time to work on myself and come back stronger.” Delivering on that promise, Young has returned triumphant with “From Down Here.” Her first single since the release of I’m Only F**king Myself, her third album after the success of This Wasn’t Meant for You Anyway, featuring her breakout hit, “Messy.”
The pressure to live up to that sophomore album was more than met, with Young unleashing a string of chart-worthy singles, including “One Thing,” “Not Like That Anymore,” “d£aler” and “SPIDERS.” Following the album’s release, Young’s live performances tended to be a bit dicey. For example, during Coachella, she ran off the stage to vomit (in part, because of the heat). Then there was the cancellation of her The Tonight Show appearance in July of ‘25 in the wake of her relapsing. Just two examples of her fraught “live show” pattern in 2025. And these performances were all before I’m Only F**king Myself came out, so it’s no wonder things felt even more fraught for Young once the record was actually released. The stress and the pressure mounting to the point where she turned, again, to alcohol and (presumably) other drugs that led to her coup de grâce of an onstage “malfunction.”
Recognizing that the All Things Go moment was a major wake-up call, Young took the necessary time to work on herself that Amy Winehouse never would have (certainly not willingly)—yet another indication of the oft-compared singers’ generational divide. The result was a refreshed return at the beginning of 2026, whereupon she performed “Messy” during the Best New Artist medley at the Grammys, stripping back the song with a piano version of it that rendered it into more of slow jam. Alas, while Young might not have won the award for Best New Artist, she did finagle the award for Best Pop Solo Performance (presented to her by none other than Charli XCX), freaking out onstage with excitement and joy—so much so that she accidentally let a “fucking” slip out, much to the censors’ dismay.
And that was the moment that ultimately led to the creation of “From Down Here,” for as Young described, “The day after I won a Grammy, I felt high, not the usual kind of high that I was used to feeling, a new kind of high, a pure, organic kind. The real thing. I hadn’t felt it in so long. It was something I didn’t know I had lost, but fuck, I had missed it so much. I got in the studio with James Blake, Jameela Jamil [who happens to be Blake’s longtime girlfriend] and Dom[inic] Maker (I love you James) and it poured out of me, it happens like that sometimes, and that day, it really fucking did.”
Blake’s sonic influence is, indeed, all over the sound of this single, starting from the echo-y, distorted repetition of Young’s voice saying, “From down here” (said a total of six times). An effect designed to make it sound as if she really is calling from some deep-underground recess (like a well…or, say, Pennywise’s storm sewer). The mid-tempo beat then drops, playing for about twenty seconds before the full richness of Young’s voice paints the picture, “Put on my birthday dress, it’s not for a whole damn year/I wanna look the part, don’t wanna disappear.” And so it is that right from the outset, Young cuts to the core of her conflicted feelings around having “disappeared” only to reemerge for one of the most visible nights in “the industry.” Not only that, but to achieve the high honor of getting a Grammy so early on in her career (as was the case for Winehouse).
So it is that Young also mentioned that, in writing “From Down Here,” inspired as it was by that night, “I wanted to frame how it feels to miss a high, a high from anything, and suddenly be stuck in between a feeling, not knowing quite how to move or dance or sit in that feeling, but still knowing that it is safer there somehow, it is safer being on the ground. ‘From Down Here’ doesn’t symbolize being [in] a definitive place of sadness, it simply shows that joy and pain can exist within the same space, at the same time.” The joy of being back amongst her peers and being so embraced by them, paired with the pain of still not quite being sure of how “safe” she feels in such a high-pressure industry.
Thus, Young sings, “I miss the high from down here/I used to fly around here/Not quite alive, I’m somewhere in between” (something Britney Spears sort of sang about with “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman”). In another moment of unvarnished vulnerability, Young acknowledges the additional pressure of needing (or at least wanting) to keep appealing to her fans and musical peers, and how that’s also part of the reason she chose to “go away” for a while—in order to be the best version of herself for them. Even so, she still has to wonder, “Can I make them laugh? Can I make them stay?”
For, although Young’s Lily Allen-esque tendency to offer self-deprecating humor as a way to mask the seriousness of her emotions is an easier way to make “rage” and “sadness” more palatable, it can also become a difficult burden to keep enlisting as one’s “shtick.” Especially if, for just once, they’d like to be serious without having to put a “funny” spin on it. This form of pressure, too, can feel almost like drowning. A metaphor that Young didn’t waste in the accompanying video (or is it a visualizer?) for “From Down Here,” which also gets the parenthetical (From the Water) in this instance. Because, yes, Young opts to show herself, fully clothed, almost entirely submerged in water except for her face and the top of her head. With hair that’s all-black as opposed to her erstwhile Billie Eilish-inspired roots (that were blonde instead of “slime green”).
And, talking of Eilish, there are many of her hallmarks to be found in this video (along with Young kind of channeling Eleven [Millie Bobby Brown] from Stranger Things when she goes into a sensory deprivation tank). Starting with the theoretical simplicity of the visual concept that’s actually quite difficult to execute. Or the fact that Eilish is also in a drowning-type scenario on the cover of her Hit Me Hard and Soft album. In other words, it makes sense that Young would have opened for Eilish on two dates of the Hit Me Hard and Soft Tour (specifically, the June 10th and 11th Paris dates), for the pair are artistically linked.
Even though one imagines that Eilish wouldn’t agree with Young’s sentiment, “Sitting on the sofa doesn’t feel right.” An allusion to her simultaneous depressive and recovery state after taking a break from the spotlight. Wanting to get up and be “visible,” but knowing that said “visibility” was also the very thing that led to her relapse.
Speaking on missing the literal high of drugs at another point in the song, Young admits, “I miss the high/And I know it’s not right to long for parts of that life/But can I just reminisce tonight?” In short, Young is aware that romanticizing her drug-addled past is no longer a viable way to move forward, but still can’t help but occasionally want to look back on those periods with “rose-colored glasses.” Perhaps viewing being passed out next to a toilet as falling under the category of “the best of times, the worst of times.”
It is in the spirit of that feeling of “in between-ness” that Young captioned her announcement of the song with, “I hope anyone who hears this song feels understood and seen in whatever way that may be. I am rewriting the next chapter of my story with this song, because what a boring book the old one would’ve been anyway.” A nod to the lyrics, “Acting my age, turning the page/But what a boring book it would’ve been anyway.” The one that ends with the tragic “drinking and drugging oneself to death” conclusion, as Winehouse was ultimately subjected to. But, in her way, Young is rewriting that cliché ending, assuring fans and casual listeners alike that, “I am back, I am well and I love you all.” Whether “from down here” or from the heights of success up above.
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