Rising star Lola Young has been chosen to provide the soundtrack to this year’s John Lewis Christmas advert.
The 20-year-old singer-songwriter, from south London, joins previous music superstars including Ellie Goulding, Lily Allen and Tom Odell in contributing to the retailer’s annual festive campaign.
Her cover of Together In Electric Dreams, originally released by Philip Oakey and Giorgio Moroder in 1984, accompanies Unexpected Guest – a two-minute tale of a young alien experiencing their first Christmas on Earth, complete with mince pies and novelty jumpers.
Young started writing songs aged 11 and by 13 had competed in and won a national open mic competition, and cites Joni Mitchell and Prince as early influences.
READ MORE: John Lewis 2021 Christmas advert revealed in full as the 'Unexpected Guest'
She enrolled at the arts-focused Brit School in Croydon, south London, which counts Adele, Amy Winehouse, Raye and Loyle Carner among its alumni.
After gigging around London, she secured a record deal with Island Records, owned by Universal Music Group and the home to Ariana Grande, Jessie J and Nicki Minaj.
Her catalogue so far includes the single Woman, her debut seven-track release titled Intro and the Renaissance EP.
Young has received support from radio DJs and taste-makers such as Annie Mac, Clara Amfo, Benji B, Gilles Peterson, Jo Wiley, MistaJam and DJ Target and featured in a number of glossy magazines and news publications.
Keep an eye on the skies, an #UnexpectedGuest is landing at 8am 👀 pic.twitter.com/67KPYszqJy
— John Lewis & Partners (@JohnLewisRetail) November 3, 2021
Since mid-2020 she has been in the studio writing with superproducer Paul Epworth, who has worked with artists include Adele, Florence + the Machine and Rihanna, ahead of the release of a new collection of tracks scheduled for this year.
She has a run of live dates scheduled for November and December, taking her from Dublin, London, Liverpool and Manchester to Amsterdam and Berlin.
Last year Celeste became the first musician chosen to write and record an original song for the John Lewis Christmas advert.
In a step away from tradition, the retail giant commissioned the singer to produce a new track, titled A Little Love.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here