Chloe Stroll – Bloom In The Break – 12/09/2025

---

When an email lands in my inbox, and the first words my eyes fall on are ‘Aston Martin CEO’, ‘Langan’s’ and ‘Olympian’, how can I not be intrigued? This was my introduction to Chloe Stroll, a Canadian singer-songwriter with a billionaire father and a debut album out on Friday. Six days later, I was in a ruby-walled members’ lounge, sipping an Old Fashioned at a bar frequented by Sir Elton John and Elizabeth Taylor, listening to Stroll perform her singles from Bloom In The Break as part of an exclusive album launch.

Stroll’s songs, like ‘I Stood My Ground’, are urgent doses of empowerment, informed by the singer’s core message that ‘it’s really important to know that no matter what you feel you’ve gone through, you’re not alone and you’re worthy and you’re beautiful and you should never feel ashamed of anything in your life.’ 

Stripped back to just her voice and a keyboard accompaniment, understated single ‘You’re OK’ allowed Stroll’s true talents to come to the fore: unflinching honesty delivered by a sincere and enrapturing vocal. It was obvious that, with every word packed with an almost palpable vulnerability, Stroll can capture an audience’s attention with ease.

That’s not to say her songwriting process is without its own difficulties. ‘You’re OK’ revolves around reassurance during grief, originating from feelings about her grandmother’s passing:

‘I wrote it about my grandmother […] She would always sit in this big yellow chair in her bedroom and wait for us to come and visit her, so I painted the picture that I remembered, of her sitting on the chair. She had these huge windows, and you could see the sky, and the sun would beam in all the time. She was an amazing cook. There were always cakes at her house. I wanted to capture the sadness, but also the acceptance that sometimes, what is best for that person is no longer on earth: “At least one of us is OK.”’

This vital imagery is prominent throughout Stroll’s debut, whether it be the water that laps the nearby beach as she writes her songs, or the picture of a ‘flower blooming through broken glass and still being beautiful’ which impressed on her mind a special kind of wonder during the album’s creation. ‘Water Over Sand’ and ‘Home’ are great examples of the interplay between these devices, the frustration of the former’s water washing over sand contrasting the vitality and familiarity of the latter’s castles in the sand, elevating the album’s themes to something more universal, and ultimately more relatable. 

Stroll’s sights have moved well beyond her first gig at an open mic night in Brixton, confessing that ‘playing the Bell Centre in Montreal is a huge dream.’ She added, ‘It would be incredible. I always hope for the biggest and the best – look, I think if you shoot for the moon, the worst that happens is you land among the stars.’

It’s a mindset that can’t be faulted in any occupation, but Stroll’s optimism imbues a particular vigour into her music, even if the song’s impetus is something more ferocious or ponderous. When the album drops on Friday, I’m sure that Stroll will win over plenty of new fans.