Little Jinder is singing in English again.

After her last album the native pop star Josefine Jinder decided to take a hiatus. Now she’s back, but the language has changed – she’s putting out her first music in English since 2013. Her new mixtape Little Jinder’s Unreleased Romance lands on June 12

18 An unreleased romance

It’s the warmest day of the year so far and I’m standing at Årsta Torg waiting for Josefine Jinder, aka Little Jinder. Neither of us had realised that today was actually a holiday, but luckily her favourite café is open anyway.

We’ve barely sat down at a bench outside the café before a woman with her young daughter approaches us to thank Josefine for her music. Josefine cracks up and thanks her for the nice compliment. The mother asks her to continue making music, especially for future generations. ”I’ll try,” Josefine affirms.

In the press release for Little Jinder’s Unreleased Romance she’s quoted saying “Seven years ago, before I released my first song in Swedish I didn’t even think a life in little corny Stockholm was an alternative, but the music would keep me here. All dreams might not be supposed to come true. But it’s still dreams that keep me writing.”

This makes me wonder what alternatives were more appealing seven years ago. “In a way I contradict myself, because I actually did release an album in English when I was 19. It came out through a New York label and the idea was that I was going to live there or in London. To become one of those kinds of people. But I think I did that thing too early. I was too young and too crap, but incredibly naïve and I had a lot of confidence. It didn’t fly, which made me crash down to earth pretty hard. It wasn’t until I began writing in Swedish that it worked, so in a way there wasn’t any other alternative. Especially in the beginning, I thought so much bigger, that I wasn’t only going to be an artist who sang in Swedish, she explains.

Isn’t a prerequisite to being an artist having really good confidence and being a bit naïve?

Yeah. And that’s why it becomes harder as the years go by. When I was young it just came naturally. Now I have become everything I despised back then, like ‘who am

I to say something?’. I almost feel ashamed when I see interviews with myself, how obnoxious I was and acting all emotional. It becomes so incredibly embarrassing in hindsight. Success usually comes hand in in hand with some sort of humility, and it can be a bit hard when you have been an underdog who said fuck you to everything and everyone. I can still think that I was right, but perhaps I didn’t have to say it. The pop scene is actually still so fucking boring.

Do you feel like it was a loss, staying in little Stockholm?

I can sometimes feel like I have missed out on having that life I was supposed to. I thought it would be cooler to live, that life was greater. But what is that? An illusion, if anything. At the same time I know that life looks pretty much the same regardless of if you’re sitting in New York or Stockholm.

In November of last year, Little Jinder said goodbye to her music in Swedish, and at the same time the country. During a farewell concert at Mosebacke in Stockholm, she announced that she was moving to Paris. “The idea was that I was going to move there and have some sort of fresh start. But I fell in love with a person in Stockholm. So after a month in Paris I gave up and moved back home again to be with him,” she says.

With Jinder’s CV of the last few years in mind, it’s kind of understandable that she would have the feeling that she had outgrown Sweden. Apart from three albums, wellreceived by both critics and the general public, she’s also made several appearances as both a host and a guest in various TV shows.

How have you changed as a person over the last seven years?

I think I am more or less the same person, but that my traits have changed to a certain extent. My need to be assertive is still there as a motivating force but I’m not as desperate to always get a receipt of having been seen. When I received my first Swedish Grammy I said

something about that it made me feel like I finally was allowed to exist, today I’m more wondering for whom I exist. At the same time, I cried yesterday because I was releasing this mixtape.

Why did you cry?

I was questioning why I’m confusing myself and people around me. Shouldn’t I just focus on writing songs in Swedish and release that ‘big, real’ album?Now it’s obviously a record in English, but I want people to have a more relaxed attitude towards it, and not think that it has to be so tremendously conceptual.

Do you have the freedom to do what you want?

My record label probably don’t understand anything of what I’m doing. And that doesn’t exactly make the process more fun. But after five years and three albums, I really needed a break from my own head, and to just have some fun. I had also completely emptied myself, lyric-wise.

Have you grown tired of your hits?

I’m not tired of my songs when I have a band with me and we do a live show. Had I just been travelling around with backing tracks and playing Super 8 and Vita Bergen, I would not have been able to listen to another second of it. Here’s where humility comes into it too, I become moved when we play live and people have come to see you. You’re reflected in the audience all the time. It’s not that terrible to play something that people like - on the contrary it can give you a sense of security to have something with you that you know works.

Is this the direction your artistry will continue going?

Absolutely. Perhaps I will even release something under another moniker. At the same time, I’m extremely eager to make my next Swedish album.

Wasn’t that exactly the whole idea with this?

Yeah. I succeeded.

Early in your career you were called Sweden’s only rock star. Have you ever felt pressure to live up to that?

I think you call everyone that. But no, I have never felt forced to live up to that. On the other hand it has been fairly disturbing for the people I have been around. My lifestyle during these years fitted pretty well with that [description]. I think I, surprisingly well, have gotten away with no repercussions considering how I have lived. It’s a miracle I haven’t done jail time. It’s equally insane that I have friends and am socially accepted. If people only knew the things I’ve done.

Have you killed anyone?

Not that I know of.

In a previous interview, five years ago, she spoke about “how hard it is being a rock star today. And that all the artists are ridiculous, they collect their kids at the nursery, no one takes drugs or parties for real”. We naturally come to talk about the fact that she recently revealed herself to be pregnant.

How do you feel about that old quote today?

When I said that, I meant there is no mystique anymore. I still want it to be like a dream, that artists sit on a pedestal and are a bit unapproachable. Not walking around the neighbourhood with a kid in a buggy. And I don’t think taking drugs is particularly fun either, I was just disappointed that no one was interesting. The biggest thing I feel about being pregnant is that it’s such a responsibility. Love and responsibility. That’s probably what I have been missing, when nothing else mattered and everything just was up to me. I think I’ll be happy with something else getting all the focus. To be pregnant also takes some of the edge off this pandemic. I would probably have been more neurotic if I was single with a cancelled tour in a oneroom apartment on Södermalm while people were dying around me. Sure, it affects me now too, not least economically. But I’m having a child in September, so everything else feels a bit ‘whatever’.