Growing up in Stockholm, Mabel wrote songs to calm her anxiety. What happens when your coping mechanism makes you anxious? The irony is even worse, she jokes. By 2019, “I was so busy I was hardly making music.” From the four days Mabel had in the studio that year, she felt painfully conscious that you’re “only as good as the last record”. Once a confident collaborator, now she questioned every note. “Too high? Too low? Too pop? Too Afrobeats, it’s not going to play on this radio station.” She sighs. “Exhausting.”
By December 2019, Mabel’s career was sparkling – Don’t Call Me Up was the year’s ninth biggest song in the UK – but her self-esteem had tanked. She went to the Maldives with an aunt and an “overflowing cup of negative thoughts about myself”. There she learned she was nominated for three Brits, up with Lewis Capaldi, Dave and Stormzy for the most nods. She wept. “I don’t think I’m crying because I’m happy,” she recalls. She flew home, determined to get herself together in the month before her headlining tour began, and she opened the Brits ceremony. By January, she was shut in her bedroom with the blinds down, holding her new dog, Imani.
---
Her therapist said Mabel needed serious time off – but she was determined not to cancel anything. “I’m just gonna get through the Brits,” she recalls now, crumbling. “I’m sorry, I talk about it all the time and it never makes me cry.” Her parents came on tour, where she slept all day. “Those shows actually kept me alive. Just seeing that you haven’t disappointed people.”
She made it through her Brits performance, too, though she skipped the afterparties and went to bed clutching her award: tangible validation. Then she read an article saying
FKA twigs should have won. Mabel loves twigs. “But I remember thinking, this is because I’m just that shitty little pop star and she does things with integrity.” She read more comments: about her performance, her dress, her body. Yet another one told her to kill herself. She was mortified and asked if she could return the award. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted and now I’ve got it, I feel like I don’t deserve it.”
---
Whereas Mabel was “winging it” with High Expectations, she says About Last Night feels more intentional: “Doing all that work on myself put me in the driver’s seat in a different way.” But the reception has fallen short of her expectations. “I haven’t had the commercial success that I’ve had before, so far. That’s been quite difficult,” she admits.
Where she used to “moonwalk into the Top 10”, handbaggy lead single Let Them Know peaked at No 19, housey kiss-off Good Luck at 45. She’s noticed that when she Instagrams unmanicured photos – her dogs, her horse, her natural hair – her followers drop. “This can’t be the reality, that people bought into me because I wasn’t there,” she stresses. “I’m so excited to put this album out, but now that I’m really showing who I am, people don’t seem to think that’s good enough. So what do I need to do? Check out again?”
For a while she couldn’t listen to the new album, worried she had made a mistake. Then she realised she loved it, and that had to be enough. Plus, she says, the pop market has been “crazy” since the pandemic. “I’ve been quite sad about it. Everything feels so disposable. TikTok has given the power to kids, which I love – some kid will post something and then it’s in the Top 10. But I worry about that kid and the pressure of having to deliver again. I’m in my 20s and I still find that hard.”