‘People Are Just Craving Real Music’: Inside Sombr’s Ascent

It’s mid-November when sombr catches up with Billboard over Zoom from his Los Angeles home, but the fastest-rising 20-year-old singer-songwriter in the United States still has two additional continents left on his travel schedule for 2025. “I’m in London next week for [The Graham Norton Show] and a little underplay,” he explains. “Then, a week after that, I start my Australia run.”

Most Americans his age would only be visiting these places on a family vacation or with a study abroad program; once sombr flies out, he’ll sit with Kate Hudson, Hugh Jackman and Ben Stiller on Norton’s couch, then headline five sold-out shows in Oceania. It’s a fitting end to a whirlwind year when the alt-pop/rock artist born Shane Boose has logged thousands of miles across 60-plus live dates over three continents.

“My favorite [thing] is waking up in a new city and just doing that daily routine of getting up, going to a new coffee shop, going to a new vintage store and then playing the show that night,” he says. “That’s what I love and that’s home for me right now.”

He can call the world his home because few new artists have been so globally embraced this year. He has already scored three top 25 hits on the Billboard Global 200 — the biggest of which, his No. 5-peaking breakout single, “Back to Friends,” also just became his first Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hit — and his debut album, August’s I Barely Know Her, reached the top 10 on the Billboard 200 and official charts everywhere from New Zealand to Switzerland. He’s also No. 1 on Billboard’s 2025 year-end Hot Rock Songwriters chart, a fitting honor for an artist who has helped return rock to the pop mainstream as a songwriter first and foremost.

Sombr is still processing his new normal. “Having people there that are fans of me and signs with my face on it… it just doesn’t compute in your brain in a place like that,” he says of his first visit to Tokyo, his favorite of his honorary hometowns. “Like, I get shocked when I go to another city in America and that happens — let alone a new continent.”

He’ll have to get used to it. Sombr blew up quicker in 2025 than any young pop-rock star since Olivia Rodrigo, a journey that has taken him in one year’s time from an indie-skewing singer-songwriter trying to show that he could play in the majors to a proven hit-maker who counts the Recording Academy and Taylor Swift as fans.

Sombr first signed to Warner as a 17-year-old in early 2023, when he was attending high school at New York’s famed performing arts school LaGuardia. He comes from showbiz stock: Sombr’s father, Andy Boose, played in a number of New York bands in the 2000s, finding some notoriety with his provocative alter ego, René Risqué — and “he ­handed me the guitar,” his son says. As a teenager, sombr started uploading his bedroom compositions and sharing them on TikTok. One of them, the gauzy love song “Caroline,” caught fire and immediately put him on the radars of multiple labels, including Warner.

A&R executive Chris Morris admits that when the teen first gained traction almost three years ago, the Warner team moved so fast to land him that it still didn’t know much about him when he officially joined the roster. But it didn’t take long before Morris realized what a wise investment the label had made. “After we’d done the deal, he came into our office and sat with everyone,” Morris recalls. “He played eight or nine or 10 snippets of songs that were so good… We walked away from that meeting saying, ‘Oh, my God, this is a real artist. He has real depth and something to say.’ ”

From there, it was just a matter of finding the right veteran to pair with the prodigious but raw sombr. “He’d never been in a studio with anyone, so the thought was, ‘You kind of need a guide, more of like a paternal presence in there…’ And the best person I know to do that — who’s also making the best-sounding records, in a classic way — was Tony.”

Tony is Tony Berg, the industry lifer from the days of Bette Midler and The Rocky Horror Picture Show who has remained relevant for the half-century since. (Of Berg’s voluminous résumé, sombr was most impressed by his work with 21st century indie icon Phoebe Bridgers.) After getting to know each other, the singer-songwriter says he and the producer “fell in love with working together”; he brought in more developed songs than Berg expected and Berg in turn showed him how to complete them.

“Earlier on in my career, I was very, like, lazy,” sombr explains. “I would write a good verse and a good chorus and be like, ‘Oh, and I didn’t do a second verse.’ But Tony held me to a certain standard and really showed me what a good song through and through is, and he wouldn’t work on something that wasn’t fully fleshed [out].”

