Tove Lo Interview

"I don't smoke weed anymore. Now I've just started eating it. It has the same effect but you've not got smoke going through your lungs." She may be one of the hottest pop properties on the planet right now, but Tove Lo has no interest in being the bland, squeaky clean role model that certain people would like her to be.
"Fuck that!" the Swede laughs backstage at Longitude, where in a little over two hours she'll supply the festival with one of its 2015 highlights. "I'm 27. I've done a lot of living. Nobody's going to tell me what I can or can't say, either in my music or in my interviews. I won't censor myself. Those weed comments were made in an American interview. They asked me a question and I answered it honestly. The Swedish magazines picked up on it and were very anti- because unlike America we're nowhere near legalising marijuana."
Those might sound like the words of somebody hellbent on confrontation, but a nicer, more affable woman you couldn't hope to meet. Having spent seven years penning hits for the likes of Hilary Duff, Ellie Goulding, Icona Pop, Girls Aloud, Cher Lloyd and The Saturdays, Lo became a star in her own right last year when 'Habits (Stay High)' – there's a theme developing here! – peaked at No.3 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Having promised that its parent Queen Of The Clouds album would be a highly confessional affair, Tove duly delivered with songs like 'Moments', in which she declares: "I'm not the prettiest you've ever seen/ But on good days I'm as charming as fuck/ I can't be the perfect one/ But I'll make you come."
A song, which for dance routine possibilities alone, she really ought to have given to The Saturdays.
"There's still time for a cover version!" Lo laughs. "You only write lyrics like that when you know you're the one who's going to be singing them! They're so personal and you can so tell when it's somebody else's words. If there's a new 22-year-old girl artist singing a 45-year-old man's lyrics you know immediately. He's going, 'I want you to say this because it's fucking sexy' and she's like, 'Well, it's not sexy to me' – but she still sings it because she feels she has to. I can tell in a second. You can't fool people in that way."
While the woman born Ebba Tove Elsa Nilsson doesn't buy into the idea of pop star as role model, she's delighted that so many people are connecting with her songs.
"A lot of young girls have written to me saying, 'You helped me through a depression and feeling worthless about myself '. Some boy or girl's had their heart broken and thinks, 'I'm useless because he or she said I am'. I'm like, 'Noooooo!' I've seen it from both sides. I've been hurt and done the hurting. I know how love can fuck with your head. Because I'm so honest in my songs they feel they can be really honest with me, which is really sweet."
Were there people Tove had to go to with a pre-release copy of Queen Of The Clouds and say, "You might want to have a listen to this because it's about you?"
"The album is actually about three love stories that started and ended more or less the same way. I know, I never learn! There was one particular person I had to play a particular song to. He was hurt when he realised I'd written it before the relationship had finished – and I get that."
So she was scribbling away in the corner and he didn't realise?
"Er, kind of!" she nods. "I worked with some amazing producers on the album and am so proud of every song. All the lyrics are my words and so personal."
Despite having "We fuck for life" as a chorus, Lo somehow managed to sneak on to Good Morning America with her 'Talking Body' single.
"I had to change 'fuck' to 'love' and wasn't allowed to say 'bite me'. It's really hard when you're on live TV having to remember, 'Okay, don't sing 'fuck'!' I understand it too, because they can get into so much shit and be sued for millions for that sort of stuff. In Sweden we don't censor at all, there's nothing you can't say, but in America those five 'fucks' would have probably cost ABC a million dollars. I made the decision to go on Good Morning America and change the words myself. It wasn't a management or record company thing. I liked the idea of invading people's homes when they were having their breakfast!"
That's some punitive swear jar ABC have.
"I get my English mixed up when I have to get up early and am tired. Sometimes it's funny – like when I told the Metro in London that I was a 'homolesbian'. I have no idea what I actually meant to say!"
Fuddling your worms up can happen when you're taking six flights in two days, as Lo did shortly before hitting Marlay Park.
"It's intense, and the tan helps to make me look a little less tired, but it's great fun," she insists. "One of the things you have to get used to is the feeling that you're disappointing people. In this business there's always something that you could be doing a bit more of. 'No' is a very important word, and during the first years I was bad at using it. I went a bit overboard and ended up going through vocal surgery and everything. That was scary. I was like, 'What if it goes wrong? There's nothing else that I'm good at'. I had to put my trust in the doctors and they did an absolutely brilliant job. It worked out and I'm still able to live my dream."
That dream includes getting to share some quality studio time with the ginormously successful ex-American Idol runner- up, Adam Lambert.
"He was going to work with all of the Wolf Cousins. We're a production team signed to Max Martin, who's worked with these crazily successful people, like Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Taylor Swift and Pink. Because I'm doing my own artist thing, I'm very rarely back in Stockholm, but I was home for two days and already had the idea for 'Rumors' that Adam really related to. We finished the lyrics together, so it became his as well as my song and he asked, 'Would you like to do it as a duet?' I was like, 'Yessssssssssssss!' He wasn't hard to work with at all and such a good singer that even if you'd given him something really bad it would've sounded amazing!"
Tove's heroine growing up was Courtney Love.
"When I started buying albums myself, it was stuff like Hole and Nirvana and Silverchair. Then I started listening to Tool
– Maynard's voice is just insane – and A Perfect Circle. I had a Franz Zappa stage when I was at high school. Being a girl amongst all those boys, I really related to Courtney. I have to see Montage Of Heck! If a 13-year-old gets from my music even a fraction of what I got from Hole and Nirvana, I'd be blown away."