“We’re banging pots and pans/To make you understand/We gotta bury you man,” as some of the more toned down lyrics to Sonic Youth’s regime-obliterating “Youth Against Fascism” go. Over a decade ago, and seven albums into their career, the prolific noise band from New York City wreaked havoc on the establishment, tapping into a confrontational punk spirit that they flirted with throughout their career. It was nails-on-a-chalkboard unignorable. And as a young teenager growing up in a suburb of Odense, Denmark, it was one of the many songs that inspired a political awakening in MØ—born Karen Marie Ørsted—and sparked a lifelong relationship between her and Sonic Youth.
Transitioning from the Spice Girls fandom of her adolescent years, she’d been looking for some new form of artistic guidance in her life. “When you become a teenager, everything gets turned upside down. Your head is just exploding,” she remembers. “They were the first band I fell in love with when I became a teenager; the first band to kind of show me the way.”
Now at 25, MØ sits with her hair pulled back in her signature high-braided ponytail in her Copenhagen apartment, where she moved in 2012 to immerse herself in the city’s musical environment, miles removed from the town where she grew up. There is just under a month left until her debut album No Mythologies to Follow arrives on March 10. We named it an album to look out for this year because since 2012, she’s impressed us with a unique perspective on Scandinavian pop music, an ear for intriguing production, and commanding vocals. We’re not the only ones taking notice. The fanfare is a positive thing, even though MØ’s been holed up in her room on Skype for round-the-clock interviews with publications several time zones away. As caught up as she is, though, she’s equally concerned about her neighbors. Several people close in age also occupy the apartment complex where she lives, and for the last year and a half she’s been worried about what kind of future they, and the rest of the country’s younger generations, will wind up with.
She’s worried because, unlike the U.S., Denmark adheres to a more socialist political system that involves the Scandinavian welfare model, granting free and easy access to things like university education and healthcare in exchange for skyrocketing tax rates. Nearly a million Danes received either public or cash benefits in 2013, according to Statistics Denmark. That translates to 17.8% of their population (compared to 4.1% of the U.S. population) on welfare. “In Denmark you get money for studying and you get money if you’re sick. You get money even if you can’t find work,” MØ explains. “Of course it’s a good thing that people get help if they’re incapable, but there’s always a dark side of the moon because people tend to exploit that and use it in bad ways.”
Sonic Youth was the first band I fell in love with when I became a teenager; the first band to kind of show me the way.
The outcome of that exploitation is what she later refers to as “lifestyle diseases”—depression, laziness, and a suffocating fog of stagnation that young people in Denmark can’t seem to shake. “They have all these opportunities and everyone will just throw money ahead of them. They just get left to themselves in a way.” But MØ was once also on the receiving end of government assistance as a student at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where she developed the DIY cut-and-scan design skills put to use for the attention-grabbing artwork on her Bikini Daze EP and her debut album. Relocating to the epicenter of government in the nation’s capital has since contributed to a growing internal conflict for MØ.
“Sometimes when I talk about all these societal issues, it’s not that I want to be preaching. I’m not a saint myself. You always take what you can get. I thought it was cool to get money while I was studying,” she reasons. “But I don’t necessarily say that that’s a good thing. I think it’s important that people have something to fight for and if you get everything served on a table, it’s hard for you to find that fire to keep you going. And I think we all need a passion.”
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MØ found a kindred fighting spirit during a stop in Russia last summer. She’d been following Pussy Riot’s story closely, and couldn’t ignore the political implications of performing in the same country that she believed had wrongly imprisoned women so inspirational to her. “[Freedom of speech] has been a big part of me for many years. So, I was in Russia to play and I kind of felt a bit weird about it, but at the same time I was curious.” To demonstrate her solidarity and silent protest, she got an outline of Pussy Riot’s symbolic ski mask tattooed on her inner left bicep after the show.
I think it’s important that people have something to fight for and if you get everything served on a table, it’s hard for you to find that fire to keep you going.
But Russia wasn’t the only country MØ left her mark on in 2013. In the middle of writing No Mythologies to Follow, MØ played a series of festival dates, one-off solo shows, and opened for both AlunaGeorge and Major Lazer across Europe. It wasn’t the conventional in-studio lockdown album process, but it was the right fit for MØ, especially since she witnessed firsthand how constant travel drives the organic creativity of her “XXX 88” collaborator Diplo. “He’s my idol,” she gushes. “All the time, he’s about making new music and finding upcoming artists all over the world, and just putting people together and doing stuff. He’s just so innovative. We’re creating all the time and being interested all the time in making new music and fresh sounds. It’s like throwing some balls up in the air and just doing it.”
Though much of the album was written and recorded in Glasgow, Slovakia, New York, Los Angeles, or whatever random hotel room on the road she’d checked into for the night, MØ nearly always revisited her beginnings to track her vocals. Years ago, with Sonic Youth’s low-maintenance mentality ingrained in her way of making art, she borrowed her mom’s blankets to build a soundproof “vocal box” in her childhood bedroom at her parent’s house—a room that once exploded with Spice Girls and Ronan Keating posters which inspired the whimsical visuals for “XXX 88.” From her old bedroom, MØ emailed dozens of files containing demos with vocal arrangements to her executive producer Ronni Vindahl, who then carved them into what will be heard on her debut album.
To access the kind of upbeat, jazzy influence that shines in her latest single “Don’t Wanna Dance,” MØ says being at home made for the perfect setting, isolated with just a piano and memories of the drunken night before that represent what she describes as the “fuck-it-all” high of being young. “I was visiting because I had to go out with some of my old friends and we were out in the city late at night,” she recalls. “I got home very late, and my parents picked me up from the city so I could sleep at their house. And then when I was almost waking up in the afternoon, I actually dreamt the melody for the chorus. I woke up and was just like, ‘Oh, I gotta write a song.’ And I ran to the piano.”
With No Mythologies to Follow, MØ absorbs youth culture and uses her political sensibilities to create a manifesto dressed up with spacey electro-pop production and warm, soulful vocals. It’s a language relatable to her neighbors and the thousands of young faces she’ll see on this year’s tour, which includes what could be a breakthrough appearance at next month’s SXSW. The album speaks to the very millennial-centric experience of what it means to be a 20-something living in Denmark: spoon-fed yet starved.
With this music, I wanna say, ‘Hey man, life is fucking hard but we can do it together.
As a young musician still living that life to a degree, MØ symbolizes youth, even carrying it in her name. MØ is the Danish word for “maiden,” which she says fits her lyrical universe. In that universe, she’s constructed a kind of reassuring camaraderie in the uphill battle to having a fulfilled life for those who still cling to a sense of passion in spite of a society that encourages settling for less, for what’s easy. “We don’t have any guidelines to life. And we kind of have to find ourselves and find out who we are in the middle of all this, and it’s just a jungle. With this music, I wanna say, ‘Hey man, life is fucking hard but we can do it together.’”
Behind MØ’s computer, the wall in her Copenhagen apartment is decorated with a collage of posters from the band she formed in high school shortly after Sonic Youth showed her the way—a reminder to stay restless and invigorated. Already wary of becoming content with having finished her first LP, the next one’s already underway. She’s got another window open next to Skype, an 11-file document that says plainly: “second album file.” MØ won’t become complacent, and she won’t stop fighting for the youth.
No Mythologies to Follow will be out in the U.S. March 11 via RCA. Pre-order the album here.
