INTERVIEW: Tove Lo on her stunning fifth album 'Dirt Femme': "The reason why I don’t talk about personal things is because I write songs. Until I write about it, it's not something I talk about."
Interview Jett Tattersall
Tove Lo has been one of Sweden’s biggest global stars ever since her breakthrough release ‘Habits (Stay High)’ was an international hit in 2013. She has since had multiple hit singles including ‘Talking Body’, ‘Cool Girl’ and this year’s ‘No One Dies From Love’ which has accumulated over 31 million streams on Spotify alone.
Today she releases her fifth studio album Dirt Femme. Her first album released on her own label Pretty Swede Records after a decade with a major record label, it is an collection that is broad in both sound and scope, ranging from the hyper-personal themes of Lo’s relationship with her body and her femininity, through to more universal motifs of heartbreak, and of struggling with the pressures that come with being an adult. “It’s extremely personal, which is why it’s so hard to describe in just a few words,” she says. “It’s all my feelings, thoughts and questions put together in under fifty minutes with no answers.”
Showcasing some of the best music she has ever made, it throws 1980s-inspired synth-pop in with raw, dramatic ballads and 1970s disco and is full of pop highs. First single ‘No One Dies From Love’ is a brilliantly melancholic synth-pop track, the type of track that sweeps you away in a three-minute rush but infuriatingly-slash-deliciously leaves you wanting more – and frantically reaching for the repeat button.
Third single ‘2 Die 4’ throws a curveball by sampling 1970s disco instrumental ‘Popcorn’, melding it with 1990s-style house-techno and telling a sexually charged story of falling into a wild relationship with a person you have just met. It is followed on the album by minimalist electro ballad and second single ‘True Romance’, which continues the story into a relationship where nothing in the world matters apart from this new partner. “I want your hands / Your future plans / To the bitter end,” Lo sings in a passionate vocal.
Lo’s decision to marry inspired the song ‘Suburbia’, a track that explores not the happy fairytale of marriage but the sense of claustrophobia that conforming to society’s expectations can bring. “If we had a baby / You’d love them more than me / What if I’m way too lazy for the Mum Olympic team? / Would we still be romantic?” she sings over a chomping electronic beat with echoes of jazz and bebop rhythms submerged in the electronica.
One of the highlights on the album, but also the most confronting, is ‘Grapefruit’ which details Lo’s teenage struggles with an eating disorder. To a shuddering electronic beat she sings about counting calories and the constant struggle of recognising the futility of what she is doing – “How am I back here again?” – but being unable to stop. “What I see is not me, what I see is not me” she repeats in a gentle, half-defeated vocal. Its gorgeous melodies and dreamy synthpop soundscape is in direct contrast to her huskily delivered, brutally honest lyrics, but it is a combination that create a remarkable pop song, which exemplify the pop sub-genre the Swedes do best - dance-cry.
Dirt Femme is everything that you have always loved about Tove Lo and then some more on top. It is an album that is carefree, emotional, challenging and joyful, with her ever present vulnerability now with an extra level of potency. Lo has always been an expert at creating perfect pop music, and with the release of Dirt Femme she has created probably her greatest album, and undoubtedly one of the greatest albums of 2022. We recently caught up with her to chat more about its creation.
Hi Tove! It is so lovely to talk to you again. Dirt Femme, what an absolutely intergalactic diamond of an album. Your music always champions women and on this album, it's called Dirt Femme because it's the grotty, beautiful sides of all of us. Can you talk me through this album as a whole, and how you felt going into it?
Thank you. All of my albums are just about me and my emotions, and my emotional journey, because I had longer than I've had since my first record to write this one, that's what made it extra special and vulnerable. I had time to reflect on past things I've done and the present. Being married now, but still being a queer woman and still living in a collective with my friends and my husband and the way that I navigate life. It’s all on there, just dressed up in a very cinematic dramatic emotional journey.
Beautiful. I absolutely love that grappling with fears of domesticity because we all feel that, but no one's singing about it. And then you come out with the song 'Suburbia'. It is such a great track. Can you talk me through that one?
I actually had the lyrics for that one first. It was when I got married. We went to Vegas, it was very wild, it was super fun and great and very us. But I remember having this feeling of it's something I never really wanted. I noticed with some of my more traditional friends and our parents, they were like, ‘Oh, you married you did something normal!’ I could just tell they're so happy that I did something that you traditionally do. And then obviously everyone is going to ask when you're going to have kids, what's your next steps? I started to feel these expectations that just because we decided to commit that way, all of a sudden your life's supposed to look a certain way. I just had all these feelings, like it's not what, but what if I do? I don't think I want kids, but what if I do? I just feel very honestly that I shouldn't have to defend them as much as I do, I constantly need to defend how I live and defend my feelings on maybe or maybe not having a family and that's where that song was born from.
