Sigrid Talks Leveling Up and Letting Go on Sophomore Album How to Let Go
The post Sigrid Talks Leveling Up and Letting Go on Sophomore Album How to Let Go appeared first on Consequence.
Sigrid has learned the power that comes with letting go. That’s the crystalline message in her sophomore album, the appropriately titled How to Let Go.
A week before releasing the album’s May 6th release, Sigrid is sitting in her record label’s office in London. She’s recently returned to Europe from a whirlwind press tour in the US — her first time back in the States since before the pandemic. The journey included shows at The Fonda Theater in Los Angeles and Brooklyn Steel in New York, and even an intimate, early-morning concert on the 86th Floor Observatory of the Empire State Building.
“It was kind of surreal,” she says of performing inside the famed New York City landmark. “But yeah, it was great fun. They even let us up on this floor that almost no one gets to go to, which is really exciting. To the actual, like, top, top of the Empire State Building, so that was very special.”
Even separated by more than 5,000 miles and meeting for the first time over Zoom, the Norwegian pop star is warm and engaging during our interview. Dressed in a cozy bluish-gray turtleneck with her hair pulled back in a casual ponytail, she opens up about how the new studio set differs from her 2019 debut, Sucker Punch.
“I feel like the songs are breathing maybe more sonically than on the first record,” she says, the end of her thought lilting up like a question. “I absolutely love the first record, I’m so proud of that one. That one was leaning quite into the Scandipop thing. I think this is still…I mean, I’m Scandinavian, you’re gonna hear that I’m Norwegian no matter how much English I speak. But yeah, the guitars are allowed to flow to my vocals, I’m not singing like [mimes relentless ferocity] all the time. It’s all breathing a bit more.”
The recording process behind How to Let Go also stood in stark contrast to her first album — largely thanks to the hectic demands of life as a rising pop star screeching to a standstill along with the rest of daily life at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Rather than being cobbled together on various writing trips to music industry hubs like LA and NYC, the bulk of the album was created in relative isolation in Copenhagen with just Sigrid, Danish producer Sylvester Sivertsen, and songwriter Caroline Ailin.
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“It was like going to the office every day,” Sigrid said of the trio hunkering down in the Denmark capital. “And I wasn’t used to that. I wasn’t used to being able to go back to the studio every day for weeks.”
The hyper-focused approach yielded impressive results, however. Led by self-love anthem “Mirror,” fiery kiss-off “Burning Bridges,” and meteoric opener “It Gets Dark,” the 12-track collection finds the 25-year-old singer laying bare her vulnerabilities, victories, and emotional losses on what’s her strongest, most cohesive album yet.
“I think that’s one lesson I’ll take with me from the past two years,” she says. “Next time I’m making an album, I think I’m — don’t tell my label, but I think I’m gonna try and, like, disappear a bit… I think that’s important, and I think that’s how we got this album and this body of work that I’m super, super proud of.”
Read on for more from Sigrid, including which album cut was inspired by equal parts Ariana Grande and ABBA, what it was like collaborating with Bring Me the Horizon on “Bad Life,” and more.
Congrats on the album! How are you feeling now that it’s on the verge of being released into the world?
It’s pretty crazy [laughs]. It’s back at full capacity, full speed. My schedule’s insane. I’m very, very excited for the album to finally be out. I love it so much, I’m super proud of it. But it’s crazy. It’s like, I’m at a point now where I almost forgot that I was an artist in a way. Like, I forgot that, “Oh, all these songs that you wrote are actually gonna be public. Like, it’s not just in your folder anymore. They’re going out.” So, of course you get a bit, like, [gasps] “My god, it’s happening!” But I’m excited.
So where did the writing process start for the album?
So the writing started actually quite some time ago. We wrote the first song “It Gets Dark” in February 2020, in LA actually. And I wasn’t really sure what I wanted the album to sound like. But then we wrote “It Gets Dark” and I just straight up knew from that point, that this is what it’s gonna sound like. Because all of sudden there was a lot of guitars, we had electric bass on it, and I don’t think I’d used electric bass on a song before. Big, live drums, and I was like, “Oh! Maybe this is the new thing.” So the whole album is quite… It’s a pop album, for sure. It’s full of pop hooks and I guess, like, very me, very Sigrid melodies and lyrics and stuff. But production-wise and the soundscape, it’s leaning a lot into the rock bands that I grew up listening a lot to. Old school favorites like Fleetwood Mac, ABBA, Elton John, Freddie Mercury. Leaning into that bravado, I guess. But built on in a 2022 way.
