'Like a slap in the face': Alt-pop star Julia Wolf on going viral

Julia Wolf is in disarray.

The indie-pop singer is in the middle of a breakout moment, and she's chosen that exact time to move house.

As she calls the BBC from her brand new New York apartment, boxes are strewn everywhere and clothes have gone missing. But her precious teddy (a polar bear called Wrinkles) has been carefully positioned in his rightful spot on her pillow.

Then the wi-fi, installed "literally 20 minutes ago", packs up. There's a tense wait as she attempts to rejoin using mobile data.

"Teething troubles," she shrugs.

It's extremely tempting to write a segue here about Wolf's career having had its own teething troubles – but, in truth, it's been more of a slow burn on a long fuse.

The 31-year-old started playing piano at the age of seven, and released her first single in 2019, building a loyal fanbase note by note.

Then suddenly, after six years of graft, Wolf's grungy obsession anthem In My Room started trending on TikTok.

There, it was often paired with fan edits of the Twilight movies (a touchstone for the singer) whose blue-grey visuals pair perfectly with her haunting vocals.

Millions of streams later, Drake sent a DM, punctuated with exploding-head emojis, inviting Wolf to record the opening verse of his recent single, Dog House.

This month, the singer had to upgrade her world tour to bigger venues to meet audience demand.

Fans connect, often viscerally, to Wolf's lyrics, which sit at the messy intersection of love, obsession, self-doubt and empowerment. She pairs them with a dissonant rock-pop sound that's equal parts Alanis Morissette and Evanescence - a stylistic choice that initially worked against her.

"Pretty much all of the major labels rejected me," laughs Wolf, who releases her music independently.

"I feel like this whole process has been the longest marathon. But overnight success can be detrimental, so I'm glad it's taken time."

Wolf was born Julia Capello to Italian parents in New York, and grew up in Glen Head - a small town on the Long Island shoreline, where she'd walk around barefoot, feeling isolated from the rest of the world.

"I was an apparition for most of my youth," she sings on Now, the autobiographical opening track of her 2023 album Good Thing We Stayed.

"I was starving for friendships," Wolf recalls. "I was praying for it every night. I just wanted to be seen by anybody, but in the same breath, was so self-conscious that I was always hiding in the shadows, wearing puffer coats in summer."

Like many lonely kids, she retreated into her imagination, where Stephenie Meyer's vampire novels became her lifeline.

"I would read Twilight alone at lunch," she says. "I just latched onto the main character, Bella, who was also completely self-conscious.

"She feels very unworthy of people's love and attention, but then she gets it. I just wanted that to happen to me."

Wolf stencilled a quote from the book on the lime green walls of her bedroom ("Look after my heart, I've left it with you"), next to the bay windows where she did her homework.

And it was a homework assignment, completed in that very room, that ultimately led to her music career.

As a piano student, Wolf was a fixture of the school talent show. But in her senior year, her music teacher threatened to exclude her unless she wrote an original song.

"I was mortified," she says, "but eventually the desire to play outweighed the embarrassment. I wrote my first song, and that opened the floodgates."

The composition was dedicated to a schoolfriend, expressing Wolf's fear they'd grow apart after graduating ("which, spoiler alert, we did"). The reaction was beyond what she expected.

"People cried," she says. "A few girls came up to me afterwards and they were like, 'Are you gonna put this out? Is it gonna be on SoundCloud? Julia, what's your next song?'

"I wish maybe I'd done these things sooner, to develop those friendships, but it was definitely a confidence boost."

The experience prompted her to step away from the classical world. She enrolled at New York's Purchase Conservatory of Music to study songwriting, and started playing open mic nights around the city.

A recording of those performances found its way to Jackson Foote, of electro-pop duo Loote, who messaged Wolf offering to work with her.

Their first collaboration, Captions, was released in 2019. Although it's only 65 seconds long, it's a perfect showcase for Wolf's breathy vocals and sharp storytelling. The hook, "you can use my lyrics as your captions", is a delectably scathing riposte to a musician who sniped her style.

Follow-up songs like Ghost and Pillow became actual Instagram captions, and Wolf gained enough support to sell out her first tour in February 2022.

"To me, that felt like, 'OK, we have a fan base here'.

"Since then, I've always measured my success on who's willing to come out."

In 2025, however, she surprised fans by dropping a third album, Pressure, which swerved away from smooth pop grooves to a grittier rock sound.

The shift was the culmination of several things. She'd grown weary of pandering to pop tropes of the "strong, independent female"; and wanted to present a "more honest and vulnerable" version of herself.

That necessitated a shift "back to a more organic sound [with] real instruments".

But, in the background, Wolf was spiralling in self-doubt amid her first full-blown relationship.

"I'd never experienced love like that before," she says. "The honeymoon phase was fantastic – but then you start to think, 'Oh, wow, this person is too good for me, and I don't want to lose them'.

"I was feeling distraught all the time, full of insecurities. And so that is what I needed to write songs about."

She dissects those feelings of inadequacy with pitch-black humour on In My Room.

"I stalk myself on the internet just to see what you'll find... I slit my own throat just to see if you'd mourn me."

"It goes a bit dark, I can't lie," she says. "But I will say that my boyfriend is my angel sent from heaven. He talks me down when I feel like I don't measure up."

Still, that unfiltered honesty took her career to a new level. Thanks to those TikTok Twilight edits (which, of course, she encouraged), Wolf went from a modest online following to an audience of millions.

"Going viral was just such a slap in the face. Like, 'Oh my gosh, this can't be ignored any more. People are actually listening'."

Her career has been a whirlwind ever since. As well as the Drake co-sign, Wolf's just been added to Radio 1's playlist for the first time, thanks to With Me, a sinuous dance track with John Summit.

Burgeoning success has changed her relationship with social media.

"As the audience gets bigger, it invites in people that don't like what I do and leave comments that I genuinely can't read," she says. "So I've had to take Instagram and TikTok off my home screen."

Freed from doomscrolling, she's busily cooking up new music.

Before our interview, she plays me a new song called Deep End – a saga of unrequited love which, amongst other things, reveals she learned how to kiss from a YouTube video.

"That was me in high school," she cringes.

"Curiosity got the better of me and I watched a tutorial… Not that I needed it at all at the time."

After we speak, however, Wolf's schedule becomes so manic that Deep End's release is pushed back, so she can capitalise on Pressure's growing success.

Looks like that new apartment's going to be in disarray a little longer.