lilo share "Cycling" as final single from their forthcoming debut album

“I wrote cycling, as with a number of the songs on this album, when I was working at a primary school during COVID. The journey referenced was my journey down the old Kent road on my bike. At the best of times, I felt like I was really helping, like the students were learning, and I was helping them move through this very confusing time. Then, there would come bouts of uncertainty, of sorrow, of grief. These would sometimes come when I felt that a group of students hadn’t grasped what I’d tried to teach them, sometimes it would come when a pupil told me about something that had happened at home, and sometimes it just came from the questions they had about the world that we live in.

I felt so consistently helpless, like I was supposed to know exactly what to do with no training, on £70 a day, with a class who had main class teachers leaving after just a couple of weeks. They all asked if they left because of them. The song comes from this uncertainty, this unclaimed blame. But the good in this song, the feeling of being made to help out, the feeling of knowing you’re beautiful even covered in sweat, the arduous yet ever changing route cycling down the old Kent road, all comes from the inspiration of those children who, perhaps didn’t know another world, but were doing the very best with the one they were irresponsibly given.”