“I’m making decisions from a place that isn’t fear”: Why Lydia Night has gone solo

“This song is as close to the bone as you can get,” says Lydia Night, delivering a heavy message but with a satisfied grin on her face. “We are in the bone.”

Speaking from her house in LA, the former The Regrettes star is telling Kerrang! all about Pity Party – her incredible debut solo single, and one that marks a radical new direction. Yes, Lydia has gone pop, but not in the way you might think.

Pity Party is a bop, catchy AF and all such superlatives, but it is also freighted with some of the most confessional, dark lyrics you are likely to hear this year. It is, quite frankly, astoundingly brave as the lyrics tackle her experiences of – trigger warning – eating disorders, depression, self-harm and the spectre of parental bereavement.

“It’s such a vulnerable, trauma dump of a song,” Lydia explains. “It’s the first song I’ve ever put out just myself and under my name and it definitely carries weight. It’s really surreal just picturing people watching it and listening to it.”

With this coming on the back of her recent video diary series Pop Or Flop detailing – in both serious and not so-serious fashion – her musical evolution, clearly, we have a lot to get into…

In order to arrive at you going solo, first we have to get through the end of The Regrettes in 2023. Why did it make sense to say goodbye to the band and start your own thing?
“It’s okay for great things to come to an end. You don’t have to run it dry for it to be the right time. Sometimes it’s better to walk away when things are in a great place, and be able to appreciate them for what they are. That’s how I felt with the band. I love and care about all of them, and love and care about all of our fans that we made, and all of the experiences that we had. They truly were what dreams are made of. It seems a little ludicrous to walk away from that, but in my gut, I just knew with the music that I was writing, the place I was going in my personal life, everything was just not aligning with that band lifestyle and infrastructure. It’s just so different.”

So, no regrets when it comes to The Regrettes?
“There are not. Every day I’m like, ‘No matter what happens with this music, if a quarter of the people that listened to The Regrettes listen to my music, that’s okay, because I’m doing it and it’s authentic.’ If I had continued in The Regrettes, it wouldn’t have been authentic, and it would have been out of fear. And I’m really trying to make decisions from a place that isn’t fear.”

For how long have you been waiting to scratch this pop itch?
“I’ve always known that one day this would happen. I grew up really obsessed with a lot of punk and rock, but I also really loved Britney Spears, Gwen Stefani and Madonna – those artists always stood out to me. I have so many clear memories of me with a hair brush, performing an entire show in my bedroom: it was me playing Love. Angel. Music. Baby. – I was pretending to be Gwen and visualising the crowd and everything (laughs). That was the dream one day, and I didn’t think that it would come this soon or that I would want it this quickly. I mean, The Regrettes were together for eight years, so it was a while, but I’m still young!”

Onto your debut single Pity Party, then… what does that title say about where Lydia Night’s head is at right now in 2025?
“It represents that I have to laugh at myself and my patterns and give myself grace and recognise that nothing’s that deep. I’ve been trying to zoom out on situations that used to feel so earth-shattering and intense and catch myself and say, ‘Oh my God, this is some shit from my five-year-old self that I went through and now I’m operating like that in my adult life.’ That’s so silly.”

Is there anything from your childhood that springs to mind as one of those patterns of behaviour?
“I mean, my anxiety. It’s so funny, if you really think about it: I’m scared to have a normal, surface level conversation at an event or whatever, and it’s like, ‘What am I afraid is gonna happen?’ So what if there’s silence, oh my God, what’s so scary? It’s silly. Where it becomes really funny is the juxtaposition of that with who I am [as a singer]. It’s bizarre. I’m a very overall confident person, however that doesn’t mean I have high self-esteem. They correlate, but for me, they can feel different. I come across as a strong-minded individual, but it’s interesting how often I look to others for validation and for advice or for guidance on what to do, instead of trusting my own voice. And yeah, the song resembles that looking around and being like, ‘Wait, I’m sad, can you feel sad for me so that I can actually feel it?’ It’s so fucking stupid!’”

One really interesting line at the start is when you say, ‘I love the way I really hate myself / I profit off a lack of mental health.’ As an artist, have you made peace with that transaction of turning personal pain into a way of making a living?
“Every day is a struggle on that front. Truly. I say that, but it’s so funny because it’s such a ridiculous thing to be an artist and to be going through something like depression and the first place my brain goes is, ‘Oh, well, maybe I’ll write a good song or I’ll make money off of this!’ That is so funny and weird. It’s such a niche experience. It can be amazing and such a gift to be like, ‘Oh, I get to turn this shit into gold.’ But at what cost? Because then it’s like, ‘Am I actually healing from anything?’”

