There’s something about Scandinavia that I can’t help but love. I’m not really sure what region that term covers, but my personal boundaries are Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, etc. Any place with lots of blonde people, glaciers, and fjords qualifies in my book. Acts like Sigur Ros, Bjork, Mum, Mew, and Lykke Li have been instant favorites, either despite or because of the fact I usually can’t understand a fucking thing that they’re saying.
Most musicians from that area have a quirky story about their childhood that makes perfect sense given the context of their music. Lykke Li, for example, lived on a mountaintop in Portugal for 5 years as a child, and her family vacationed in Lisbon, Nepal, India, and Morocco. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried, go check her wikipedia page.
In 2008 somebody linked me to a song called Little Bit, which we’ve all heard by now. It’s a bizarre pop song, maybe a little to cute for some but it fired on all cylinders for me the first time I listened to it. Lykke Li’s hallmark is to drop a WTF lyric in the middle of an otherwise G-rated, precious song, and in this case it was the line “And for you I keep my legs apart/And forget about my tainted heart/And I will never ever be the first to say it”. It’s a song about not wanting to put your heart on the line. It’s great, but I don’t have to tell you that.
What surprised me was the rest of that album. I’m writing a retroactive album review so I won’t delve too deeply into Youth Novels, but it’s a well rounded record in terms of content and song structure, even if most of the tracks stick to the precious, naive vibe, which definitely works.
Lykke Li is a tad bizarre, her concept of pop music has a very Scandinavian spin, and she’s attractive in the way that Bjork is attractive: She can sing and she looks a bit like an alien. I don’t ask much more of my pop singers.
When the world jumped on her dillz and Drake was making incredibly shitty remixes to her hit songs, I had to quietly conceal my appreciation for her music before it started to annoy me. I basically shelved Youth Novels so I wouldn’t be forced to talk about it with bandwagon rap dudes who seem to be late as Fuck on everything but the new Tony Yayo mixtape. It sounds snarky and pretentious but it’s the truth. If you don’t check your listening habits, the things you love can end up irritating you.
Lykke Li was smart enough to keep stuff coming out on Youtube between albums, which was a full three years. Much of the material on her freshman could have been given to somebody else without affecting anything. It’s not that it’s generic, she just doesn’t really let the bird out of the cage, so to speak, and in reality Robyn could have done the album just as well. It’s just not distinctive. What Lykke Li can do that Robyn can’t, in my opinion, is make this song work:
Sorry for the snoozer. She did this about a year after Youth Novels was released, and in my opinion, is the best example of her singing style. She flats out a couple times, but I like to think it’s intentional, or at least done artistically enough to earn a pass. Despite how great I thought this was, I was still apprehensive about looking forward to her next record. If she was going to go all weepy on ballads, I would have skipped it. Another Youth Novels wouldn’t have worked either.
Fortunately, Lykke Li has a remarkable ability to write her life into her songs. Where her first album was explorative, precious, timid, and all the cutesy stuff that made her a (forgive me for this) indie darling, Wounded Rhymes was much darker. She came out of those 3 years a bit jaded, obviously on drugs, and embracing her role as a more domineering, alpha dog type of singer. The video for Get Some came out a week after my birthday, and it was the best present I didn’t know I wanted.
Menacing, isn’t she? Scowling and writhing around without pants on, I was floored all over again by Lykke Li but in a different way. Where before I wanted to swaddle her in linen and burp her, now I felt like I wanted her to beat me up a little bit before we got it on in a pit of mud and snakes. Don’t judge me, that’s how I feel.
If you listen to Wounded Rhymes you’ll get the sense that Lykke Li’s been living on the edge a little bit, and it wasn’t always pleasant. She told Spin it’s an album of [drug songs about love and love songs about drugs], which I still doubt is an original thought, but it works. It’s bigger sonically, deeper lyrically, and more versatile emotionally than Youth Novels, and I thought it was a tremendous success. I gave it a 10/10, and for me it goes back to being able to translate experience into song work. Bjork definitely does this, but often it’s so obscured by metaphor and her bizarre style that it goes unnoticed for the first three months of listening. Lykke Li’s music isn’t as complex or heady as Bjork’s, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s a brevity of lyric and a directness in her songwriting that is perfectly capable of expression while remaining as accessible as possible. Take I Follow Rivers: “I, I Follow/I follow you deep sea baby/I, I follow/I follow you dark doom honey”. I think it’s perfect. Unmuddied by frills, Lykke Li’s music is straight to the point without being simple. Enough gushing lets rock out.
I’ve said it before, but I can’t understand why she’s not the biggest thing on the planet right now.
I urge you to go check her live show while she’s still playing low-capactiy venues like Chicago’s Metro. Rarely have I been bowled over twice in two shots like I have with Lykke Li’s albums, and I’m anticipating great things in the future out of this evil little fairy. Say what you want about my listening habits, accuse me of championing things just to be contrary, but don’t deny yourself the opportunity to get in on what is still essentially the ground floor of the Lykke Li revolution.
Plus she’s hot.