MBW’s World’s Greatest Managers series profiles the best artist managers in the global business. This time out, we talk to Lola Young’s manager Nick Shymansky about where the fast-rising UK star can go from here, plus what he learned during his time managing Amy Winehouse and much more. World’s Greatest Managers is supported by Centtrip, a specialist in intelligent treasury, payments and foreign exchange – created with the music industry and its needs in mind.
It was a classic breakthrough moment. A rising British pop star with an incredible voice and a larger-than-life personality, singing a career-defining song, on the biggest stage of all.
Anyone watching Lola Young’s performance of Messy at the 2025 BRIT Awards would have been in no doubt that there is now a new star in the UK’s fading musical firmament. Some may even have been reminded of similarly charismatic turns by another true British original, Amy Winehouse.
And, indeed, Young’s manager, Nick Shymansky, has been here before. The artist manager, label exec and co-founder of Day One Entertainment, has been one of the 21st century’s foremost unearthers of musical talent. He was Winehouse’s manager up until the release of her multi-platinum Back To Black album; he found and broke La Roux in his label days; and has now guided Young to her current status as British music’s hottest property.
Not that Young’s journey has been straightforward. First signed to Island back in 2019, she soundtracked the John Lewis Christmas ad in 2021 and featured on the BRITs Rising Star shortlist in 2022, but never quite broke through until Messy belatedly picked up traction late last year, six months after it was first released (“Never judge a record on its first six months, let alone its first six days,” sighs Shymansky). Suddenly, TikTok celebrities were lipsyncing to it and Young found herself participating in sofa banter with Jimmy Fallon and Graham Norton.
“I’ve spent every day since I’ve known Lola believing that it was going to happen,” Shymansky chuckles as he greets MBW at Day One’s King’s Cross office. “The irony is, when it blew up, I looked at it in disbelief like, ‘What’s the catch, what’s going on, is this real?’
“I’ve gone through this Lola journey questioning what is taste, what is instinct, what is belief, what is intuition?” he adds. “I’ve picked it apart and put it back together and it’s been fascinating, because it’s the greatest feeling in the world when you believe. You can’t fake belief.”
“I’ve literally been weeks away from losing my house, there’s been pressure. But I always felt I’m going to be alright and I can do it.”
That faith in his charges has kept Shymansky going through the occasional dark times in his remarkable career.
“This is probably a defence mechanism but I’m happy I’ve got it – all the time I wasn’t successful, I didn’t actually feel unsuccessful,” he laughs. “You notice it is slightly different when you’re having a moment, but I’ve never once come to work and thought, ‘I’m so cold’. I’ve been skint, I’ve nearly lost the business, I’ve literally been weeks away from losing my house, there’s been pressure. But I always felt I’m going to be alright and I can do it.”
Indeed, Shymansky has now been doing ‘it’ for almost 30 years. Having dropped out of school, he started in the business in 1996 as an intern at Nicki Chapman and Nick Godwyn’s promotions company, Brilliant!, after an attempt to hit up his uncles – aka the Grainge brothers Lucian (now CEO of Universal Music Group) and Nigel (the renowned A&R who passed away in 2017) – for industry advice.
“I would hang off their every word,” says Shymansky. “They’d have these arguments over Friday night dinner or Sunday lunch and I thought it was the greatest thing ever – they had this connection, but rivalry. Both had great taste but Lucian was always about the hits, the excitement of the industry, and Nigel thought everything was shit if he didn’t like it.
“I remember going up to both Lucian and Nigel separately at 16 and going, ‘How do I become an A&R person or a manager?’ and them going, ‘You find talent’. ‘How do you find talent?’ ‘Go fucking figure it out!’ That tough love was actually brilliant – although at the time it felt horrible. I remember thinking, ‘You arseholes, I’m going to show you I can do it…’”
Years later, having followed that advice, Shymansky didn’t have much more luck when he tried to pitch the fledgling Winehouse to Lucian, by then running Universal Music UK.