I think it's great and we all go through those feelings and it's so lovely to hear it in a song where suddenly you do one conventional thing and suddenly it becomes ‘this is how the rest of your life has to look like.’
Exactly. If it's what you want, it's what you should do, but I think it should be very okay to not want other things. In general it falls more on women to make those choices in a way and that's where some people just don't understand.
It's so good. Your breakout hit 'Habits (Stay Hight)' was just such a great song and it just hit home with so many young women. But of course, you had the big conservative backlash of 'keep Tove away from our children!’ Now, fast forward 10 years and we've got those same people forcing their daughters to look at you and go 'this is how women should be.' What the hell is that about?
Honestly, when I think about it that's kind of a triumph, because I haven't changed anything about my expression. I've evolved as an artist and performer and writer, but no part of me is like I regret those songs, I take it back. Maybe when you're singing about real things, that is a presence in a lot of women's and people's lives, that is sort of making people accept themselves a bit more. And that's a good thing to look up to.
Absolutely, self acceptance and freedom. And that's what you navigate and I always think about how free and positive and joyful and sexual, the joys of being sexual, your performances convey and then the album hits with a song like 'Grapefruit', and I'm on the fucking ground. Can you talk to me a little bit about 'Grapefruit', and how was that putting it on the album?
Here's the thing, it's a song I've tried to write for like 10 years, and I've never been able to put it into words or express it properly. I used to have really bad eating disorders from 15 to 20 and I worked so so so hard on therapy, everything to get better. And I got better, I really worked on accepting myself and loving my body and breaking the habits. I don't want to speak for everyone who struggles with this, but it’s usually not about your body, it's about something else, so at first you have to break the habits, and then you have to deal with what's actually going on. Once you actually do that and get through that, that's when you properly recover, and you let go of all that negativity and hating yourself and being so mean to yourself. I have this good relationship with my body now and I’m so happy I was healthy when I became an artist and started putting out music because the trolling and comments and mean things people say about you, if I was 17 when my career took off I could never have handled it, I would have been so in such a bad place.
Maybe the reason why I don’t talk about personal things is because I write songs about it. Until I write about it, it's not going to be something I talk about. For me, getting up on stage and flashing my tits, being half naked and dancing that's a victory for me every time. From going to that from having hated myself as a teenager and just seeing that journey for myself is very powerful.
It's so beautiful to hear. And it's also, I must say, such a turn on to watch you perform, it's so hot because it's so real. Speaking of, your 'No One Dies From Love' video, is the greatest video of our time. Can you talk to me a little bit about the creation of that beautiful thing?
Oh, you know, I had food poisoning the whole way through. It was awful, but it didn't matter! My adrenaline was so high because everything was looking so good that I was like, ‘it's fine!’ I worked with these directors, Alaska, two Brazilian guys who are just incredible storytellers. My creative director was like, ‘we should send this to Alaska, I feel like they could really figure this out’. We told them it doesn't have to follow the storyline of the song, but just something cinematic, we wanted it to look and feel like a movie. They just took that to heart and called us up with ‘what if it's like a love story, but set in the 1970s between you and a robot and you're this lonely starlet’, he just had the whole script in mind already. I was like, ‘I don't want to hear a single other idea this is the only video we're making. Nobody talk to me about anything else!’ It was definitely a pricey passion project in that sense, but so worth it. It felt like such an amazing comeback after not having put anything out in a long time to just be like...’and here you go'.
My 1970s castle with my hot robot girlfriend dancing around like Madonna in the 'Hung Up' video is what you've been doing. It's so good. This album is honestly just the greatest and is going to be amazing. You’ve just finished your Australian and NZ tour and are about to hit European stages, what else is coming up for you?
t's gonna be mainly touring now. I'm going to put out a video for 'Grapefruit' that is very, very beautiful. It was a tricky one to make, like how do you tackle that? But I'm working with this really great director Liz Setts and she understood it's an internal fight, not an external fight. So we translate that into dance and just beautiful movement. It was really, really beautiful and quite emotional to make actually. But then I'm just going to be on tour till the end of the year!
Dirt Femme is out now via Pretty Swede Records/mtheory. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Tove Lo you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
