Totally Stockholm 1
Recently four Swedish artists, Miriam Bryant, Vic
tor Leksell, Myra Granberg and Daniela Rathana, covered a song each from Veronica Maggio’s classic album Satan i gatan as a homage to Maggio, and to celebrate Satan’s ten-year anniversary. ”That felt surreal and fantastic,” she says. ”Seriously, I was really moved by listening to those songs. I have bad imposter syndrome, so that felt like an acid test. I thought that when they did their versions, everyone would realize how rubbish my songs actually are”. Was it uncomfortable? Sometimes you can feel pressured into liking presents you are given. I felt really pressured. I knew it was wrong, but I thought ”What if I think they’re really bad?”. There was a representative from Spotify there, who just sat there watching me as I listened to them. But the versions weren’t bad at all. I thought they were really lovely. I was moved for real. You told Dagens Nyheter that you’re a retrospectivehater. Does it feel frustrating that every journalist asks you to look in the rear-view mirror in connection with this anniversary? I’m working on this acceptance thing. You just have to accept that journalists want to do that right now. It’s a bit boring, but what can I do? Why do you not like looking back on what you’ve done before? I’m a bit afraid of getting stuck. That I would begin to build up some sense of awe about what I have achieved before, to buy into the hype about myself, and start to think ”oh my God, I’ll never be able to better that”. I won’t say who it was, but I met a person who was very convinced that he still has his best years ahead of him. It’s almost ridiculous when someone is beginning to get old, but still feels that way. Can’t you just feel a little bit happy about what you have achieved? There has got to be some point when you can feel it’s ok and fun to start looking in your old scrapbooks. I just don’t feel that I’m there yet. So if you look ahead instead, what kind of unfulfilled dreams do you still carry around? At some stage I would like to make an album where I’m not trying to please anyone. An album that might be insanely unpopular, but that I really like myself. That would be awesome. And how would that sound? I’m wondering that same thing. I’ve got a pretty commercial taste in music, so it probably wouldn’t be something alternative or narrow. It sounds terrible to say ‘something poppy that no one likes’! That doesn’t sound appealing at all. But I’ll come up with something. In the interview with Dagens Nyheter you also spoke about the lack of new experiences during the pandemic being the cause of your first creative wobble. What did you use as fuel to kickstart your creativity again? You know that thing about small towns, and that not having anything to do there often leads to the birth of good bands? That was the thing in the end. You live in some sort of sensory deprivation chamber, with all potential input from the outside world fading away. Then you begin to goof around by yourself. 9