If you thought that Lykke Li was going to stop being the tormented artist that you remember, the Swedish star has assured that her next album will probably be the “last of her career”, because composing it has “cost her horrors” (“it was a motherfucker to make”, were her original words). The album is titled ‘The Afterparty’, exactly the same as that of another essential Swedish artist on this website, Tove Styrke, and is released on May 8 (it will not coincide with Styrke’s, which comes out in autumn).
Returning to the topic of torment, Lykke Li has declared that ‘The Afterparty’ is an album dedicated not to your “higher self”, but quite the opposite: “It seems to me that we are in a time where everyone talks about ‘my higher self’. Fuck that. This is an album that deals with your worst side: your need for revenge, your shame, desperation.”
Recorded in Stockholm alongside a 17-piece orchestra and an arsenal of “apocalyptic bongos”, ‘The Afterparty’ is introduced with ‘Lucky Again’, an organic pop-disco track (that’s where the bongos come in) that samples the music of the most unlikely artist: neoclassical composer Max Richter. But the sampled piece, belonging to an adaptation of Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’ released in 2014, is not so unlikely.
‘Lucky Again’, today’s Song Of The Day, is torn between the luminosity of its composition and instrumentation – which refers to the first Lykke Li, literally that of the first album – and the darkness of a lyric that portrays a “wounded and broken” Lykke, trying to get out of the well. “I scream at the darkness, there is no light, it is a black hole,” the artist sings.
All the light of the song emanates from the chorus – encapsulated in the Vivaldi sample – since it is where Lykke finds hope and strength to move forward: “Honey, hold me; if we’re lucky, we’ll be lucky again; hold me until the bitter end,” he intones. It’s been a long time since a Lykke Li song sounded so light and carefree. It is the best of news.
