Newcastle’s songwriting powerhouse Chloe Gill is making 2026 her own, following up her January hit ‘Down The Drain’ with the monumental new single, ‘Pushing Punishment’. Accompanied by a cinematic music video, the track serves as a bold precursor to her highly anticipated debut album, 'I Have A Habit of Dreaming', arriving 12 March.
Produced alongside long-term collaborator Gareth Hudson at Hazy Cosmic Jive Studios, the single is a masterclass in dynamic tension. While the track’s foundations were laid with speed, its impact is slow-burning and profound. Drawing from the "emotional intelligence" of heavyweights like Bon Iver, Sharon Van Etten, and Gang Of Youths, Gill has crafted a sound that feels both intimately small and stadium-sized.
For Gill, the song is a landmark of personal evolution: “This song feels like me becoming me. Growing into my adult self, growing into my personality, being kind to myself and others, listening to my own heart and my own needs, accepting my neurodivergence and my personality and learning about how to pave my own life for how I want to live it and achieve my dreams. Learning to “fill my cup” first or to “put my own oxygen mask on first”. I can’t show up for anyone else until I’ve shown up for me first.”
The single isn't just a song; it’s a sonic map of Gill’s internal world. “This song is how I can best share what it feels like to live inside my head. I wanted to capture the tension and release that plays in my body and my mind. It can get really loud but it can also be kind and quiet. The drums in the end and the string cadence, to me, recreate a period in my life where I just kept going around in circles with myself but then finally stopped because it wasn’t serving me. I didn’t want to live like that anymore. The choruses feel to me, really uplifting and strong, how I wanted to feel and knew I could feel.”
The accompanying video mirrors this growth, opting for a deliberate, simplified pace. As Gill puts it: “I wanted the music video to replicate the pace of the track but in a simplified way because there is so much going on in the track, it’s a slow build through the whole song.”
With a run of tour dates spanning April to June, 2026 is shaping up to be the year Chloe Gill stops dreaming and starts leading. For more details and tour dates, head to Chloe's website, or catch her on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