How did you settle on all those reference points?
I think some of them came out in that song. But then that manifested in all the other ones that came after it. Because “It Gets Dark” kind of then became the leading star for the album. Like, that was the reference point for everything. So, as much as we were referencing other bands and other artists that have been influential to me — other bands like War on Drugs, Kacey Musgraves, Tame Impala, stuff like that — we always kept referring back to “It Gets Dark” as me 2.0 in a way [chuckles].
How did this theme of letting go come about? Not only is it in the title, but it also runs through so many of the songs in different ways.
I just felt like I wrote a lot of letting go in all the songs. I didn’t mean to; letting go just slipped in. And then we thought instead of fighting that concept, we were like, “Whoa, that is the concept, the whole album.” Apparently I had stuff to let go of: Relations that weren’t that great that you had to let go of. Fears, doubts that you have, insecurities. And I think that’s something we all have. I love writing songs that are personal but where I also think, “I’m sure a lot of people are thinking about exactly the same thing.” And I love that about music. That’s why all my favorite songs that I have in my playlist, they’re all songs that were written from a deeply personal space from the artist’s point of view. But it’s written in a way that just feels super universal, like, “I feel like the second line in the second verse speaks to me!” And that’s the best feeling ever when you hook yourself onto that one line — that feels very personal, like the artist kind of just knew exactly what you were thinking. So I’m trying to do that same thing with my songs. I want people to listen to the songs and hear one line and be like, “Wow, that’s how I feel.”
So where do you think that recurring theme was stemming from if it was subconscious?
I didn’t mean to write a record called How to Let Go. I just never set out to write albums where I already have the title and the concept… I think I had a lot of things that I felt like I had to let go of… Fear of not succeeding at what you want. I think we all have that. Maybe insecurities. Of course we have some days, all of us, where we don’t feel like [our] best. And then you have other days where you feel like you can take over the world. Yeah, it’s all that stuff.
Like, there’s songs like “Risk of Getting Hurt”: It’s like me in a nutshell of wanting everything at once. Like, I love my chill and peaceful and quiet life in Norway, where I’m originally from. I speak Norwegian with all my friends and I go hiking and skiing and I just live very quietly. And then there’s this other part of me in English that just travels the world and I’ll go up onstage and play for thousands of people with absolutely no trouble. And I seem to never fully agree with myself on what I feel at most home with. But I think that the conclusion is that you can be both, you don’t have to be one thing.
Was any of that fear coming from the fact that you were making your sophomore album?
There’s always gonna be pressure making a second album, for sure. I feel like that pressure’s always gonna be there — I’m sure there’s gonna be, like, “What’s she gonna do for the third album?’ I’m sure that’s gonna be there as well, so, yeah, you just try to deal with it in the best way possible. I think the album was made with a lot of love and with a lot of patience as well, because it was made for the past two years, we’ve been working on this. And a lot of it was made in Copenhagen; Norway and Denmark had, like, a travel corridor during the pandemic… and we were just in the studio every day.
Because of the situation in the world, I wasn’t able to travel. So I didn’t have concerts that I had to do, I didn’t have to run and get on a flight. It was a very focused way of working because I had that one task to do. And it was also, like, the light in my every day of knowing that I was making this album and I was making these songs. Yeah, it really was a nice time, those weeks we had where we were in the studio every day and we could go back and forth and polish the melodies, polish the hooks and the writing. We went swimming in between vocal takes in the ocean. Yeah, it was really wonderful.
So you wrote “It Gets Dark” in the US and then did you go right away back to Europe?
Actually, I was still in LA when the former president closed the borders. Yeah, it was intense. But luckily, I had a flight back home to Norway. So I got back home to Norway and then I moved back in with my parents. I went home to my hometown.
It was “It Gets Dark” and “Mirror” in the US, and “Grow” as well from I think it was that same writing trip. “Mirror” and “It Gets Dark” were written back to back in two days. We were on a roll for those two days!
Speaking of “Mirror,” what made it the perfect first single to introduce this body of work?
I felt like it was a classic Sigrid track, I suppose. It was fun, and it also had a bit of that new sound. Especially in the bass; it’s electric bass on it, which is new. It just felt like a good start to the album. And it was really fun, I absolutely love the music video for that one. We shot it in Barcelona with [producer] CANADA and director Femke Huurdeman, it was such a fun shoot — six very, very intense days, but I mean, there are a lot of colors in that video and I was playing with styling properly for the first time, which was really fun. I wear a lot of cool outfits.
