The ability to feel comfortable anywhere is something the 23-year-old learned young. Born in Málaga, Mabel had lived in London, Stockholm, and London again by the time she was 18, spending most of her teenage years in Sweden. Since releasing her debut single in 2015, Mabel has chosen to lean into this itinerant lifestyle. “I wake up in hotels now, and I have no idea where I am,” she says. Still, anything beats being bored in Sweden. The country venerated by lifestyle bloggers for its philosophy of lagom—balance and moderation in all things—was too small, slow, and obsessed with acoustic guitars for a girl who dressed like Aaliyah (the result, she says, of having two older sisters obsessed with ’90s R&B). “I felt trapped,” Mabel recalls. “I didn’t look right. I didn’t sound right.” She became depressed and left school in her teens to study at home. “I wonder sometimes if it was extreme exhaustion from being really anxious,” she says. Mabel now views the depression as situational but the anxiety as lifelong—a reality she confronts on High Expectation’s “OK (Anxiety Anthem).” “I’m not going to wake up one day and it’s just going to be gone forever, and that’s fine,” she tells me.

Tonight she’s dedicating a rare night off to cooking vegan lasagna with friends at her flat in Notting Hill—a decorous neighborhood that she chose explicitly because “I’m not going to run into people who I’d bump into in the club.” When she has a break she reads—currently Isabel Allende’s Maya’s Notebook—and plays the piano that sits pride of place in her otherwise sparsely furnished apartment. (She’s converted the master bedroom into a walk-in wardrobe to house her sneaker collection.)

Mabel knows it would be a bad idea to get too comfortable right now. With the exception of “OK,” High Expectations is an album almost exclusively about her exes. Mabel loves love—and tells me so repeatedly. She even kind of loves heartbreak. The problem is that it’s been ages since there was time for any of it. She says she’s so busy that she’s been single for a year and a half (then sheepishly corrects the record: It’s been more like two). While she eventually hopes to find a relationship that emulates her parents’ 30-plus-year partnership, she’s mature enough to know that what she needs right now is—ironically—a bit more drama in her life. “There’s only so many songs that I can write about being really happy,” she tells me bluntly, rapping her beige acrylics on the table with sweet, scheming intent. “Who’s album two?” she muses. “Where do I look for you?”