For the next couple of years, the two worked on one-off songs that built sombr’s audience and established his sonic brand. However, their efforts failed to take him to the next level. “I think he was in a low place,” Morris says of sombr at the time. “He felt like some of his records hadn’t really performed in the way that he thought that they would. And he just decided one night, he’s like, ‘I’m going to do exactly what I want. I don’t care what anyone else says. I’m going to do what I’m inspired to do.’ And that was ‘Back to Friends.’ ”

While sombr had made his name on dreamy, washed-out bedroom ballads, “Back to Friends,” released in December 2024, was something new: a pulsing, hot-blooded howl of requited-then-unrequited passion and despair, clearly meant to be performed with a full band. And Berg’s internalized lessons, combined with sombr’s already sharp instincts, made for by far his fullest song to that point.

“Back to Friends” spread slowly but surely, reaching the Hot 100 in April. As the song earned the kind of crossover success most bedroom pop musicians can only dream of, it would’ve been understandable for sombr to drop his other efforts and push his breakout hit. Instead, he released “Undressed.”

Sombr had been teasing snippets of the new song on TikTok, and his growing following was responding enthusiastically to the bouncy midtempo lament. Warner was over the moon about the new song — “I sent that to Aaron [Bay-Schuck], our CEO, and I just wrote, ‘Dude,’ ” Morris recalls — but was hesitant to let another track get in the way of “Friends.” But sombr saw the fan excitement, and he didn’t want to risk it cooling down. “Shane wants to move things fast,” Morris says. “He’s reading his audience. He digests and deciphers music the same way that his fans do, and that’s quick. And it’s like, ‘Let’s get something out.’ ”

So just a week after “Back to Friends” debuted on the Hot 100, “Undressed” joined it, with the two songs fanning each other’s flames rather than extinguishing them. Within a month, both had climbed to the chart’s top half. “They both kind of informed each other and really let the audience know that it’s not about one song ­— this is a really capable, unique artist,” Morris says.

While many musicians — particularly alt-­leaning artists — downplay the role of TikTok in their creative processes, sombr is very open about the role it has had in his success. “Being able to A/B test things in real time is something that you’ve never been able to do [before as a musician] in history, really,” he points out. “Testing it with my audience to decide what out of the 100 things to work on is the hugest blessing. And I think people should do that more.”

With two big hits under his belt, sombr was officially one of 2025’s most exciting breakout stars. The opportunities started to roll in, including late-night performances and his awards show debut at the MTV Video Music Awards in September. By then, he had a third hit: the lusty disco stomper “12 to 12.” Following his medley VMAs performance of “Friends” and “12,” the latter shot into the Hot 100’s top 50 while his first two hits were still percolating in the top 25.

Morris cites the Warner team’s radio strategy as a reason the songs did so well simultaneously. “We were able to kind of divide and conquer,” he says, explaining that “Undressed” was growing at pop radio while “Friends” was still climbing on alternative. “Then, of course, ‘12 to 12’ comes in… [The team was] able to kind of traffic-control a little bit and make sure that everything was kind of working at the same time and not canceling anything else out.”

It also helped that the three songs, while clearly by the same artist, were totally different in tempo, feeling and structure, allowing sombr to credibly play both sides of the pop-rock divide — to the extent that once-mighty chasm even still exists. At the turn of the decade, a guitar-based song like “Back to Friends” or “Undressed” would have had little chance at virality or top 40 radio. Now, sombr isn’t the only artist achieving both of those — with multiple songs to boot — as fellow breakouts Lola Young and The Marías joined him on pop radio with guitar-driven hits. Suddenly, the pop world looked like sombr’s for the taking.

“I think people are just craving real music with real instruments and real bridges and really thoughtful writing,” he says. “And I think we’re headed in the right direction. I’m loving the current state of the charts right now, with Olivia Dean and RAYE and Rosalía and, you know, me! I didn’t set out to make pop songs — I initially set out to make alternative indie songs. [They] became pop songs because they were catchy.”

It’s easier to envision sombr as a pop star than most alt-branded artists, though, because unlike many of them, he’s willing to think big with his visuals, creating distinct looks and finding ways to make each one memorable. (His newfound clout makes that last part easier: He was able to nab Addison Rae to co-star in his “12 to 12” video.) Sombr calls it a “pain in my ass” to still have to figure out visuals after he’s done with all the music and production, but he acknowledges their importance and remains committed to being heavily involved, with the help of a small circle of trusted collaborators.

“I’ve worked with the same photographer for everything; I’ve only worked with, like, one music video director,” he says. “What has gotten me [this] far is me being super hands-on with the creative and not letting anything slide or anything get past me or anything be half-assed.”

