Tove Lo has spoken to NME about her upcoming sixth album ’Estrus’, as well as being inspired by Robyn and Lykke Li, her journey from depression through therapy, and the legacy of smash hit single ‘Habits (Stay High)’.
Previewed by singles ‘I’m Your Girl Right?’, ‘DNH’, and Stromae collaboration ‘Des Fleurs’, ‘Estrus’ marks Tove Lo’s first solo record in four years – the longest break she’s ever taken between studio albums, thanks to a period of writer’s block following her 2024 collaborative project with SG Lewis, ‘Heat’.
“After that, I felt kind of creatively satisfied for a while,” Tove Lo told NME, “and then when I started to do this record, I was like: ‘Man, I don’t even know what I want to say. Am I ready to open up again? I don’t know’.”
Pressing pause on writing for six months, Tove Lo later settled in the small Swedish fishing village she spent summers growing up, working with longtime collaborator Ludvig Söderberg. Here, the album began to take shape, with the ’80s-imbued synth-belter ‘Die For My Art With A Lonely Heart’ being one of the first tracks to emerge in the writing process.
‘Estrus’ is a floor-filling collection that sees club beats and slinky basslines coupled with the Swedish pop pioneer’s deeply personal pen and soaring pop melodies. Inspired by Robyn, The Knife and Lykke Li, these are songs meant for the stage.
With preparations well underway for a live show that will “blow everyone’s minds”, Tove Lo was especially looking forward to performing ‘I’m Your Girl Right?’ thanks to “the punk energy and feral-ness of that song”.
Check out the rest of NME‘s interview with Tove Lo below, where she also told us about writing ‘Estrus’, how the fishing village she spent her childhood summers at has become a creative hub, working with The 1975‘s George Daniel, and beating her demons through therapy.
NME: Hi, Tove Lo! You’re about to release your sixth record ‘Estrus’. How did you land on its name?
Tove Lo: “It actually took me some time. I was searching for a word that felt very animalistic and primal, but also vulnerable and introspective. I knew there was a word out there, but I didn’t know the word until it fell into my lap. I was looking through these books in my studio in LA – that I go to when I’m dry for lyrics and nothing comes to mind – and this book in particular was called Feline. It has descriptions of cat animals, and it said: ‘When a feline is in heat, they’re in estrus’, and in parentheses it said: ‘(female mammal in heat)’.
“It’s that frustrated, animalistic impulse, the energy that this album has. Then in the description it also said, while that animal’s ready to procreate – ready to fuck, basically! It’s looking for a mate; it’s also feeling a lot of vulnerability and anxiety, a little bit not recognising themselves. [It’s] every emotion that I had while making this album, so it was kind of like the universe provided it for me.”
Going through all these feelings like vulnerability, how much of that was inspired by going back to the fishing village you went to growing up?
“A lot of it is. I kind of have to go there to start any album process now, because it is a place where there are a lot of emotional triggers in both beautiful and dark ways. I’ve always gone back there through everything in life – first just in the summer as a kid, so I had a lot of firsts there: first kiss, first time being drunk, first time having my heart broken.
“And then I went there when I was completely burned out after my first album. I’ve had these moments where I’ve come back to that place. A lot of emotional turmoil comes up to the surface when I go there; I get reminded of things that I’ve been through in life, and then that ties into new things. It’s one of the few places where I don’t mind being grounded, and also I go in the off-season, so there’s no distractions, no people. We’re just in this writing bubble, and I think that’s really good for me, who’s easily pulled into trouble.”
You’ve reflected that this village has seen you at every stage of your life: “growing up, being depressed, struggling with my eating disorder, going through break-ups, family drama, loss, everything.” What’s your relationship like with teenage Tove Lo now?
“I still feel very in touch with her, until I read one of my old journals, when I’m like: ‘What was going on here?’, just in terms of how I expressed myself. But there’s a feeling of: she would be very proud that I got through all my body issues and ended up in such a good place with my body, because that is something she never thought she would get through. That’s something that I find quite beautiful and feel proud of, and then sometimes I can be like: ‘Oh, I wish I didn’t let it take so many years of my life’.
“But I also feel like maybe because of it, I have a way better relationship to my body than if I hadn’t. A woman doing what I do and how I express myself, you get a lot of love. But there’s also a lot of mean comments, and very negative attitudes towards being so sexually open and naked and unretouched and natural and everything. I wouldn’t have been able to handle that if I hadn’t gone through so much therapy and gotten to a really good place with the shape of me.”
What was the journey like to get to this point of being so comfortable with and proud of your body?
“I mean, it was a long journey. It started with therapy to break the eating disorder habits and the pathways of where your brain goes, because it’s all habits and control. And once you get those into a better place, then you have to deal with what’s actually going on, because it’s usually very unrelated to food, or what you look like.
“So I just did so many years of therapy. I still do therapy. I’m still checking in with my therapist, because I think being able to break those worst-case scenario spirals about yourself has been really helpful, and I have tools to do that. That’s made it so that I can go through all this madness without ending up in that place again – in terms of the inner saboteur that’s still very present, but I can handle her.”
Would you have any advice for people who are going through similar things and are on that recovery journey?