“I was so excited to play it to him and he went, ‘Don’t put it on’,” Shymansky recalls. ‘He went, ‘If you think it’s incredible, I’m sure it’s incredible. But the worst thing that can happen for you and me is, if I think it’s great and sign this. I need my people to tell me it’s great and then we’ll do a deal’.
“Now I look back and think, ‘That was so cool’. Because what he was saying was, ‘If I give this to you, you’re never going to be taken seriously, she probably won’t get taken seriously and I won’t be taken seriously’. I didn’t get it for years, but he was so right. He knew you have to find your own path and figure it out, for him, for me, for her, for everything.”
And Shymansky has certainly never been afraid to plough his own furrow. After Brilliant!, he moved to 19 Management with Simon Fuller (“A brilliant guy, he’s been amazing to me”) where he found Winehouse. After the split with Amy, he worked in A&R at Polydor and Island, before launching Day One with Nick Huggett just before the pandemic.
Huggett is now stepping back from management, although he remains involved in the Day One Songs publishing company, home to Young collaborators Conor Dickinson and Will Brown.
“Nick’s been a huge part of everything that we’ve done,” says Shymansky. “He’s my best mate, we still talk but I just have a slightly different vision of how I want to do artist management and so, for the foreseeable future, I’m not going to manage artists with him. But hopefully we’ll still be partners on other things.”
Sofia & The Antoinettes
The management company is certainly in good shape, with Young, Kenya Grace (who scored a 2023 No.1 with Strangers) and the hotly tipped likes of Sofia And The Antoinettes, Kid 12 and Bug Eyed making for what Shymansky calls “the greatest roster of young talent in this country”.
Meanwhile, he also has Day One Pictures – a successful TV/film production company that made the Disney+ Camden documentary, and has a number of big projects in the pipeline – and he’s launching a label, after an earlier attempt was scuppered by the pandemic.
“One of two things could happen,” he declares. “I’m either going to be a successful manager who blew it all on trying to be a label, or I’ll have a bit of both.
“I’m an Arsenal supporter,” he adds. “In those years when we were winning, I thought it was always going to be like that. But it’s healthy to realise it’s never always one thing. In your twenties, you give it large like you know it all, when you haven’t got a clue. Now, I actually do know what I’m doing, so hopefully it’s going to be a purple patch that keeps going…”
Why is it happening for Lola Young now after a few near misses?
It was always going to happen, because there’s a depth, a character and a talent that is undeniable.
We made a pact. I’ve been saying the whole time, ‘We get to decide if this happens or doesn’t happen’. When Lola’s lost her momentum or belief, I’ve always said to her, ‘The only way this doesn’t happen is if you stop. But if you keep making music, playing shows and being you and we keep trying stuff, you’re going to be huge’.
I was saying that from experience but also out of total belief, blind belief almost. But there’s also a logic to it – if someone is great and they keep trying, it just increases your chances. Why wouldn’t it?
When you’ve been around for a minute, you really do know when something’s special. I’ve never seen her get up in a room or do a meeting and not leave a massive mark. You go and see accountants and she’ll leave a mark. You can go to a pub where no one knows her or put her on a festival line-up or a gig and she’ll leave a mark.
Eventually all those little marks become the sum of all parts and then, when you do get the bigger stage or the right song comes, the zeitgeist changes or the way you use social media lands a bit more articulately, then it all comes together.
We’ve been in this with Island Records as such a team, they had this belief too. We weren’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer.
I’ll say now, one big hit in, I’m 100% sure there’s a 20/30-year career here – as long as she wants it and looks after herself, she’s going to have the greatest career you can have as an artist.
Is there a lesson for the music industry there about sticking with talent for longer?
It would be a bit too worthy to say that. What I would say is, knowing the difference between someone that’s good or great, is maybe something you don’t see enough of across the board.