The success sombr had experienced by September was fairly astonishing — and also included the release of his debut album, I Barely Know Her (as in “Sombr? I barely…”), which collected the album’s three Hot 100 hits and seven other songs for an impressively consistent first effort, drawing mostly strong reviews and cracking the Billboard 200’s top 10.

But his biggest wins of the year occurred in 2025’s final quarter. In October, he received the biggest co-sign a pop aspirant could ask for when Swift shouted him out as “amazing” in a SiriusXM interview, a moment he refers to as “breaking the simulation.” Swift later also gifted sombr a four-leaf clover necklace — which he wears to his Billboard Zoom chat — though he declines to share the story behind it out of respect for the pop icon. (“But it was, like, the sweetest message and very, very selfless of her to give me this,” he says.)

Then in November, he made his debut both as a Saturday Night Live performer and a Grammy Award nominee, scoring a nod for best new artist. As a New York kid, he says doing SNL was a trip — though he wishes he could’ve gotten in a skit (“Next time, maybe”) — but he calls the Grammy recognition “crazier than everything.” In fact, he purposefully slept through the nominations announcement so that he wouldn’t make himself crazy over receiving one or not. (He’s hoping he gets the call to perform: “I’ll do whatever the f–k they want me to do. Just f–king let me play. Please. I love you, Grammys.”)

And all the while, he has continued to tour — with a live schedule that has barely let up since May and has required on-the-fly venue upgrades to accommodate the increased demand. “I had to, like, constantly check the new tour poster,” says singer-songwriter Devon Gabriella, laughing about learning to roll with the punches as sombr’s tour opener. “We were playing here, and it was, like, going to be 1,200 people… Oh, perfect. Now it’s 6,000!”

As his shows got bigger, sombr also kept scaling up his performance theatrics — “I’m big on really investing into these shows and not being cheap about it,” he says — adding a running talk show theme and inviting his fans up to leave their “toxic ex” a voice message. (The live show sparked some online discourse when a slightly older fan went viral with a TikTok complaining about its “cringeiness” and sombr posted an equally fast-spreading rejoinder; fan responses to the two videos were mixed.)

Still, nothing has managed to slow down sombr’s momentum this year — and as his live show has pushed on, his stage has become a frequent stop for pop star pop-outs, from veteran hit-makers like Sam Smith and Sophie Ellis-Bextor to more contemporary kindred spirits like Laufey and Cigarettes After Sex.

Gabriella says that in 28 shows on the road with sombr, she never missed an opportunity to catch at least some of his headlining set. “I think just seeing him operate on that level and still being so young was very, very motivating,” she raves. “He fully embodies his art. And he’s a rock star. I’d watch his show and I’d be like, ‘You’re a f–king rock star.’ ”

As jam-packed as 2025 has been for sombr, he’s not easing up in 2026. He’s already got a month of European tour dates lined up for late winter, as well as his first Coachella shows in April — and the Grammys await in February. “I might take a week for New Year’s,” he says. “But that’s going to be the only week I have [off] the next year.”

And even as his IRL duties have increased, he remains diligent online. Sombr no longer needs to constantly self-promote — and social media sometimes proves more trouble than it’s worth — but he nonetheless posts on TikTok regularly. “I still do it because it’s what got me here,” he acknowledges. “And I’m not just going to act like it didn’t get me here and act like, ‘Social media is lame, whatever.’ ” (He allows that an occasional break might not be the worst idea, “but it’s really hard when it lives on your phone that you use for everything. I haven’t really had much luck with that…”)

The hardest habit for sombr to break, it turns out, is songwriting: “Even if I take a week [off], I’m still going to be writing,” he says. “I can’t not write, because it’s what I enjoy doing.” He’s already been hard at work on two new songs, which he says are “levels and levels above my previous stuff,” and which Morris is equally excited about: “The new stuff that he’s doing is just so good. He’s just in this moment of [being] really kind of tapped into the source.”

Will it all eventually get to be too much for him? Many of sombr’s alt-rock idols ultimately turned away from pop stardom, burned out on the road or both.

“There might be a point where, like, I get tired of being in the public eye… but I think there will never be a point where I stop creating,” he says. “Things can still hurt you because you’re a human. But I still stand on the fact that anything that I’ve experienced, I can’t complain about. I mean, I can complain about it, but it’s part of the job. It’s what I signed up for, and if I want it to not happen, then I should quit. Which I’m never going to do.”

This story appears in the Dec. 13, 2025, issue of Billboard.