Out of all the tracks on the album that aren’t singles, the one that immediately stuck out the most to me was “A Driver Saved My Night.” Can you talk me through how that song came together?
[laughs] Yeah, “Driver” was written in that period in Copenhagen I was talking about. I’ve had that happen so many times where I’m in a car on my way from somewhere — I spend a lot of time on transportation, as we all do. But being in a car either in London, New York, LA, going somewhere and maybe I’m a bit homesick or having a bit of a day. And I’m in the back of the car, like, [sighs], and then low on the radio, I can hear a song that I really love at the moment. I’m especially thinking of, like, if an Ariana Grande track comes on the radio. And I’m always like, “Please turn it up.” And the driver turns it up, and you’re both sitting there, like, jamming along to it. I love that. I love how much music can change your day, how much it can affect your mood, and how much music means to me and lifts my mood whenever I’m having a bit of a day. So it’s kind of an homage. It’s a bit of “Thank You for the Music” ABBA type of vibe.
Yeah, totally! I will say, the other song that it immediately reminded me of was “Party in the U.S.A.,” with that same sort of universal moment where you hear a song on the radio and are like, “Wait, that’s the song I need right now.”
Oh my god! [laughs] Exactly, I love that. Oh, I love that reference.
So what Ariana Grande song would you make you feel that way right now?
Always “thank u, next.” Always. But my favorite Ariana Grande song is probably “Bad Decision” [sings riff in chorus]. Yeah, I love that one. And “Dangerous Woman,” “Into You,” “N.A.S.A.,” “34 + 35.” All of them. They’re all hits.
You also just dropped “Bad Life” with Bring Me the Horizon. What inspired that collaboration? Because, sonically speaking, it was a big surprise.
Yeah, it’s not, like, the most obvious collab [laughs]. But that’s what I love about it. I really wanted to do something that was a bit unexpected. I’ve been a massive fan of Bring Me for a couple of years, I’ve listened a lot to their music — especially, like, getting hyped before I go on stage. And apparently they were fans of me, too. So that was sick, did not expect that one.
They’re really talented with pop music. I met Jordan [Fish], the keyboard player and writer and producer in Bring Me, at Reading, a festival in the UK, last year. And he said they had this demo that they’d been working on called “Bad Life,” and they wanted to go into the studio. I was like, “Whaaat? Sick.” So I came to the studio with him and Olly Sykes and we finished the song. I wrote lyrics on it, we tracked the vocals, and it was really, really lovely. And yeah, we’ve just been hanging out quite a lot. We shot the music video, the song is out now. We love it, we’re really proud of it. It’s a full-on… I don’t know what you would call it, like a pop-rock ballad? We’re definitely meeting in the middle between the two things that we do. But I love it, it’s really nice.
What do you want fans to take away from this album?
I hope that this is the type of album where my fans, or new fans, will download the whole thing and, like, listen to the album. I think it’s the type of album where you can put all of the songs in different playlists you have. Like, there’s songs that are perfect for driving or being on the bus or the train, or there’s songs that are perfect for pre-drinks with your mates. There’s songs that are perfect for waking up and having the first cup of coffee in the morning. Or your last cup of tea before you go to bed. There’s cooking songs, there’s dancing in your living room, there’s the song you want to put on when you’re on the dance floor and you want people to dance. I feel like there’s a song for every part of the day.
So I just hope that it’s music that can be a part of your everyday life. Because that’s how I live with my favorite music, my favorite artists and bands. They’re like the soundtrack to my every day, and every day feels a tiny bit more magical when you have that one song that just gives a really nice filter to your life. Do you know what I mean? Like you have the song in your headphones and everything feels a bit more… Woo! And that’s how I hope the album will make people feel.
[EMBED TK]
How to Let Go Artwork:
How to Let Go Tracklist:
01. It Gets Dark
02. Burning Bridges
03. Risk of Getting Hurt
04. Thank Me Later
05. Mirror
06. Last to Know
07. Dancer
08. A Driver Saved My Night
09. Mistake Like You
10. Bad Life (with Bring Me the Horizon)
11. Grow
12. High Note
Sigrid Talks Leveling Up and Letting Go on Sophomore Album How to Let Go
Glenn Rowley
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