Nobody tells you that growing up isn’t a finish line. It happens in loops. In false starts. In moments where you think you’ve finally figured yourself out, only to realise you’re beginning again.
It’s a feeling that sits at the heart of Nieve Ella’s anticipated debut album, How Long Will It Take?, announced today alongside its new single, ‘Standing On A Pane Of Glass’. Accompanying the single is a striking video by Millie Jamieson-Pond, placing Nieve at the centre of a visceral visual world that blurs the line between inner turmoil and reality.
Across eleven songs, Nieve explores the messy reality of becoming, navigating identity, relationships and self-worth while feeling like everyone else has somehow got there first. Rather than offering easy resolutions, How Long Will It Take? finds hope in simply continuing forward, embracing the mess and choosing progress over perfection.
Throughout the writing process with producer and co-writer Jamie Rendle, alongside fellow band member and co-writer Finn Marlow an image kept returning to Nieve: an endless staircase. It became both the visual language of the album and an emotional core, a metaphor for chasing adulthood, confidence and success while never quite feeling like you’ve arrived. Every milestone simply reveals another flight ahead. Rather than asking listeners to race towards certainty, How Long Will It Take? celebrates the climb itself, finding comfort in the idea that none of us have quite figured it out.
That journey reaches one of its emotional deepest points on new single ‘Standing On A Pane Of Glass’. Composed during a period of intense self-reflection, the song captures the exhausting cycle of anxiety and overwhelm that so many experience but rarely articulate: the quiet calm, the sudden crash, and the guilt of struggling when life appears fine from the outside. Beginning in fuzzy intimacy before erupting into cathartic stabs of guitars, the song mirrors the emotional whiplash at its heart.
“Standing On A Pane Of Glass is my lowest low; it’s the sound of hitting rock bottom,” explains Nieve. “My way of processing my emotions is getting in a room with Jamie and Finn and putting everything down on paper and sounding it out. This song is truly a fearless piece of art I feel very held up by. I hope it can make a difference.”
How Long Will It Take?:
- 101
- Drive
- Standing On A Pane Of Glass
- Romance Is A Desert
- Bite Back
- At Any Cost
- Angie
- Love:Hate
- I’M NOT DEAD
- Back To Basics
- How Long Will It Take?