“The only thing I can really say is just open up and talk to people close to you. That is the scariest part, because once you say out loud that you have an issue, then you can’t hide it anymore. You have to do something about it. But that is the very, very first step to actually get better – to tell someone close to you what you’re going through, and then let them help you get help.
“That first step of telling someone is the hardest because then you’re not in control of it anymore; you can’t control how you hide it. That is the first scary step, but that’ll start to change everything.”
Robyn and Lykke Li were big inspirations for this record. How have they inspired you on ‘Estrus’ and throughout your career?
“I listen to all those Swedish acts all the time still, and it’s so funny that I had them on my inspo list, Lykke and Robyn. And then they both put out new albums this year too, and I was just like, ‘What are the odds, this is so amazing?’ I just got blessed with even more new, amazing music from them, and they both stayed so true to their world. It’s very impressive to me.
“With Robyn, the way that she can just [write something that] sounds so simple, but it’s the most heart-wrenching line of all time. There’s so many lines, and ‘Dancing On My Own’ obviously being one that’s just the ultimate sad banger. But then I also think there’s this line in ‘Be Mine’: ‘It’s a good thing tears never show in the pouring rain‘, and I can just see her, in the streets of Stockholm in the rain crying, and I’m just like, ‘Oh, this is so visually beautiful’. They’re the artists that made me dream about making my own music, I guess.”
You’ve become a modern pop pioneer, especially when it comes to body and sexual positivity. How far do you think things have kind of come in terms of acceptance?
“So much further. If I compare it to my first year of being who I still am, I had to defend myself so much. And now I feel like there’s another level of respect for it, and it’s not assumed that I’m an idiot just because I’m sexual. Because I remember feeling that a little bit in the beginning sometimes, with certain questions I would get asked. It sounds like you think I don’t have anything real to say, and it’s not like that anymore at all. I feel there’s way more love for and acceptance of the messy girl.”
Who are some fellow messy girls coming up in the industry who you love?
“The first one that comes to mind is Slayyyter. She’s done her thing for a long time, but I feel like she’s finally getting the attention she deserves in my opinion. I think she’s really just found her tone and her thing, and she’s just so cool and deserving of her moment.”
Outside of your own career, you’ve written with a lot of artists, including working with The 1975’s George Daniel on his debut ‘Screen Cleaner’. How did that happen?
“Me and [producer and artist] TimFromTheHouse, who does a lot for my album, we have our side project Associanu that we work on. Me and him had made the song where I’m singing in Swedish, and then he and George make a lot of music together. George is a friend of mine as well, and George actually signed our DJ collective Associanu to his label, so there’s a very in-house family dance music vibe there.
“So [George] and Tim reworked that track, and George re-produced it with my vocals. And he’s like, ‘Do you mind if I use this on this song?’, and I was like, ‘Of course not, let’s go for it. Sounds so sick!’ It all happened organically without being in the same room, even though we are in the same room often as friends – just not in the studio.”
Is he someone you’ve written with since?
“Actually no, but I’d love to. He’s amazing.”
‘Habits (Stay High)’ – which you first released in 2013 – has become such an enduring hit. What’s your relationship like with that song now?
“It obviously means something different to me now, but it’s still… I mean, I love it. It’s a song that changed my life. So for me, now it’s connected to a very sort of endearing euphoria. Whereas when I wrote it, it was like, ‘My heart is falling apart!’ I have a warm relationship to that song now, versus having a heartbreak relationship to it; but I love playing it live, and it kind of takes me back to how it changed my life.”
In recent years, we’ve seen artists like Charli XCX and Zara Larsson release incredible remix albums. If you were going to put out a remix version of ‘Estrus’, who would you want to be on it?
“I actually know for certain that I won’t. For some reason, I would have a hard time hearing someone change anything about these songs, and I’m usually very open to that. But for some reason, with this album, I don’t want to have anyone do that.
“I might do one or two remixes that work for the song specifically, but I have a lot of dream collaborators that I want for deluxe or additional songs that are in the ‘Estrus’ world but are new songs.”
Who would be on that list?
“The dream list would be Robyn, ADÉLA, Slayyyter, Charli [XCX], Wet Leg, Doechii. I fucking love Doechii and would love to do something with her. I think she’s so fucking badass. And who am I missing now? Let me think… Zara [Larsson], obviously!”
‘Estrus’ is your sixth record. What did you learn about yourself making it?
“I learned that I’m OK with not knowing where I’ll end up in life. That I don’t have a future plan, that I’m luckily with someone who also doesn’t care about having a future plan. That it’s OK to not have everything together at this point in life.”
How would you like people to feel when they hear this record on release day?
“I want them to feel like I ripped their heart open and poured glitter on it; and that they’re coming out of some sweaty room where they’re like, ‘What just happened in there?’ And they won’t have any more answers, but maybe feel a bit more understood.”
‘Estrus’ is out on September 18 via Pretty Swede Records. Tove Lo’s North American tour kicked off in Nashville last night (Tuesday September 15), before she rolls into Mexico in October and the UK and Europe in November. Visit here for tickets and more information.
The post Tove Lo talks ‘Estrus’ and the power of therapy: “There’s way more love for and acceptance of the messy girl” appeared first on NME.
