Dagny This northern light is set to burn bright
Songwriter Dagny hails from a musical hotbed 350km north of the Arctic Circle, but her album is steeped in the sounds of summer
Norwegian singer Dagny is looking like a very hot tip for a lockdown breakthrough. She has already released a brace of addictive dancepop singles this year in Come Over and recently Somebody and when people hear Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda, an upcoming release, it may become the earworm for the era. Earlier songs such as Backbeat, More More, More and Wearing Nothing stirred interest in the statuesque blonde from Tromso. However, when Katy Perry took inspiration from Dagny’s 2017 single Love Like That for her worldwide hit Never Really Over last year, Dagny went overground.
If you want to pronounce her name like a Norwegian, it’s pronounced ‘Dog Knee’. ‘But Dag- nay is fine too,’ she says. On Friday, she released side A of her album Strangers/Lovers. The second part comes in the autumn. She’s done it this way, she says because the first six songs are full of the joys of spring and summer, like the beginning of a relationship, which is what the songs are about.
‘The first six songs that are kinda light, describing going into a relationship, like going into the summer,’ she says.
‘Then the second part will be reflecting on the end of it like at the end of the summer. It would have been confusing to put them all together in one big bowl, if you like. I want the listener to digest the album part by part.
‘I thought releasing the album in two parts communicates the story a bit better.’
Dagny Norvoll Sandvik’s story began 29 years ago in Tromso over 350 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle. Electronic music duo Röyksopp are also from the city. Dagny’s mother and father are both well-known musicians in the Norwegian jazz music scene. But, she says, it wasn’t inevitable that she would follow her parents into the music business.
‘I think it was actually a bit unexpected,’ she recalls
‘Our home was always filled with music and I think as a kid you dream of what is unreachable instead. Music was just always there. It was only when I was 16 or 17 when I started playing the guitar. I never thought even then that I might become a pop musician. It just kind of happened as I focused more and more on it rather than dance or football.’
You can see from her videos that she excels at dance. The five-foot 10-inch singer is a safe pair of hands in the penalty area too.
‘I was, I am, a very good footballer. I was a goalkeeper,’ she says.
‘Women play football to a very high standard in Norway. It was a hobby at first, but then playing football became more like my ambition. They were going to send me off to this ’keeper camp. Then it became a bit too serious. In the team I played in, people started blaming each other if we lost and it stopped becoming fun. I realised music was what was making me happiest.’
At 29 and having an insight from her parents as to how the music business works, she involves herself completely in how she is presented aurally and visually. It was her idea to present the album as side A and side B six months apart and she likes to plan well ahead. However, the Katy Perry interpolation, which accelerated her career evolution, was as unexpected in a positive sense as Covid-19 was conversely.
‘I didn’t know Katy Perry had done it until they reached out and told us about it,’ Dagny says.
‘My first thought was I’ll believe it when I can actually download it on iTunes. I wouldn’t say I didn’t take it seriously but I was trying to manage my excitement about it. It was funny to be part of something while still kind of being outside looking in, if you know what I mean.
‘It has been really good to be able to think about an album as a whole, not a succession of singles. I can think about how each will be represented visually and promoted. I like to be in a situation where I know what is coming. It’s not good to release a single and then eight months later thinking, “okay, now what?” The coronavirus has been tough. People thought I would want to delay the album but I thought now more than ever people need their spirits lifted and something that they can dance around their room to.’
nDagny: Strangers/Lovers, Side A is out now
‘It was a hobby at first, but then playing football became more like my ambition ’