Holly Humberstone – Beauty Pageant
The Lincolnshire singer-songwriter continues to sharpen her emotional blade
Holly Humberstone has never been particularly interested in playing it safe. Since emerging from Grantham, Lincolnshire, with her debut EP Falling Asleep at the Wheel in 2020, the BRIT Award-winning artist has built a reputation as one of British indie-pop's most emotionally intelligent voices. Her 2022 debut album Paint My Bedroom Black announced her as a serious artist capable of marrying confessional lyricism with lush, cinematic production, drawing comparisons to Taylor Swift and Lorde without ever feeling derivative. Beauty Pageant, her latest offering, suggests she is entering a new and more self-assured chapter entirely.
Beauty Pageant arrives as a track that feels simultaneously intimate and expansive. Built around Humberstone's signature hushed-then-soaring vocal dynamic, the song deals with themes of performance, external validation, and the quiet exhaustion of presenting a curated version of yourself to the world. It is territory she has touched before, but rarely with this level of precision. The central metaphor of a beauty pageant — all smiles, all surface, all score-keeping — is deployed with a wit that stops the track from drowning in its own sincerity.
Production-wise, the track leans into the atmospheric indie-pop textures that defined Paint My Bedroom Black, but there is a sharpness here, a slightly more unforgiving sonic edge that feels like artistic growth rather than reinvention for its own sake. The instrumental arrangement breathes without becoming sparse, giving Humberstone's vocal performance room to do what it does best: crack at exactly the right moment.
Where she stands
Humberstone occupies an interesting space in contemporary British music. She is critically respected, commercially credible, and possesses a fanbase that borders on devotional — particularly among younger listeners who find her writing unusually honest about anxiety, family, and identity. That loyalty feels earned rather than manufactured, which is increasingly rare.
Beauty Pageant will not convert those who find her brand of emotional pop too studied, and there are moments where the track's self-awareness tips slightly toward the overwrought. But for those already invested in her world, this is another carefully constructed addition to a catalogue that continues to grow in confidence and depth.
Verdict
Humberstone remains one of the most compelling young British artists working today. Beauty Pageant is not a reinvention, but it does not need to be. It is a reminder that when she is operating at full capacity, she writes pop music with a genuinely literary soul. The crown, it seems, suits her fine.
Featured Image By Justin Higuchi - Holly Humberstone @ The Roxy 10/06/2021, CC BY 2.0, Link