And you need backbone and belief. I’ve had some peers that I really respect and that are way more successful than me, that have questioned my belief on this. Like, ‘Why are you doing this?’ And when they said that to me, I suppose I could have thought, ‘You’re doing better than me, maybe I should listen to you’. But I didn’t. I just thought – you don’t get it. I thought, they’re the mug, not me.
I worked, developed and gave blood, sweat and tears to what I think is one of the greatest talents this country has had in Amy [Winehouse] and I lost at the final hurdle.
“there was no way, from the minute I took Lola on, that I wasn’t going to put every part of that anguish and frustration at what happened with Amy into this.”
I lost emotionally and financially so, when you see someone else who you think has got that, you’re going to probably go a lot further. And I suppose there is some sort of second chance at Amy, some sort of drive that’s fired me up to be so tenacious and so passionate about this opportunity.
I’m like that with my other acts too, but there was no way, from the minute I took Lola on, that I wasn’t going to put every part of that anguish and frustration at what happened with Amy into this.
True artist development does always win. You hear A&R people say, ‘I made that record’. I don’t believe A&R people ever make records – you might make pop records, but you don’t make true artist records.
But the skillset isn’t, ‘Oh, I told them to turn the bass up’ or ‘I found that record producer’. The skillset is to really stand for recognising talent and understanding that nuance between true brilliance and something that’s alright or is going to work for a minute.
Far too many A&R people get passionate, they call you, they do the lunch, the dinner, they show some flair – and then their boss says something negative and they wobble.
But what every boss of any company within music really wants is someone going, ‘I’ll live or die by this – if I get this wrong, fire me’.
You’ve got to be prepared to get fired, and you’ve got to be happy that you got given that shot and you stand for something.
Lola’s now flying the flag for a UK music industry that’s been desperate for breakthrough artists. Does that add extra pressure?
No, it’s brilliant. She will hold the flag really well. The thing about Lola is, she can do it. There’s no pressure, you know she can hold it with the Americans.
She’s ready to take on the world and I, as her manager, am ready to do it – nothing’s daunting, it’s just exciting. The only thing I ever get stressed about is making sure that we don’t overdo it. We’ve had a few close shaves recently, where I’ve had to really look at myself in the mirror and go, ‘How did I let [that happen]?’
In the studio with Lola Young
Everyone does an amazing job of making you feel like, if you don’t do their thing, it’s going to really screw things up. Then you do it and think, ‘I don’t think that’s made any difference, other than the artist genuinely looks like they’ve done too much’.
The weight of the success or flying the British music flag is all great, but the one thing we’ve got to be careful of is not being tempted to do too much.
Lola has been upfront about her mental health issues. What did you learn from your experiences with Amy?
It can be incredibly destructive for an artist if you don’t give them protection. The irony is, you have to do so much when no one really cares – do festivals and interviews and go and shake this person’s hand.
But if you look at the great British female artists – Adele, Sade, Amy as just some examples – they can have 10 great days a year and do more than anyone. Sade, what a career, but she’s not grinding herself into the ground. Adele does very specific bursts of energy and it’s always brilliant. Amy unfortunately was lost in the drugs and there was mental health stuff – we didn’t call it that at the time, but it clearly was – and it’s so sad how that affected her. But, if you took the drugs out of it and look at the output, she wasn’t doing much work.
I wasn’t involved post the release of Back To Black but I was on the sidelines, being furious and very upset with what was going on. I wish more was shut down but the point I’m making is, if you’re potent, you can do one or two TVs, one big magazine, a tour, a couple of key festivals, you don’t have to do 200.
Some artists are athletes. They can do backflips on rollerskates or pick up their guitar and tour places you’ve never heard of for three months, do stadiums forever and still be CEO of a restaurant chain or whatever. And good for them!
But there are some artists that can do 10 days in the studio and wipe the floor with everyone, but can’t necessarily do 300 days grafting a year without it damaging them.
What did your time with Amy teach you about the music industry?
