The buzz on artist’s ink
WITH A NEW TATTOO AND A NEW ALBUM DROPPING, TOVE LO OPENS UP ABOUT WHAT HER BODY ART REALLY MEANS TO HER
Swedish muso Tove Lo has tattoos all over her body that remind her of different places she has visited. On her recent tour of Australia, the Stay High singer got inked by tattoo artist Harley Jones.
“I got a little bunny with a knife in its back,” Lo says.
“I have kind of assigned a different visual character for each song and one of them, for True Romance, it is like inspired by the movie. I think about (character) Alabama Whitman (played by Patricia Arquette in the 1993 movie) and how she is kind of cute but murderous, and so I wanted to get a tattoo that represents that, and that is a bunny with a knife.”
The bunny sits as a permanent reminder of her time in Australia through September, when she was one of the headline acts at the Listen Out Festival.
Jones, of Sydney studio Hunter and Fox, first tattooed Lo in 2019 when she was last in Australia prepandemic.
“I’m very impulsive with my tattoos,” Lo says.
“And I haven’t gotten one in a while. The bunny just popped into my head. They (her tattoos) just become like scars almost from your life, they represent different points in your life, like when you fell over as a kid and have a scar from that. They tell a story and they all mean a lot to me, although I am sometimes like, ‘why did I get that one?’”
Other tattoos on Lo’s body include a lynx on her hand from New York artist Alex McWatt. She also has a scorpion on her shoulder that she got at the age of 17, and the words “happy sad” on her forearm.
A large image of a girl riding a bee, based on the artwork of Mark Ryden titled Clear Hearts Grey Flowers, is on her shoulder, too.
She has no regrets regarding the many ink drawings adorning her body, although would change the bee girl.
“I want to cover this arm, but I find it really hard to figure out what to do around it,” she says. “It would have been easier if I had a bunch of little ones, but it has lasted so well and it just reminds me of a time when I was fighting everyone and nobody believed in me and my music and I was in my weird alternative band (Tremblebee).”
Lo would need a total of 12 tattoos if she were to ink permanent reminders for each of the tracks on her new album, Dirt Femme, released on October 14.
Other songs on her fifth studio album include I’m to Blame, Pineapple Slice, Call on Me, Cute & Cruel and 2 Die 4.
“I’m just so happy with the response so far with the new songs,” she says. “It is a very vulnerable album, a very dramatic album, and I think because I had more time to write this one, it feels like my first album again in a way. I really like that feeling and I feel just a lot of butterflies. I am really proud of this one.”
It is true to form for Lo to deliver emotion and drama. She has in the past been dubbed “the saddest girl in Sweden” thanks to her honest, raw and emotive lyrics.
“It is so not my thing, I am usually so put together,” she laughs. “It is very Swedish of me to want to dig around in the feelings and get to the core of the darkness.”
Despite the dark themes and heavy lyrics, Lo has had huge commercial radio success.
Her other big hits include Talking Body, Cool Girl and Glad He’s Gone.
“If I didn’t feel, like, all the feelings while writing my songs, there would be no point for me to do any of it because that’s like the whole reason I started to begin with,” she says. “And I think it is really important for the reason you start writing music to still be with you.
“That’s the one thing that I like about this album, I think it shows the whole human being that I am. I think also when you’re in the pop genre, people like to put you in this box and get frustrated when you veer off that box, but that is what a human is. We contradict ourselves, we change our minds, we grow, we are destructive and everything in between.
“I have been called the saddest girl in Sweden and (people) say, ‘but you seem really happy’. That is really funny to me because I can have sad feelings and have happy feelings as well. It is not just one line.”
They just become like scars almost from your life, they represent different points in your life