Winter 2021 - Lola Young from Beckenham was in the spotlight.

Her slow cover of Phil Oakey and Giorgio Moroder's pop anthem Together in Electric Dreams soundtracked the John Lewis Christmas advert.

The BRIT School grad became a BRIT Awards "rising star" nominee in February 2022 - a title which she shares with Foals, Dua Lipa, Lewis Capaldi and Mabel.

Summer 2022, and Lola Young is on the festival circuit - at Glastonbury, the RADAR new music festival in Zürich and All Points East.

"It looks like a meteoric rise this year," she admits.

"It's amazing, but in reality, it has been a slow build to get this far.

"I've been a support act for quite a while. We've been doing a lot of tours to get onto the main stages but it is a slow burn.

"But I love doing music and I love seeing the growth in my career.

"At last, that growth in me as a performer feels quite tangible."

Lola began writing music and poetry aged 11. She's now 21 and is managed by Nick Huggett - who signed Adele to XL Recordings in 2006 - and Nick Shymansky - who managed Amy Winehouse.

"Nick [Huggett] saw me at The Bedford in Balham," she said.

"That was really inspiring because I remember Ed Sheeran played there in his early career.

"There are other places I really like to perform, too.

"Camden is still really bubbly. It's definitely one of my favourite places to be as an artist, I'd say."

Lola Young said her music is a reflection of her and her surroundings.

She said: "I write about my experiences, and write about the subject matter I really care about.

"Being honest about myself isn't always easy on a big platform, but I think I say what needs to be said."

Her music explores the human condition - honesty and anxiety.

"Am I a sinner if I don't regret?," Lola frets in her 2021 piano ballad "Pill or a Lullaby - 4AM till sunrise".

"And if God exists, does she stress about all the promises that the world never kept?"

In her hit single Fake, which has totted up more than 2.1 million streams on Spotify, she sings: "I'm better off without it... Leave your fake s*** at home."

Both songs have landed on TikTok in videos which have garnered several hundred thousand plays each.

One video from her All Points East set in Victoria Park amassed 1.1 million views in a single day.

@lolayounggg Fully thought my trousers were gonna fall down mid set … #fyp ♬ original sound - lolayounggg

"Social media has been a difficult one to navigate," Lola said.

"It's always so new - and TikTok is basically a new streaming platform, as important as Spotify to discover new music.

"I'm not in the generation which has never known anything different - they are still new platforms to me.

"I'm getting the hang of it, and TikTok is a lot of hard work. Thankfully I've got a social team who are amazing.

"But it's definitely not my biggest influence.

"I'd say I listen to a lot of 'older' music - 'old' RnB such as Lauryn Hill and I love D'Angelo, and then Anderson Paak and Frank Ocean more recently."

What's next for Lola Young - the 2022 BRIT Awards "rising star" nominee?

"I've got a project coming out next year and a new single coming out in the autumn," she said.

"I'm not sticking to a big plan or anything like that, but I'm really proud of what we've done this year and what I've got lined up for the rest of this year."