NEWS
Two years ago next month, Hayla stood on the side of the stage at the Los Angeles Coliseum, observing the 46,000 people assembled before her. There in the shadows, she kept repeating to herself that everything was going to be alright. Then, it was her cue.
She maneuvered through the dark, onto the stage and into the spotlight. Suddenly, the voice booming out of the stadium’s speakers was her own.
The British artist was closing the set with “Escape,” the 2022 hit by deadmau5 and Kaskade’s collaborative project Kx5 which she co-wrote and contributed vocals on, forging the track’s emotional core. The album that the song came from was nominated for a 2024 Grammy for best dance/electronic album, and the Coliseum show was the year’s biggest ticketed global headliner dance event. The spotlight Hayla stepped into that night wasn’t just a literal one.
“It changed the trajectory of my career completely,” she says of the song while speaking to Billboard over Zoom from her place in London, cozied up in a black sweater and black horn rimmed glasses. “It’s been an interesting few years.”
Born Hayley Williams, the artist has since sang on charting hits by producers including Sub Focus, Kygo and John Summit. The track with Summit, “Where You Are” landed on both Hot Dance/Electronic Songs and Barack Obama’s list of favorite music from 2023. “I thought it was a joke,” she says. “Blew my mind.”
Hayla co-wrote this song with the same group of collaborators with whom she wrote “Escape,” with the idea to get it to Summit after he did the “Escape” remix. “We thought that it might be nice to see if he would like something in a similar sound,” she says. He did, with the pair forging a working relationship that would contribute to the “domino effect” of Hayla collaborations with marquee producers over the last two years.
Now, after establishing herself as one of the defining voices of the current dance music moment, Hayla is releasing her own solo project — her debut album, Dusk. Out through Believe Music, the 10-track collection has already generated millions of streams, with singles like “Fall Again,” “Treading Water” and “Embers,” and finds Hayla fusing her love of ambient and electronica with the more progressive mainstream sounds that have helped make her a star.
She started writing the tracks that would become Dusk in 2021, in that moment leaning into the sounds of influences like Portishead, Bonobo and Massive Attack. During one writing session, she and a few collaborators came up with the topline of “Escape”, an exercise that was done “just for the love of writing,” she says. The song eventually found its way to deadmau5 and Kaskade, who decided to keep the voice on the demo, Hayla’s, on the final product. And as her singular voice became increasingly interwoven into chart hits, she found the writing on her own work shifted more towards those sounds.
“I started writing in this sort of more EDM/house way for some of the album,” she says, “I think it’s got a really nice ebb and flow of what I’ve been influenced by and what I’ve been listening to along the way.
Dusk is named for Hayla’s favorite time of day, with this vibe enhanced her X-Men meets haute couture aesthetic, which she calls “dopamine dressing” because it makes her feel good. The album amalgamates this twilight mood into a cohesive, moody, sometimes melancholic, often achingly pretty 34 minutes of music. songs were produced by a group of collaborators, although the album-closing title track was produced solely by Hayla. It’s the only album song she doesn’t actually sing on, although her signature is all over it in the lush, emotive vibe it conjures.
“I’ve always produced at a level where I can put an idea across,” she says, “but I’ve never had the confidence to be able to put it out there and show off my own skill set. ‘Dusk’ was definitely a feel-the-fear-and-do-it-anyway kind of track, because I had a huge amount of anxiety in putting this on the album initially, because it’s quite exposing.”
Many components of Dusk are examples of finding such self-assurance. While Hayla’s rich timbre is enviable, it took her a long time to get over her “incredible” shyness about singing in front of people.
That shifted “when I started noticing that singing was a healer,” she says. “I realized that I felt amazing when I sang, because it was a form of therapy for me. I realized that it may resonate with other people in the same way, and if I can make people feel the way I feel when I sing, I’ve sort of done my job.”
This same type of vulnerability exists in the album’s subject matter. “Treading Water” is about a breakup that “rocked my foundations of who I was as a person.” While “quite a heartbreaking one to write,” the song’s effect is soothing, like the hand of a knowing friend on your shoulder.
