Pop’s new anti-hero in ascendance Baby Queen releases her new single “You Shaped Hole” alongside a Radio 1 Hottest Record premiere with Annie Mac. The single is the fifth track to be taken from Baby Queen’s eagerly awaited mixtape The Yearbook, set for release September 3 via Island Records/slowplay.

Baby Queen aka Bella Latham says: “I was super heartbroken when I wrote this song, and my ex was dating this beautiful supermodel after dumping me in Clissold Park in North East London. I went through a bit of a wild phase, as one does, and was doing everything I could possibly do to feel better. At the time I had this image in my mind of a hole inside my body that was shaped exactly like my ex, and it was as if I was trying to fill that hole in any way I could, but the things I was filling it with never reached the corners or made me feel any better, they just cluttered my life.”

“American Dream” is the latest in a series of songs marking the new musical era of Baby Queen, which started at the top end of 2021 with “Raw Thoughts” and follows the release of her debut Medicine EP in November. This latest chapter culminates with the forthcoming release of the 10-track mixtape TheYearbook. The experiences that informed the songs on The Yearbook unfolded when Bella moved to London at 18, joined rock bands and fell in love and headfirst into the city’s party scene. They are bittersweet and brilliant. “It’s important to be able to capture a full range of emotion,” she says of the songs on The Yearbook, which include previous releases “These Drugs” and “Dover Beach.” She continues, “I want the listener to feel like they’re on the top of a London bus, travelling through a city they’ve moved to for the very first time, seeing the world through new eyes.”

The songs are born from personal experiences she has chosen to keep under wraps for years. Taking us as far back as 2018, they’re her most diaristic work to date, chronicling her coming-of-age. “It’s an American coming-of-age film,” she says of the final project’s concept. “It feels confusing, happy, free, lonely… all of these things you go through when you are growing up.”