A Lykke Li story

Li Lykke Zachrisson - that’s Lykke Li to you and I - wearily removes her oversized sunglasses, shakes my hand with a thin smile and politely orders a cappuccino from the waitress. If I didn’t know any better, I’d wonder if I’d somehow managed to inadvertently offend the 22-year-old Swedish popstrel - but it soon becomes clear that Ms. Zachrisson, fresh off a delayed flight from a flurry of UK dates, is just tired. Very tired.

“It’s a positive thing,” she says of her recently-devised hectic schedule, “but it’s not really positive when you’re right in the middle of it, because you don’t have any time to think. It’s really changed over the past six months – it’s gone from nothing to everything. Sometimes it’s hard, because I don’t have any time to be creative, and that’s boring. Everybody wants to be successful, so I guess it’s a good thing – but it can be quite scary as well.”
Since the Scandinavian release of her debut album Youth Novels on her own label LL Recordings in February, a steady stream of bloggers, music fans, journalists and tastemakers have been developing crushes of mammoth proportions on the Stockholm-born singer. The album, which recently got a major label release through Warner in the UK and Ireland, is a beautifully rich, diverse and endearingly romantic collection of experiments in pop.
It’s clear from her responses, however – which range from purposeful, enthusiastic answers to brusque rejoinders – that an already-cynical Lykke Li is very conscious of being taken seriously as an artist, with no ties to any scene, Swedish or otherwise. Still, I tell her that Adam Olenius from her former touring partners Shout Out Louds called her their ‘little sister’ when I spoke to him earlier this year, which raises a fleeting smile.
“I feel totally isolated, though. I’m alone,” she says in relation to the apparently mythical Scandinavian indie-pop community. “I mean, there is no scene – all the bands are on tour all of the time, and Stockholm’s actually a really dead place. I think it’s terrible, actually. I saw posters here for Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Morrissey – that would never ever happen in the same week in Stockholm. There’s nothing, just nothing.”
Perhaps such a fervent sense of displacement stems from Li’s nomadic childhood. Born to a photographer mother and a musician father, her family travelled through Europe and Asia during Li’s formative years, and she herself moved to New York at the age of 19 – spending a year playing coffee houses and open mic nights to “just learn how to do things, really.”
Whatever her methods, Youth Novels is a triumph of a debut record; an album which many have placed under the ‘indie-pop’ banner, but which combines a curiosity and predilection for musical experimentation with melodies catchier than a well-worn baseball mitt.
It’s not until I confess that the album worked its magic on me over a couple of weeks, not immediately, that she uncurls from her semi-foetal position and perks up. Recorded last year in Stockholm with the man who’s fast becoming Swedish music’s answer to Timbaland – Bjorn Yttling (of Peter, Bjorn and John fame) – Li speaks with a genuine respect for the producer.
“He’s a genius,” she states. “He works so fast, it’s crazy to watch him. I can come up with a song on the piano, and if it’s quite shitty, nothing special, he’ll be like ‘No, we’ll do it on bass instead, do it like this’, and all of a sudden we’ll have this brilliant pop song. He has the best ear. He taught me so much about the industry, too.”
Many of the tracks on Youth Novels are implicitly poignant love songs, not least album-starrer ‘Little Bit’, which sees her softly croon “And for you, I keep my legs apart/Forget about my tainted heart” over a sweet ‘n’ sour electro-pop melody.
“They were inspired by this relationship I had at the time that was an off-and-on thing,” she nods. “We never really said we were boyfriend and girlfriend, but it was quite a passionate affair that was going on for years, and it kinda broke my heart at the end.”