Tove Lo seems relaxed when she shows up for the video interview at ten o’clock in the morning. Wearing a cozy looking jumpsuit, she holds a coffee mug and politely asks if she can drink from it during the interview. Of course she can. The Swedish pop musician will play a concert in Berlin’s Astra Kulturhaus in the evening, her fifth album DIRT FEMME was released a month earlier. When asked what the title means to her, Tove Lo replies: “Generally, that’s just how I identify. The record has this overarching theme of my relationship with my femininity, and I think that’s how I ended up there.” For the first time ever, she saw her feminine traits as strengths and not weaknesses, she says. However, this was not always the case.
Watch the full video interview here:
“I used to be the only girl in the room,” says Tove Lo. “When I was in that room and played my masculine traits, they respected me and listened to me more.” Flashback to 2014: one song dominates international radio stations. With “Habits (Stay High)” Tove Lo, then 27 years old, landed a surprise hit. It becomes one of the most streamed and played songs of the year. In the song, the artist sings with ruthless honesty about how she puts herself into a perpetual high to numb the pain after a bad breakup. In the accompanying music video, you can see them staggering through various clubs, crying in the toilet and kissing strangers.
“Habits (Stay High)” earns her the somewhat irritating name “saddest girl in Sweden” in the press. “I used to take that as a kind of compliment,” says the singer, whose real name is Ebba Tove Elsa Nilsson. “Back then, ‘being sad’ in pop music had a lot to do with honesty in music. People said, “Why do you have to reveal so much about yourself? It’s embarrassing.” There’s a lot of self-destructive ideology in the song. And I think that was very unusual at the time.”
To this day, Tove Lo is vulnerable and open in her music – in her new track “Grapefruit” she sings for the very first time about the bulimia that accompanied her for years as a teenager. The piece “Suburbia” on the other hand deals with the question of how one manages not to slip into bourgeoisie despite marriage. “It’s easier in pop music when you just have a message, because you want to pigeonhole people,” says Tove Lo. “And I think when you show yourself as a complete and complex human being, people get a little confused.”
Tove Lo’s album DIRT FEMME was released on October 14, 2022. here you can hear it in the stream: