Lydia May’s "PURGER": Letting Go of Who You Were to Survive

Lydia May is an untamed voice in the alt-pop rock scene and is widely seen as a force of both earnestness and fun. Born in Australia and shaped by theatre classes alongside a steady diet of rock records, she seems almost built for the stage. Now a graduate of the BRIT School, she brings that training into everything she does, commanding rooms with the defiant energy of classic rock while still holding onto a raw emotional honesty in her songwriting.

Her songs often sit in that uneasy space between haunting and comforting. She writes with a clarity that makes difficult feelings easier to sit with, offering connection in a time that often feels isolating and perfection-driven. On stage, that same emotional openness becomes something more chaotic and theatrical. She does not hide from the uncomfortable parts of her writing. Instead, she expands them, letting them fill the room until they feel shared rather than private.

Her single PURGER marks a key moment in her work so far. The idea behind it comes from a split identity. There is “the purger”, the version of herself that lets shame take over and cannot hold onto anything good. Then there is PURGER, the force that removes that version, even when it hurts. Lydia May has lived in both states. The song sits in the space between them, where she grieves who she was but makes the decision to keep going.

Musically, PURGER is bold, layered and constantly shifting. Big drums and anthemic guitars build a sense of pressure and inevitability. There is a confidence in the production that brings to mind the intensity of Wolf Alice alongside the emotional scale of Florence and the Machine. At the end, everything falls away into voice alone, a bedroom-recorded harmony choir that Lydia wrote and produced herself. It leaves a sense of exposure, as if everything has been stripped back to its most honest form.

Her vocal delivery reflects her training at the BRIT School. There is an intimate, confessional quality in her voice that recalls Billie Eilish in her most vulnerable moments, but it is balanced by a power that feels direct and unfiltered. She sounds like someone who has stopped trying to hide anything.

The track opens with the line “most days I don't want to be here”, setting the tone for its subject matter. PURGER draws from Lydia May’s lived experience of an eating disorder, insomnia, and the long and non-linear process of letting go of a version of herself that was damaging. In her own words, during that period it was not just food she struggled to keep down, but also any sense of pleasure or self-kindness. The song becomes a way of laying that version of herself to rest.

In a cultural moment shaped by isolation and the pressure to appear perfect, Lydia May’s work stands out for its honesty. With PURGER, she highlights the parts of ourselves that are often hidden or rejected, and suggests there is value in facing them directly. It is not about arriving somewhere fixed, but about the act of choosing to move forward at all.