Today began just like any other day in Lykke Li’s life: waking up to her six year old son, Dion, kicking her in the face. ‘You don’t want to see me right now,’ the award-winning Swedish singer-songwriter – also an actor and model – insists as we speak on Zoom at 9am her time in Los Angeles, where she lives. And yet, just days before on 20 May, Lykke was having a considerably more glamorous time of it, wearing a Thierry Mugler steel corset and trousers as guests celebrated the release of Lykke Li’s fifth studio album, ‘EYEYE’, at a warehouse party hosted by Nylon magazine.
To create an immersive experience, the whole warehouse was scented with a custom-made perfume designed to capture the themes of the album: “Love and devastation… everything forbidden, sex, drugs, romance, intensity”. And what does that smell like? “Tobacco, vanilla and musk”.
The album is Lykke’s first “audio-visual album”, and fittingly the album’s music videos – including the one to accompany the song ‘Carousel’, which features two naked dancers writhing naked, inextricably connected to each other while trapped in a red room – were streamed on gigantic screens on the walls of the warehouse during her album launch event.
The videos were shot in 16mm (a format more typically used for amateur projects, providing an artsy, intimate feel) by cinematographer Edu Grau, whose most popular work include 2009 Tom Ford film, A Single Man. The music itself follows the same raw, faux-amateur style, integrating voice memos and recorded in Lykke’s home without headphones or anything to block out external sounds. It’s a far cry from the heavily-synthesised, trap-inspired music of her last album, 2018’s ‘So Sad, So Sexy’.
‘EYEYE’ has been years in the making, and Lykke describes its release as “monumental”, adding that she’s given herself the opportunity to celebrate properly. The album publicity cycle – the “being out in the world, taking photos, talking about yourself” – is harder for Lykke, a self-described highly sensitive introvert. She’s backed away from fame in the past. After her live cover of Drake’s ‘Hold On, We’re Going Home’ went viral in 2014, raising her profile considerably, she responded by announcing her temporary retirement in an Instagram post.
