You might be used to seeing Lucia Fairfull as one of the faces of Alexander McQueen, but now, prepare to add her to your playlist as she releases her debut album as Lucia & The Best Boys. Filled with dark themes and complex emotions, it’s woven into a mosaic of colourful hooks and earworm melodies. Burning Castles is named after a colossal tumbledown castle behind Lucia’s childhood home, drawing inspiration from her Scottish roots and paying tribute to the transition from girlhood to womanhood.

Here, the model and musician takes us on a deep dive into her music, providing a track-by-track, emotion-soaked review of her debut album.

Listen to the album here…

“Butterflies”
I was in a hotel room when I first started writing Butterflies. I had brought my Casio and recording mic in my suitcase and felt like I needed to do something to distract myself from feeling homesick as I had been away for quite a long time. I think ‘Butterflies’ is one of the most heartwarming songs I’ve ever written and writing about love in a positive light isn’t something I’d done much of but the majority of the lyrics spilled out in that one sitting… I never knew at that point it would end up becoming the opening track to my album, but as soon as we had finished recording it in the studio we knew that that’s where it belonged and I think we really channelled the scenery we were surrounded by into the sound of the song itself.

“When You Dress Up”
I’ve known since the first time we played ‘When You Dress Up’ in the studio that it was the first song I wanted people to hear for this turning point in my music. It went on quite a journey and there were a fair few versions of it before it got to where it is. This song resonates deeply with my values as a woman with its unapologetic energy. For me, this is an evolution from themes I have sung about in the past which underline the weight of the male gaze, and learning not to suppress our own identity for the sake of another person’s version of who we should be!

“So Sweet I Could Die”
This song was actually the first song that Chris (bassist), Ally (drummer) and myself wrote together. We hadn’t seen each other in quite a while due to the pandemic and I think we all had a lot of pent up energy which was channelled into writing this song. We started off with just the driving bass synth blasting in our studio which really got us inspired and set the tone for the lyrics. I remember visualising a giant storm when we wrote it, which also became the theme of the music video.

“Angels Cry Too”
I wrote this one with my friend Oscar. I really loved writing Angels Cry Too because I feel like it was one of the first songs I wrote which allowed me to experiment with my voice and melodies. We wrote it about wanting someone to love you for who you are, even the slightly more vulnerable or darker sides which I think a lot of people feel scared to show initially in case it scares the other person away…

“Care”
Care started out as a song I was writing for a friend who was going through a really toxic relationship and I soon realised I was also actually writing it for myself…I feel like there was a lot of naivety when I was younger and I didn’t realise how toxic one of my relationships actually was until I started reflecting on it. I started thinking about this particular time a lot whilst writing care and really started to embody these emotions all over again and although that was quite a strange thing to experience I think writing it gave me a lot of closure. I remember sitting in the passenger seat on a long drive up to the Isle Of Skye, which is when I wrote the verse lyrics.

“Love Yourself”
It started out as an instrumental demo which my friend Calum sent me, I loved it so much I asked him if I could write something over it. The lyrics are about that constant battle of not feeling good enough and the comparison you hold against yourself and everyone else (which kind of just leads you down a rabbit hole where you feel even more lost) but it’s such a wonderful feeling when you have those moments of realisation that you are the best you when you are just being yourself. This is definitely one of my favourite songs off the album because I think it will always be a little reminder for me, and hopefully for lots of other people too.

“Burning Castles”
I wrote “Burning Castles” about the onslaught of emotions that your body goes through when you receive bad news; that sudden and overwhelming weight that bears down on you when the news hits you. It was one of the first songs written for the album and it became one of the touchstones going forward in the studio. I love making something sound soft and graceful when the meaning and the experience that I’m writing about is pretty much the opposite. That sort of juxtaposition of the music and the lyrics is something that I’m prone to doing, but I think that it always manages to capture the way that I really feel in a way that makes sense to me. There was some kind of intertwining with how I visually saw the song in my mind whilst writing in, and with a castle ground, I lived near when I was much younger. This song just made everything fall into place and summed up what the album meant to me.

“Hurt Somebody You Love”
Hurt Somebody kind of feels like “Care” part 2… I was watching a friend go through a horrible relationship and I really felt for her because I had also experienced similar things in the past. She was in quite deep and was struggling to find her way out of it for a while. I wanted to write this song as a note to remind her that not only did she deserve better, but in a time where she felt so isolated and alone I was able to capture exactly how she felt because I had been there too, but writing this I was able to articulate how I felt and what I wanted to say so much better than I had in the past.

“Haunt You Back”
Haydn and I had built a fort in our living room because we still sometimes do stuff like that, so we wrote ‘Haunt You Back’ together under the fort. It disappeared somewhere in a file on my computer for ages and then one day I found myself singing the melody and dug the demo back up. I realised that it was the missing puzzle piece on the album and it quickly became another favourite for me.

“Waiting On You Now”
I remember going through a slight head block around the time I wrote ‘Waiting on You Now’, so when I sat down at my home piano the aim was to not judge myself harshly on whatever came out and to just write down the first things that came into my mind. I feel like I always write these big momentous songs then all of a sudden a ballad will come from nowhere…

“Favourite Thing To Lose”
The original demo of this started out quite fragile and bedroom pop like, when we went to record it with Ash it took on a couple of different forms before it became this big nostalgic 90’s-esq dance song. I never saw it going in that direction but rave synths started to become a kind of saving grace in the studio and added a new side to everything…Originally there was a big debate on whether “Favourite Things to Lose” or “Care” should be the closing track of the album, I feel like FTTL just leaves you feeling the exact way I would want to feel after listening to the whole thing through for the first time.