Elle, by Lizzy Goodman, Culture Club, April 24, 2014
http://www.elle.com/pop-culture/best/lykke-li-profile-2
The Answer to Pop's Prim-Princess Problem? Lykke Li
Searching for a little more soul and a little less predictability in a world of hypermanaged pop stars? Swedish indie-soul singer Lykke Li is here to answer your prayers.
In September 1981,
Stevie Nicks appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone. She’d just released her legendary first solo album, Bella Donna, and was busy working on Fleetwood Mac’s Mirage on the outskirts of Paris in a decaying 30-room château that David Bowie, who’d also recorded there, believed to be haunted. In the interview, Nicks talked about her affection for the Hindu goddess Devi, her desire to build her own pyramid, and her certainty that she’d been a monk in a past life. The story reads like a portal into a lost world, one in which decadence and eccentricity were prerequisites to rock stardom. On the cover, shot by Annie Leibovitz, Nicks’ delicate finger serves as a perch for a giant white bird (in homage to the Bella Donna album art). It’s a paean to the kind of rock ’n’ roll woman you just don’t see anymore—the enchantress, the mystic, the gothic siren.
Blame it on the fact that today’s twentysomethings were raised in the heyday of irony. Blame it on the collapse of a music industry no longer able to rent French estates in the name of sonic soul-searching. Blame it on a modern definition of New Age as meditation and green juice rather than séances and cocaine. Today’s rock stars, so crushingly aware of the bottom line, are more managed, less debauched, and generally saner than they’ve ever been. Where are the Grace Slicks, the Kate Bushes, the Tori Amoses; who among today’s stars has Nicks’ “timeless face of a rock and roll woman/ while her heart breaks”?
In 2008, an answer emerged in the form of a beguiling Swede named Lykke Li (pronounced “Licky Lee”). The cover of her debut, the Little Bit EP—with the singer gazing into the distance, wearing a headdress of white orchids—conjured a sense of intimate mystery that the music only amplified. Li sang in a girl’s voice about having a woman’s broken heart. The detached youthfulness of her tone against her warm electro-soul sound, plus the abject loneliness in her lyrics, made for an irresistible modern take on girl-group melancholy. Critics embraced her as a founder of a new “indie soul” movement—one that has since become a defining subgenre of the day, from the orchestral nihilism of Lana Del Rey to the dazed funkiness of Solange Knowles. With her long, dirty-blond layers, crisp tailored slacks, and enveloping coats—always in black, always with kohl-rimmed eyes—Li may not have been a direct
Nicks descendant, but she certainly embodied Scandinavian alterna-cool.