AN ICON IN THE MAKING
She’s the BBC Music Sound of 2018 and everyone from Lorde to Annie Mac loves her. Hannah Flint meets Sigrid, pop’s brave new voice
sigrid is sitting on the edge of her chair, a wide smile on her make-up-free, freckled face as I rattle through a list of her achievements over the last 12 months. There was her feminist hit last year, Don’t Kill My Vibe, written after she was belittled in a recording studio by male music executives. A performance at Glastonbury that had critics predicting she’d headline the festival one day. Praise from Lorde, who put Don’t Kill My Vibe on her public Homemade Dynamite Spotify playlist, as well as Annie Mac, who has called Sigrid ‘literally the perfect pop star’. When we meet, she’s still amazed at being named BBC Music Sound of 2018 in January.
That’s all despite having only released five (admittedly very good) songs to date. Her takeaway from the last year? ‘Flying’s a huge thing,’ says the 21-year-old Norwegian after some thought. ‘ When I was growing up, I found going on a flight really stressful. And now it just happens so much that you have to get used to it.’
Not quite the response I was expecting, especially from a young woman who turned being patronised by men into an anthem that had women twice her age screaming ‘ YAAAAS’ at their radios. Needless to say, there will be many, many more plane journeys: her entire UK tour, which starts next month, is already sold out and her US dates have been so popular that she’s had to ‘upgrade’ venues for bigger crowds.
‘It’s mental,’ she says. ‘It’s an honour. I feel very lucky. I’m just hoping it lasts. No matter how hard you work, you have to be lucky and be in the right place at the right time.’
It takes approximately six minutes in Sigrid’s company before I understand why the last 12 months have happened for her. She’s astoundingly confident and greets me with a firm handshake. Her eyes sparkle with unapologetic ambition and drive, yet she never veers into arrogance. In fact, she’s faultlessly charming and polite, although I sense she’d hate to be called sweet (‘ What always annoys me is how people are, like,
“Oh, you’re so small! How do you have that voice?” It’s like, why not?’).
She certainly appears every inch the Millennial pop star, with bold eyebrows and a relaxed, Scandi-inspired dress code. Then there’s the music: her songs are pure, infectious pop anthems, which compel you to listen on repeat. But in an era where we expect more from our musicians than just good songs (see the backlash against Taylor Swift for refusing to condemn Donald Trump), Sigrid, with her message of female strength and empowerment, feels like the right pop star for now. In Don’t Kill My Vibe, for example, she sings, ‘ You shut me down/you like the control/ You speak to me like I’m a child/try to hold it down, I know the answer/i can’t shake it off and you feel threatened by me.’
Women frequently tell Sigrid that those words have helped them end unsatisfying relationships or have given them the courage to stand up to patronising male colleagues. ‘ That’s what I love about that song,’ she says. ‘People can turn it into little stories that they can relate to. I wanted to write it as a universal message.’
Sigrid Solbakk Raabe grew up surrounded by lakes and mountains in Bergen, Norway. Her determination today, she says, was learned from her formidable mother, who encouraged her to try theatre, music and dance as a child. But she owes the birth of her songwriting to her older brother, Tellef. At 16, he gave her a two-week deadline to finish a song after she’d been trying to write for six months ‘without ever finishing anything’. By the time she had written Don’t Kill My Vibe, multiple record labels in London were desperate to sign her.
‘Her voice grabbed me and I was really taken by her and the message of Don’t Kill My Vibe,’ says Annie Christensen at Island Records, part of Universal, who won Sigrid over despite fierce competition from other major labels. ‘I knew I had to work with her because she is so talented. There’s a bit of a selfish aspect, because I knew she’d make my working life interesting and fun.’
Despite the excitement around her, Sigrid insists those who know her best are still ‘shocked’ that she’s a pop star. ‘I was very shy growing up,’ she says. ‘Doing theatre changed everything because suddenly I got into the role on stage.’ Back then, she saw herself becoming a teacher, or maybe studying law. ‘But I’m happy I did this,’ she adds, somewhat redundantly.
She speaks perfect English with a comical lilt of an Irish accent. ‘I’m embarrassed by it!’ she laughs. ‘It’s because I’m from the West coast of Norway, but it sounds like I’m pretending to be Irish.’ She still wants to go to university one day, but mainly to find something new to write about. ‘At some point, I’ll need to find inspiration in something else in my own life. Everything is quite good at the moment, so it’s kind of difficult to know what to write about. I would love to study maybe history or politics. Or geology! I love volcanoes and tectonic plates.’
Her closest allies are still her childhood friends, and she lives with her brother in a flat in Bergen. Off-duty, she shuns parties, preferring to write or cycle around her city. Even when she won BBC Music Sound of 2018, celebrations were muted.
‘My celebration is on stage,’ she says, looking almost apologetic. ‘ That’s something my manager told me, and that’s what I want. A party is a party, but being on that stage and playing the songs I’ve been writing with someone else, that just gives me adrenaline that nothing else can give me. It’s just the greatest joy. Sometimes, I feel like I’m trying to be like “I party sometimes!” I don’t.’
It’s a world away from the female pop stars who have preceded her: the wild lifestyle of Amy Winehouse or the sexiness of early Madonna. But Sigrid would far prefer to use her platform for good than for hedonism. ‘It’s a good thing that you’re expected to read the news now and know what’s going on around your own bubble,’ she says. ‘It’s a really good state in pop at the moment, it’s a good development’.
Beyond the tour, the next few months will be spent in her ‘favourite place’ – the studio – writing and recording her upcoming album. But she has no intention of rushing it.
‘ We don’t have a date for it yet. It’ll be out when it’s finished,’ she says matterof-factly. ‘ What comes first is always the music. I would never put anything out that I’m not 100% comfortable with.’
Beyond coming to terms with flying, the last 12 months have also taught Sigrid what her ‘ambition’ is. Meaning? ‘I want to have a love for music. To be able to still have the same piano in 20 years and write songs that I love. I think it’ll be pop music, but I can’t promise anything. I just want to make music that means something, that has a message. And that’s hopefully important to somebody else as well.’
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