On the one hand, it’s a pop anthem, on the other it’s incredibly dark lyrically. There’s an astounding run of lines where you talk about everything from confronting eating disorders, the spectre of parental bereavement, depression and self-harm. What made you want to share all of that, and specifically in one go?
“When I say something out loud, it forces me to process it in a real way, vs. just holding on to certain experiences. Putting it in a song, for me, has always been a way for me to really reflect. I know that people are going to hear these lyrics and relate to it. So many people are suicidal at certain points, or go through eating disorders or self-harm, or illness in their families, all the things that I touch on. If one person hears that and realises that going through those hardships doesn’t have to [define you], then I want to share it. The song does feel cathartic, it really embraces vulnerability – and feeling weak is actually a sign of being strong and intelligent. That's important for people. It’s definitely important for me.”

What was the key to getting through all of that, to the point where you are here with us today saying you’re happy and in a good place?
“I’m really lucky that I have the parents that I have. I’m extremely close with both of them, and they’ve allowed me to feel like I can reach out when I need help. That’s huge. What is really hard for a lot of people is knowing that it’s okay to ask for help. So I’m really lucky, and the friendships that I have – the people in my life who will always be there at the drop of a hat – if I need them, they’re there, and I’m there for them. That’s huge, too. And I’ve done a lot of work to weed out the friendships that aren’t as genuine and that I don’t have that same trust in.

“It’s taken me until probably this year to really get to that place. All of these different things have come in waves, and I think that’s normal; a lot of people don’t recognise that. It’s not a linear recovery or journey. My dad’s been sick for seven years now, and my eating disorder stuff has been on and off since I was 16. I always think of it like Whack-A-Mole, where you get one, like an eating disorder or whatever, and then it’ll pop up in a different way if you don’t actually get to the root of it. That’s what my experience has looked like. I used to get very frustrated at myself for things coming back up, or for it not being linear, because I’m a perfectionist, and that feels really imperfect in my brain. I’m like, ‘Well, I did all these steps, why is this happening again?’ It feels ridiculous to some degree, but I think that it’s really important to let go of this concept and also the comparison of what other people’s journeys look like.”

Another interesting line is when you ask the listener, ‘Am I a name you’ll remember?’ Is that you talking to someone friend-to-friend, or is it actually in dialogue with your music career, like you’re asking if we will remember you, given how fickle the industry can be…
“It came from that [latter] place. I am so grateful for what I’ve been able to accomplish and succeed at, but along with that, it also can feel like it’s never enough, and it can really easily feel like people’s attention is fleeting, and that it’s a bit of an impossible game at points. Sometimes I’m like, ‘I don’t want to be playing this game, why am I even doing this?’ However, those are just glimpses and moments in a grand scheme of something that I love so much, and it doesn’t matter regardless. I love to create and make music but, of course, there are going to be moments where something doesn’t go your way, or someone makes a comment, or it can be scary. It’s really scary to put yourself out there and to work really hard and to wonder if it actually ever even mattered.”

In one of your Pop Or Flop videos you said your whole approach has been “unmysterious” lately. Between Pity Party’s lyrics, its video and this diary series, you’re really showing us more of yourself than ever before. Is that just a happy outcome of where you are in terms of your life, or is there any way in which you felt maybe the world doesn’t know you as a person as well as it should?
“It honestly feels like the only option for me, because that is how I operate now in my life on a day-to-day level. I just don’t wear a mask anymore. I don’t act differently around certain groups of people. I really have found a way to embrace my personality and be who I am, and I think this album embodies that. It felt like everything surrounding it should follow the same through line to be consistent. It’s just the most authentic I can be. And that’s all I want from other artists. I’m not the fucking cool, chill, nonchalant girl. I’m not. I’m intense, I feel things deeply and that’s just who I am – you either love that or you hate it. And I think because of that… I just don’t really give a shit anymore (laughs).”

Let’s talk about the album. Given you called your series Pop Or Flop, is that wink-wink sarcasm, or does it actually feel like they are the stakes for a project like this?
“Both. It’s a combo. It’s making fun of the industry a little bit while also falling into it because it really feels like the time that we’re in with TikTok and the way that attention spans are, it’s like I’m playing this weird little video game where every level is a new song coming out, and it’s like, ‘Okay, pop or flop – what’s happening?’”

It really does feel like there are parallel stories – you are going pop and you’re taking it very seriously, but you’re also going pop and playing with all the tropes of what that normally means…
“I love that you said that, because my whole idea behind this series and this whole era of what I’m doing is wanting people to not necessarily know what’s a joke and what isn’t, and what’s serious and what’s real, and that’s what life is like, really, to me. I’m often like, ‘Is this real or am I being fucked with right now?’ I don’t know, so I’m trying to embrace that.”

Finally, what can you tell us about where you go after this single, and what we can expect from the album?
“Pity Party is a good intro into the world, because it feels there’s a scale – one extreme side is super-pop, catchy, simple, and then the other side is a little darker and more funky, sonically and lyrically. This song is right in the middle of both. But there’s certainly a spectrum on the album – there’s a song for everyone in terms of pulling from a lot of genres. I’m really excited to share those different sides. The next single that’s going to come out is just a fun pop song. It’s not like Pity Party in terms of the darkness – I mean, they’re all dark in my own humorous way – but the next song that’s coming is just a bop. There’s nothing that over-thought with it.”

Pity Party is out now via Warner Records.

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