We Lykke Her, We Really Lykke Her
Ben Barna
May 01, 2008
The release of Santogold’s justifiably-hyped album was like a starter’s pistol being shot off—and the race to become the next M.I.A. is on!
NYMag.com just named Santi, Robyn, Uffie, and Yelle as the top competitors for a throne we doubt Maya is even ready to relinquish. “The next M.I.A” is a compact (if somewhat lazy) way to describe fashion-forward, beat-driven, female solo artists who get heavy coverage by websites named after farming tools. But if we can all on agree what we’re talking about here—an “electro-pop hopeful vying to be Pitchfork's next favorite commercially disappointing MySpace phenomenon," as NY Mag puts it—then we’d like to enter our own racer as well, Lykke Li.
Europeans and blog-hounds may already be familiar with the Swedish songbird’s lo-fi pop sounds, but Lykke is still just a not-sure-how-to-pronounce-it name on our side of the sea. Her first single “Little Bit” is a perfectly pretty piece of moony electro, that sounds as good in the studio as it does on the street. With unashamed lyrics like “"And for you I keep my legs apart/ and forget about my tainted heart,” the song is a submission to infatuation. And one visit to her MySpace page proves the catchy inflections of “Little Bit” are no fluke. Songs like “Breaking it Up” and “I’m Good I’m Gone” could easily have stepped up as first singles. The 22-year-old’s debut album Youth Novels (produced by Bjorn, the filling between Peter and John) will be released in the U.S. on May 6, to coincide with a small North American jaunt. Music critics will undoubtedly sprinkle praise all over her album (we predict an 8.3 on Pitchfork), which in turn, may not even chart.
But Li is part of a very special and new stable of female pop stars—mostly from Europe—who manage to make cool, credible tunes without the help of Timbaland or Pharrell (Li collaborates with Swedish producer Kleerup). Don’t get us wrong, hers is music for the masses, but the masses have to seek it out. In a commercial landscape where hype machines are scanning waves for the next “someone,” Lykke Li should be perfectly content being just who she is. So on second thought, we withdraw her from the M.I.A. race. Santogold was probably going to win anyway.
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