The perfect chaos of Tove Lo: 'Self-destruction is part of the game'

Martin Robinson 1 minute ago COMMENTS Bar Liam Gallagher, when you meet wild music stars, it’s usually the case that they’re surprisingly soft-spoken and considerate in person, at least when on album promotion duties. So it is with Tove Lo , who we meet at the Standard hotel (no relation) and find her a model of poise and dry humour; a cool customer. A surprise, because Tove Lo was a messy brat pop girl when Charli XCX was a mere twinkle in her vape’s eye.

Filthy lyrics? Clothes-shedding? Bisexuality? Banging tunes? Terrifying straight men? Lo’s been doing it for 15 years. And with the world in love with Charli, Slayyyter and the new wave of dancefloor-filling maniacs, the timing for Lo to release her first album in four years, Estrus, is perfect… yet Lo, grappling with shifts in her life, says she felt intensely vulnerable making it, “like a crab without its shell”.

The problem? Her life had become stable. “I always write from such a personal place and the difference with this is the first album I’ve written when I’ve been in a relationship for this long. I’m not writing about the beginning of things or the end of a thing. I’ve been with the same person for nine years.”

Tove Lo Charlie Denis) Yes, this party girl elder is settled down with her husband, creative director Charlie Twaddle, something which has brought a fear of losing her edge. “The chaos is still very present,” she qualifies, “but it’s not affecting relationships as much as it used to. I’m more conscious of stopping before I cross the line, although I would say my line is probably a bit further away than most people’s. But it’s been good for my creativity because it taps into another nuance of being an impulsive, messy girl.”

Estrus works with the tension of moving into a new phase of life without becoming a sanitised version of yourself. She says, “I’m being told that I’m not allowed to make any more mistakes or my time for self-exploration is up. I’m just so not there.”

This record is hardly a rocking-chair country album. It’s more that her kind of club music has become physical, emotional and existential.

“I’m not saying it’s wrong to be a responsible person, it’s just I’m not ready for that. Naturally, being in my late thirties, I see where other people are going, but being creative and someone who hates routine… I’m wondering, am I on the right trajectory? These philosophical things are coming in, but also, I just want to live and not think about the future. Luckily, my partner’s very similar. Family, all those adult long life choices, are coming into play and it’s freaking me out. That’s where we’re at: freaking out.”

She wonders if she’s having an early mid-life crisis. Lo grew up in a nice suburb in Stockholm, and was always in bands at school, always writing songs. Coming out of school she began working on her own career as a pop star; by her mid-twenties she was a songwriter in Los Angeles — writing for Girls Aloud among many others — while building her own solo act, which was singularly provocative and uncompromising.