Lola Young just delivered a performance that cannot be ignored, helping Apple Music launch its brand-new Music Room series.
The British pop singer is the first artist to appear on the new performance series, which aims to give musicians an opportunity to reimagine their own tracks in a smaller, more private setting. The first look at her performance comes exclusively via Billboard on Monday (May 18), with a video of Young singing “Can We Ignore It :(” for a small crowd of fans gathered in Apple Music’s studios in Los Angeles.
After an extended instrumental intro that differs from the original track, Young raises her mic and lets her powerful voice rip in the video, the stripped-back setting giving a new resonance to her lyrics. “I play with fire, kinda like the way I feel when it burns/ If I’m being honest, I’ll take anything as long as it hurts,” she belts, emotion saturating her voice. “I need a doctor, got a sickness, and it’s just getting worse/ I said, ‘I think I’m dying,’ he said, ‘Darling, you’ve been dying since birth.’”
As the song picks up in intensity, the Grammy winner circles the small, carpeted room, taking turns singing straight to members of the crowd bopping along in their seats. “I’m not going to start crying my makeup off, but it was just a moment when you realize, like, art is really all we have,” she says at the end, holding back tears.
“F— it, that’s what I’m saying,” she adds. “That moment when I’m hearing the music, and it’s like, ‘F—, that’s all I’ve ever had.’”
Young also reworked several other songs from her 2025 album, I’m Only F–king Myself — including “d£aler,” “Penny Out of Nothing” and “One Thing” — for the flagship program, with her full performance premiering on Apple Music and YouTube at 2 p.m. ET on Tuesday (May 19). Fans will then be able to listen to recordings from the event compiled on an EP titled Music Room: Lola Young EP, available exclusively on Apple Music.
“Apple Music has always aimed to bring artists and their fans closer,” Rachel Newman, co-head of Apple Music, said in a statement about the new series. “There is no better example of that idea come to life than Music Room. It’s everything that’s pure and even magical about live music, unfiltered and unadorned. No spectacle or stage — just the songs and the stories behind them, shared like never before, the audience just inches away.”
More installments of Music Room with other guest artists are set to roll out in the coming months.
Watch Young’s performance of “CAN WE IGNORE IT :(” for Apple’s new Music Room series above.
