Holly Humberstone Returns with Gothic Romance “Die Happy”

Words By Paula Zawicka

Holly Humberstone has returned with Die Happy, a gothic love song that feels like stepping into a dark fairytale, where passion flickers between enchantment and danger. Five years on from her breakthrough EP Falling Asleep at the Wheel, Humberstone has built a world that is unmistakably her own: cinematic, visceral, and unflinchingly intimate. Through her vivid storytelling, she’s carried listeners from the haunted corridors of her family home in Grantham to stages around the world. Now, with Die Happy, she dives even deeper into that universe, exploring the intoxicating pull of a love so consuming it threatens to undo you.

“I wrote Die Happy thinking about a fairytale at night,” Holly says. “Somewhere between driving fast with the windows down and wandering through a crumbling old house.” Drawing on dark literary influences like The Bloody Chamber and Dracula, the track explores the dangerous thrill of surrendering to love – passion as both enchantment and undoing.

It’s a fitting evolution for an artist who has never shied away from emotional honesty. Where Paint My Bedroom Black was full of chaos and disconnection – the messy life on tour, the ache of missing home – Die Happy feels more grounded, but no less intense. Turning 25 has clearly given her a new sense of perspective, even as she remains drawn to extremes. “In order to feel extreme happiness, you have to know extreme sadness,” she says, a balance that runs through the song.

Since first appearing in 2020 with the ghostly ache of Deep End, Holly has carved out her own lane, touring with Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, winning over festival crowds from Glastonbury to Lollapalooza, and selling out headline shows at Brixton Academy and the Eventim Apollo. Through it all, she has remained one of the UK’s most emotionally literate songwriters, able to capture private feelings with incredible precision.

Atmospheric and cinematic, Die Happy feels like the next act of her story, where darkness and desire blur together, and love is both the poison and the cure. Later this year, Humberstone will take the song around the world, joining Sam Fender on his Australian tour before a run of headline dates of her own.

Photo by Phoebe Fox