Lykke Li talks new album The Afterparty and finding hope in chaos
As Lykke Li prepares to release her sixth album The Afterparty, she talks to Michael Cragg about anger, ageing and the strange in-between state of a world,
and a life on the edge.
Across five albums of tear-stained emo-pop, including 2011’s breakthrough opus Wounded Rhymes, and 2018’s trap experiment So Sad So Sexy, Sweden’s Lykke Li has carved a niche for herself as the goddess of gloom. Based on The Afterparty, the 40-year-old’s forthcoming sixth album, that title doesn’t look to be under threat. Written mainly in LA, where she’s been based for nearly a decade, and recorded in ABBA’s studio in Stockholm, its nine tracks teeter on the edge of emotional implosion, even as they reach for something approaching happiness. Take lead single, Lucky Again, which pairs spritely percussion with a lyric about scrabbling about in the dirt for hope, or the deceptively angry disco strut of Happy Now.
Paired with minimalist, Berlin-shot visuals by regular collaborator Theo Lindquist, The Afterparty is a liminal world Li is keen for people to immerse themselves in. That extends to the live shows, a brutalist vision that imagines Li and her band playing outside of the main party, as if on the street. It’s a new experience that premiered at this year’s Coachella, with this interview taking place hours before the first show. “It’s not the ideal place to do your first show for a new album,” Li laughs. “So let’s see!”
I’m intrigued by The Afterparty as an album title. It’s very evocative. When did the idea of calling it that arrive?
That title came to me even before I knew that it was an album. I’m like, is this just a feeling? I just kept on driving in my car in LA, which feels a bit like Gotham City. The suffering and the decay on the streets and everything that’s going on – the fires, the ICE raids and so much poverty and graffiti and trash everywhere. I kept thinking about how I’m safer in my car watching the beautiful sunset, but like shit is really off the rails. It felt like we’re on the last dance here. Like it’s 5am and the sun is gonna rise but that sun might be the big star that’s just heading towards us.
I guess an afterparty is like purgatory, something in-between.
Yeah, and even with what is happening in the world – I don’t know how much more we can push it.
We’re really testing the limits!
I don’t want to see what the outcome is. It might just be like a brutal hangover.
Was that feeling of being on the cusp of something one that you’d had for a while?
Yeah, and I’m also reflecting on myself, and on my career. I started this quest for whatever when I was so young. My whole adolescence, and my adulthood, was searching for something that was gonna save me, or fill me. So it’s like ‘oh wow, I’m still here, I’m still grinding, making music’. But I just want to question the motives a bit more. Searching for something deeper I guess.
My whole adolescence, and my adulthood, was searching for something that was gonna save me, or fill me. So it’s like ‘oh wow, I’m still here, I’m still grinding, making music’. But I want to question the motives a bit more and search for something deeper
Lykke Li
Were you able to do that with this album?
Well, I think the album is an exploration. It’s not a fixed answer. I see the album as one night. You walk on the street, you go into a bar, you go into this room, you go into yourself. So it’s one long journey through the night, but then also the night of yourself. Of your soul.
Your lyrics are incredibly economical; you do a lot with not a lot if that makes sense…
I’m taking that as a compliment!
You should! Are they heavily edited down or do you just write like that?
For me, especially on this album, I really dug in lyrically. I care a lot about the lyrics.
You’ve talked about wanting to wallow in the emotional shit on this album – do you find that therapeutic?
I kind of hate the word therapeutic. It’s more that it tickles me. As a writer, it tickles my brain. It makes me laugh. You know what I mean? It’s just the ability to turn all these sticky emotions, like shame, revenge, anger, despair, into pop songs. I find that very intriguing.
Do you think the messier side is more male-coded in music? That men are allowed to wallow in this stuff more easily maybe than female artists?
