The Lykke Li story

Mum was a punk, dad a touring world musician; she's been writing songs since childhood, and always wanted to be a star. Swedish songstress Lykke Li talks to Jim Carroll.

ACT ONE, scene one, Groningen, early January. It's the Eurosonic festival and there are hundreds of bands prowling the streets of this lovely Dutch town in search of attention.

At the Grand Theatre at the top of the main drag, Lykke Li Zachrison is as nervous as a bag of cats. Tonight, the Swedish pop star will play songs from her debut album, Youth Novels, for the first time. There's nowhere to run.

She walks up to the microphone and starts to sing.

She's done a lot of singing and gigging since. Sprawled on a sofa in a Dublin hotel on the day the nation says no to the Lisbon Treaty, Lykke Li can't remember how many gigs there have been this year. Too many stages, too many microphones.

She can remember some gigs clearly, though. The one at the trade show stage at South By Southwest in Texas stands out because of the strong smell of garlic in the air. She can recall the gig the night before this because she has a raging hangover today as a result.

You ask her when her next day off is and she has to think for a bit. "June 18th, I think. But there will probably be phone interviews to do." When you're as hot as Lykke Li is right now, there are always phone interviews to do and you're tired, exhausted, fed up and bored with all that now entails.

"I thought I'd just release the album in Sweden, tour in Sweden and do the next album in Sweden," she says. "I didn't think I'd end up talking about myself all day to people all over the world. I'm tired of myself at this stage."

The reason for such interest in the twentysomething Swede comes down to that album. Youth Novelsis an exotic, intoxicating, futuristic set of pop songs on which Li and producer Bjorn Yttling (Peter, Bjorn and John) work wry, sharp lyrics into hugely adventurous tunes. It's a real one-off, a new artist reinventing pop without making too much of a fuss about it.

Li sees Youth Novelsas her take on The Shangri-Las, Dr John, ESG, African pop, Nina Simone and the Fugees. Writing songs from when she was very little, she always knew she'd get there in the end. She was that kind of kid.

"I wanted to be Bob Dylan, but it took me a while to learn not to throw away everything I wrote just because it wasn't as good as Bob Dylan," she says.

"I would be like 'fuck, fuck, fuck, this is not as good as Blowin' In the Wind'. It took me time to develop patience and be myself. I always wanted to be someone else, and I still wish I could write stories like Dylan."

Those stories could well be about her own life. Her mother, Kärsti Stiege, was in a Swedish female punk band, while her father, Johan Zachrisson, was in various world music combos. Shortly after Lykke Li was born, her family swapped safe and secure Stockholm for a life on the road, moving between Portugal, Nepal, Indian and Morocco before eventually returning to Sweden.

By the time Lykke Li left school, she had made her mind up what she wanted to do. She didn't really want to be a dancer, despite following that trade since seeing Michael Jackson and Madonna dancing in music videos on TV.

No, she wanted to go to New York and be a pop star. "In New York, you could be incognito and have a smoke and a drink without anyone caring about you were doing." She spent a couple of months there, had a whale of a time living in Brooklyn and trying to play in public. One reason why she liked New York was because, well, it wasn't Sweden.

"It was a place where you are allowed to be yourself. It was full of every single nationality in the world and people don't give a fuck about what you do. I was out every night, taking in all of these things.

"In Sweden, everyone is white, they're beautiful, they're tall, they've got money, they've got nice nine-to-five jobs, they have a nice steak for dinner, they have a quick shag and then they go to sleep." It's fair to say that Lykke Li will not be called upon by the Swedish tourism board to sell her homeland.

"I shouldn't be negative about my country, but there are a lot of things wrong with it. If you have money and you're well-educated and you're white, it's fine. But if you're black or from another country, it's very hard.

"Sure, the government look after you and take care of everything and you'll never be homeless , but that doesn't mean you're happy. I know three people - three friends of mine - who killed themselves last year. We have one of the highest suicide rates in Europe. People don't care about each other. They don't say hello to each other on the street or look out for each other. It's a very cold culture. You're not allowed to be different."

The antipathy seems to be mutual. "I've been getting a lot of shit in the Swedish press from girls talking about my sense of style instead of talking about my music." She then stops, takes a look at what's she is wearing and bursts out laughing. "OK, I don't look great today with this big parka and no make-up and a bad hangover. I'm usually better turned out than this."

After New York, she returned to Sweden and hooked up with Bjorn Yttling, who liked her early demos and wanted to work with her. Then Young Folkshappened, and Peter, Bjorn John got on planes and chased that hit all over the world.

Back home, Lykke Li went job-hunting. "I worked in nursing homes and old people's homes wiping poo from people's arses. Meanwhile, I was getting emails from Bjorn going 'I'm in LA' or 'I'm in Tokyo' or 'we just sold 200,000 records'. My life just sucked."

All that has changed. Yttling returned (you can only get so far with a whistling song), recordings were done and Youth Novelswas released. Now, it's all happening and Lykke Li is starting to adjust to a new reality.

She's able for it. "I know I do a lot of complaining and it is fucking tough, but it is what I want. What's hardest is that you have to do everything yourself. I never trust people to do things, because they never do. It's all up to me."

Act one, scene 76, Dublin, June. Lykke Li and her band take to the stage of a packed Sugar Club. There's no reticence this time out. She tells the crowd not to sit there like she's the Dalai Lama, and to get into it. Just when you think Little Bitis the night's anthem, they do Breaking It Upand everyone is suddenly looking at a star. An encore of A Tribe Called Quest's Can I Kick It?and she's gone. There may be another hangover tomorrow.

Youth Novels is out now. For more, see www.myspace.com/lykkeli or www.lykkeli.com