UK singer-songwriter May Payne has dropped her emotionally hard-hitting new song, ‘The News’. Built above the soft shimmer of acoustic guitar fingerpicking at first, and later a heavy, almost grungy full-band accompaniment, the track is languid and almost overwhelmingly moving. In earlier moments, her voice finds space between the distant drone of cello to jump to an intimate falsetto, and towards the end, is laced with an emotive graininess that matches the texture of the guitars beneath. “When we broke up after two years, my ex said that they would love me forever, that they would be incapable of dating anyone unless it was me again,” Payne says on the track’s background. “A few weeks after that, I found out that they were already in a relationship with someone else. I remember immediately after seeing it thinking that I could either go into a complete tailspin or try to write about it, and this song came out in one go as soon as I sat down." Keep an eye out for what’s next from Payne in 2026.