The way we get judged, you know, I despise it so heavily. Reflecting back on myself, the question that you keep asking yourself, and it’s also what other people are wondering, is are you beautiful or not? That’s just what it is to be a woman and it really enrages me. So on this album I was so tired of that landscape that I’m like ‘fuck that, I’m just gonna write from this kind of fuck boy perspective’. So I gave myself the freedom to just be something else. But there were so many moments on this album that surprised me. Like, am I allowed to go there? And even that is such an interesting question. Because then I’m like, ‘oh, I’m going somewhere I haven’t been’. And I don’t even know, like, ‘Should I go here? Can I go here?’ But then I realised, especially with anger, that people in general just hate female anger. But you realise that anger is punk. It’s hip-hop. It is feminism.
Would you say the album has a tiny bit more hope though? A chink of light, maybe?
I think it’s a wish. I mean, music, art, a poem, that is just in itself, some type of offering, and that action [of creating] is hopeful. Instead of just, like, laying down flat on the concrete.
Do you do that too?
Uh, yeah. Figuratively, I suppose.
How does it feel when people focus on your love of sadness? Can it be a bit reductive?
I mean, that’s what I create as an artist. But that’s not necessarily who I am as a private person. But I guess I made a living off my sadness in my twenties.
What’s the most unexpected thing about you that people might be like, oh, wow, she collects clown figurines or something?
I really fuck around a lot. I have quite a sense of humour and I laugh a lot and I don’t take myself very seriously. I’m quite self-deprecating.
The songs have these DIY-looking video clips to accompany them. At what stage do you start thinking about the visual identity of an album?
I think about it all the time. When I’m writing and producing, I basically see a Stanley Kubrick or Francis Ford Coppola film in my mind. But then I kind of come back to reality with very little budget. Even on my Instagram people are like ‘drop the music video’, ‘where are the visuals?’, and it’s like ‘bitch these are the visuals! You’re in the world now’. For me, music videos are actually dead. I don’t even know why people bother making them anymore because music videos were made for MTV. You’d sit down and watch the whole thing. Now, sadly, we live on the small screen. So I wanted to make something contemporary that is fragmented for fragmented brains. It’s also like a protest at AI, and anything overly filtered or beautifully shimmery. Like fuck that, let’s just see what a few people and an iPhone or a DV camera that we got for 300 bucks can do. So it’s very purposeful.
And you shot them in Berlin, right?
Yeah, and we didn’t have any permits, so it was complete mayhem. But that’s exactly the world we’re living in. We’re living in a shitstorm, and we’re broke.
I love the album cover. What inspired that chic balaclava look?
I guess it’s some type of resistance to being on camera. If I have to go on camera, I don’t want to be seen up close. I just want to live in my own mystery world where I’m half-human, half-fuck boy, half-unicorn. I hate that everything needs to be so in your face, especially now with everyone like tweaking their faces. So it’s kind of turning away from just this youth sexual object female. I did something [on camera] the other day and the comments were like ‘wow she’s aged’, so then I went full troll on the comments because I just can’t help it. Aging is this thing that you just are not allowed to do as a woman and it really makes my blood boil. How do you, as a woman, just say ‘I don’t want to subscribe to this’? Like, I’m not agreeing to the terms.
Aging is something that you are just not allowed to do as a woman and it really makes my blood boil. How do we, as women, say ‘I don’t want to subscribe to this’? Like, I’m not agreeing to the terms
Lykke Li
What can people expect from the new live shows?
It’s more brutalist. I’m still a fucking indie artist that is always working with a low budget and this and that. I’m kind of leaning into being the underdog. I’ve been really inspired by WrestleMania. I get it you know; these kinds of people have just been beaten up for so long. But, it’s still so physical. You’re never safe. You have to continuously fight for your spot. It just moves me.
Which wrestler would you be?
Well when I was writing this album I identified with Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. What a character. I like the dedication and the commitment and the sacrifice. Like anyone who’s still doing [music], if you’re not raking in millions of dollars, there is something just deep in you. Like, why am I still doing this? This is insane.
But you just keep coming back.
Exactly.
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