She says success for the album for her is simply the fact that it exists, with particular pride coming from having it in a tangible form on vinyl. She’ll perform her first-ever headlining show at the Roxy in Los Angeles on December 4, and while she’s coy about 2025 performances, she doesn’t deny that some big and stuff is on the calendar, with a few other collaborations also incoming. She’s also well into the writing of her second album.
Now, after once being too terrified to sing publicly and having to hype herself up in order to step onstage at the Coliseum, two years, many hits and one album later, she says singing live “is definitely where I feel most myself.”
NEWS
Stormzy has shared that he is returning with renewed strength after a period of being “crippled by sadness” in 2025, while also pushing back against accusations that he was “selling out” following his collaboration with McDonald’s.
The collaboration was initially revealed early last year, when the UK rapper partnered with the fast food brand to launch the first Famous Order meal across the UK and Ireland. Fans were able to order his go to meal, and a selection of merchandise was released through the McDonald’s app at the same time.
The partnership sparked criticism from some quarters due to McDonald’s perceived support of Israel, with detractors arguing that the deal appeared to contradict Stormzy’s stated values. The artist, whose real name is Michael Ebenezer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr., has previously spoken publicly in support of Palestine and performed at a benefit concert in January 2024 to help raise funds for humanitarian aid.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement had earlier backed an international boycott of McDonald’s after franchises in Israel distributed thousands of free meals to Israeli forces in the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 attack.
Around the time the collaboration was announced, fans also noticed that the rapper had deleted a social media post from October 2023 in which he voiced his support for Palestine.
Stormzy later addressed what he described as a “twisted narrative” suggesting the post was removed because of the McDonald’s partnership. He clarified that the deletion was part of a wider clean up of his social media account, during which he removed numerous older posts.
“In that post I spoke about #FreePalestine, oppression and injustice and my stance on this has not changed,” he wrote at the time. “The brands I work with can’t tell me what to do and don’t tell me what to do otherwise I wouldn’t work with them.”
Now, Stormzy has shared another reflective message to usher in 2026, explaining that the previous year had been a deeply transformative chapter in his life, marked by his efforts to push through feeling “crippled by sadness”.
Opening the lengthy message, Stormzy described facing “a few unexpected twists and turns” at the beginning of 2025, experiences that he said strengthened his resilience and “put the final nail in the coffin of my desire to be understood”.
Reflecting on the reaction to the McDonald’s deal, he noted that “a lot of you [questioned] both my character and my integrity”, adding that a younger version of himself would have felt “compelled to quickly explain himself, and let you know that there is no world in which he would ever trade his humanity for cash”.
He explained that he no longer feels that pressure, saying he “couldn’t give a single fuck to explain that fact” because he does not “need to explain anything to anybody”.
Opening up further about the challenges he faced throughout the year, the ‘Hide & Seek’ rapper said he was determined not to allow “2025 have me on the backfoot, so I came out the first quarter with one hand down my trousers and my middle finger up”.
“Then towards the end of the summer I found myself crippled by sadness and I was struggling again,” he continued, adding that his faith and close circle of friends helped him find the strength to keep going.
“I was tested physically, spiritually, professionally and creatively. I had no choice but to reassess every detail of my life,” the post later shared. “So yes it’s been painful and at times I hated it but as the year ends and I reflect I can say that I am so so so so grateful for it.”
Looking ahead, he said that he has “gained a lot of clarity around who I am as a man and who I am as an artist, and in 2026 I want to honour that clarity with execution”.
He finished by revealing that he plans to step back from social media and confirmed that work is still ongoing on his fourth studio album.
Around the period of the McDonald’s controversy, the company’s CEO Chris Kempczinski stated that the brand had not taken sides in the conflict, describing the boycotts as “disheartening and ill founded” and attributing them to “misinformation”.
Elsewhere in Stormzy news, the London artist was awarded an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University last summer in recognition of the Stormzy Scholarship to Cambridge.
The scholarship programme began in 2018 and committed to funding two Black British students each year. With additional backing from HSBC UK, the scheme expanded to support 10 students annually, resulting in 56 students having their tuition fees and living costs fully covered.
