Spotlight
The Sunday Age
Sunday January 4, 2009
Who LYKKE LI
Why MAKING DANCE MUSIC FOR INTROVERTSIn her melancholic but surprisingly radio-friendly single, Dance.Dance.Dance, Swedish pop star Lykke Li reveals that she is "shy, shy, shy": "Having trouble telling how I feel/but I can dance, dance, dance..." she sings. Shy she may be but Stockholm's Li Lykke Zachrisson has cut one determined path through the music industry. After abandoning a promising dancing career, the still-teenaged Li moved to New York with her sights set on becoming a singer and was booed off stage at open mic nights. Back in Sweden, Li set up a MySpace page for her music, nagged Bjorn Yttling (of Peter, Bjorn and John) to help her put a demo together.. "I was never the kid that people believed in," she says. "When I quit dancing everybody questioned me. I was 19 when I got my first compliment and I'd been singing for a long time." In Yttling she found someone who not only believed in her, but someone she shared a creative synergy with. "A lot of people just talk and talk. He's like, 'OK, let's do it' and then you walk out of the studio with two new songs. He's fast, productive and he trusts his instincts. He has an idea and he goes for it." The result was Youth Novels - an eclectic mix of pop, offbeat balladry and electronica - and an album Li claims is equal parts Bjorn and herself. "A lot of people probably think he's the producer and (I'm) the girl who sings, but we're both the masterminds behind this." The songs are hers. Sung in a voice both brittle and sweet, they document 14 chapters about her life - and all its youthful love, angst and obsessive dreaming - thus far. The album was created to sound as intimate as a diary entry. "I wanted it to feel like you're listening to something you shouldn't be listening to. Really confessional. Like you found a demo and you're listening to it." It takes a lot of conviction to stand on stage - even a small one - in New York and sing to a heckling crowd. Li insists she wasn't buoyed by confidence when she did it. "I always think I'm the worst singer. I think: 'I suck, I suck, I suck', but I do it anyway. I dunno - it's just something I have even though I don't believe in it." With such tattered self-confidence, where does that drive come from? "I think it's a revenge thing, like ... 'I'll show them.' " Then there's good old sibling rivalry as a spur. "My older sister was always the beautiful, smart, skinny one. She was always like a model and I was always the short and weird one. So I always thought 'One day ...' "Her next challenge after this tour wraps is working out how to recharge. "Youth Novels was a project where I was thinking of everything - the artwork, my clothes, the stage ... so I've (given) all I have to the audience. Now I'm just a paper walking around looking for new expressions. I need to fall in love and then we'll see ..." -- Ghita Loebenstein Lykke Li plays the Prince of Wales bandroom tonight.
© 2009 The Sunday Age