I learned everything through Amy. I learned to toughen up a bit. I look back and I was so fucking green. I’ve got a toughness now, no one’s fucking me or my artist, no one’s going to take the piss.
And if something goes wrong, it will be because of me – that’s how I see it. I will take full fucking responsibility. If Lola ends up in a bad place and it isn’t shut down or she’s not looked after, you can be the first person to call me out. And I say that to her.
I look back at myself and think, ‘Fuck me, if that was me now, at that gap between Frank and Back To Black…’ I did try at the time, I tried to have fights and arguments and I lost a lot of them. But I look back now and I think, I’d fucking win ‘em all. I know now, no one’s beating me in a fight about Lola’s well-being, including her.
Because Amy wasn’t a six-week decline or a big night out in some club, it was a fucking five-year car crash, she was slowly dying in front of everyone. We should, as an industry, cringe when we look at that moment. I do and, of course, I don’t see myself as a bad character in that story, but everyone’s got their own truth.
But, on a more positive note, I will also say that there is an understanding now. If we pull a show or we can’t do something, I never feel that people don’t get why. The manager does have the most responsibility, but I’ve never known a label, when you tell them something’s up and you need help, they won’t do it – they’ll support you.
Was it strange to see yourself portrayed in the Amy biopic?
I got sent the script just before it came out and it was the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever read in my life, it was just total bollocks.
Eventually, I watched it on a flight. The guy they cast was better looking than me so I didn’t mind that, but the film was so lazy. Amy was so bright, charismatic and brilliant and the writing made her sound like someone from Love Island – this moody, angry, heartbroken damsel in distress, and that’s not what Amy was.
It made me sound like a Foxton’s estate agent that didn’t understand culture or artists, so they can fuck off for doing that. And how could they fuck with the vocals like that? Of all the people. Just mime to the fucking music, why do you have to have the actor sing some half-arsed vocals, blended with her vocals?
I thought it was a car crash and, for one of the biggest characters and greatest talents the UK ever made, that was a film put together to make money. No one cared about the story, it was shit. And I’m glad it was a stiff. (Laughs) Other than that, I don’t have an opinion!
When you sign an artist, do you look at the data or trust your gut?
I know I sound like a dinosaur but… Data is great retrospectively, who doesn’t want to look at analysis after the moment? What everyone forgets with data is, every great bit of data was shit before it was great.
The worst, most infuriating thing I hear in the music industry is an A&R going, ‘It’s a bit early’. You’re either early or you’re late, and you’ve got to be early in this business. What the fuck like, are you mad? Why would I, as a manager or an artist, work with you if you’re not early? Being early gives you a chance to be great. Being late, we’re talking to your bosses about a cheque, simple as that.
“The thing about managers is, you need to get in before the consensus is formed.”
The thing about managers is, you need to get in before the consensus is formed. It was a nightmare being an A&R person, because I would bring things in with no data that I knew were going to be brilliant. I did it with La Roux and I was like, ‘We could sign this for 30 grand. I’ve got the relationship, she’s incredible, the songs are there’.
And I remember my boss at the time saying, ‘I’d rather sign it for a million with everyone patting you and me on the back. You’re at a company where they want to know that it’s the one everyone else wants’.
But with artist management, if you wait until everyone else wants it, you’re probably not going to get the act, or you’re in the queue. It’s about having a belief system and a benchmark.
Where I’m spoilt is, Amy was the greatest benchmark ever, because literally everything for 10 years after I worked with her was shit. So, when I started to hear things that moved me again I was like, ‘It’s got to be good because, otherwise, I wouldn’t want to do it’.
How big can Lola become?
She could be the biggest in the world, up there with Billie Eilish, Adele, Amy – and I think she will be, I really do.
We’ve got to do that properly and the other artists coming through all have the same potential in their own lane of music.
I understand it’s a contradiction, because I think my entire roster’s all going to be huge, but the law of averages would say maybe that isn’t going to be the case. But, then again, if you looked at the law of averages, you wouldn’t get out of bed!
