Totally Stockholm 1
something about that it made me feel like I final
ly was allowed to exist, today I’m more wondering for whom I exist. At the same time, I cried yesterday because I was releasing this mixtape. Why did you cry? I was questioning why I’m confusing myself and people around me. Shouldn’t I just focus on writing songs in Swedish and release that ‘big, real’ album?Now it’s obviously a record in English, but I want people to have a more relaxed attitude towards it, and not think that it has to be so tremendously conceptual. Do you have the freedom to do what you want? My record label probably don’t understand anything of what I’m doing. And that doesn’t exactly make the process more fun. But after five years and three albums, I really needed a break from my own head, and to just have some fun. I had also completely emptied myself, lyric-wise. Have you grown tired of your hits? I’m not tired of my songs when I have a band with me and we do a live show. Had I just been travelling around with backing tracks and playing Super 8 and Vita Bergen, I would not have been able to listen to another second of it. Here’s where humility comes into it too, I become moved when we play live and people have come to see you. You’re reflected in the audience all the time. It’s not that terrible to play something that people like - on the contrary it can give you a sense of security to have something with you that you know works. Is this the direction your artistry will continue going? Absolutely. Perhaps I will even release something under another moniker. At the same time, I’m extremely eager to make my next Swedish album. Wasn’t that exactly the whole idea with this? Yeah. I succeeded. Early in your career you were called Sweden’s only rock star. Have you ever felt pressure to live up to that? 20 I think you call everyone that. But no, I have never felt forced to live up to that. On the other hand it has been fairly disturbing for the people I have been around. My lifestyle during these years fitted pretty well with that [description]. I think I, surprisingly well, have gotten away with no repercussions considering how I have lived. It’s a miracle I haven’t done jail time. It’s equally insane that I have friends and am socially accepted. If people only knew the things I’ve done. Have you killed anyone? Not that I know of. In a previous interview, five years ago, she spoke about “how hard it is being a rock star today. And that all the artists are ridiculous, they collect their kids at the nursery, no one takes drugs or parties for real”. We naturally come to talk about the fact that she recently revealed herself to be pregnant. How do you feel about that old quote today? When I said that, I meant there is no mystique anymore. I still want it to be like a dream, that artists sit on a pedestal and are a bit unapproachable. Not walking around the neighbourhood with a kid in a buggy. And I don’t think taking drugs is particularly fun either, I was just disappointed that no one was interesting. The biggest thing I feel about being pregnant is that it’s such a responsibility. Love and responsibility. That’s probably what I have been missing, when nothing else mattered and everything just was up to me. I think I’ll be happy with something else getting all the focus. To be pregnant also takes some of the edge off this pandemic. I would probably have been more neurotic if I was single with a cancelled tour in a oneroom apartment on Södermalm while people were dying around me. Sure, it affects me now too, not least economically. But I’m having a child in September, so everything else feels a bit ‘whatever’. Photo: Matilda Rahm