Lykke Li: Why Raw means Honest

A conversation with Lykke Li: Exploring non-linear time, psychedelics, the connection with her inner child, and how her artistry transcends the indie sleaze revival

Lykke Li: A Comeback with New Soundscapes

Earlier this year, the 38-year-old artist announced she was working on a comeback. In March, she premiered a lacerating cover of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire as a soundtrack for the Netflix movie Damsel, directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. Two years and a half after, her fifth album Eyeye (2022).

Lykke Li and the Emotional Journey Through Music

Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson chants about the soreness of the human experience. Her urgency to turn heartaches into songs has accompanied millennials’ inner turmoils for almost two decades. Her body of work spans mournful ballads, upbeat pop songs, and audiovisual experimentations. In the seventeen years since she began, Li’s journey through love, grief, loss, and rebirth has defined her place in indie pop.

The Indie Boom and Lykke Li’s Breakthrough Albums

Li’s breakthrough occurred during the indie boom of the mid-late 2000s. Ever since then, she has released five albums, seven EPs, and collaborated with Skrillex, Drake, ASAP Rocky, David Lynch, among others. Over six years, she produced a trilogy of albums – Youth Novels (2008), Wounded Rhymes (2011), I Never Learn (2014) – alongside her longtime friend and producer Swede Björn Yttling, from Peter Bjorn and John. These albums cemented her signature gloomy, haunted wall-of-sound, lyricizing the miseries of a broken heart. Throughout her twenties, Li was restless, producing music, promoting it, going on tour, burning out, and repeating the cycle for each record. Moving to Los Angeles came as an antidote to this fatigue.

Life Changes and New Musical Inspirations

The birth of her first son Dion and the passing of her mother marked another phase in Lykke Li’s life, which she channeled into 2018’s So Sad So Sexy. This trap-inspired album highlights her R&B and hip-hop influences. She collaborated with L.A.-based producers like T-Minus, Malay, Skrillex, Kid Harpoon, and Jeff Bhasker.

Yola Mezcal: A Mezcal Brand with a Feminist Ethos

During this time, Li became a mezcal enthusiast. She met entrepreneur Yola Jimenez and chef Gina Correll Aglietti – also her stylist – bonding over music, food, and drinks. Jimenez, from a family of artisanal mezcal producers, joined forces with Li and Aglietti to found Yola Mezcal in 2016. The brand uses Jimenez’s grandfather’s 1971 recipe and employs local Oaxacan women, honoring indigenous matriarchal mezcal traditions.

Yola Día: A Festival of Music and Mezcal

Li contributes creatively and visually to Yola Mezcal, amplifying their network of collaborators. In 2019, she curated and headlined Yola Día, a female-focused music festival in L.A. hosted by Yola Mezcal. The event featured a femme-centric lineup, including Sophie, Kelsey Lu, Megan Thee Stallion, Cupcakke, Cat Power, and Courtney Love.

Eyeye: A Return to Lykke Li’s Intimate Origins

When the lockdown hit, Li found comfort in self-isolation. Musically, she processed the need to return to her intimate, raw origins after the mainstream turn of So Sad So Sexy. Reuniting with Yttling, she created a cinematic, voice memo-inspired soundscape. This resulted in 2022’s Eyeye, an immersive, audiovisual project recorded almost entirely at home with no digital equipment. Structured more like a painting than a record, Eyeye mirrored Li’s obsession with the repetitive patterns of romantic love. She released seven video loops, all directed by her friend and creative director Theo Lindquist. “I often find myself locked in the same cycle,” says the singer-songwriter. “Obsession. Infatuation. Rejection. Abandonment.” With Eyeye, she attempted to break that cycle – and succeeded.

New Beginnings and a Creative Turning Point

The birth of her second son Shai Ilian, now one year old, has deepened Li’s exploration of self. Today, “the high priestess of heartbreak and sadness,” as Mark Ronson once called her, stands at another career turning point, on the verge of leaving behind romantic love and embracing existential questions.

Lykke Li and the Indie Sleaze Revival

We live in a timeline where the mid-late aught’s indie movement is glorified again under the label of ‘indie sleaze.’ Whether it suits her or not, Li’s art seems to transcend this phenomenon. Her creations uphold honesty. In an era that rewards virality and algorithm-friendly content, Lykke Li’s work celebrates the rawness of the self. “Am I indie sleaze? I just found that out,” she reflects.

LYKKE LI I just came back from spending two months in Sweden. If I look back into my work, I realize it always goes back to the cycle. The album, the video, the artwork, the tour. Right now I’m still early in the process. I just spent a couple of months writing. When you’re writing you’re also discovering, channeling all the possibilities and everything is open. Then, when you come into production that’s when you start closing doors and making choices. I’m in between writing and production right now, narrowing the road. I’m understanding what the subject is and putting the parameters to the painting.

S.G. Painting evokes the same synesthetic approach that was present in Eyeye’s production, where you said you almost ‘painted with sounds’.

LYKKE LI I was working in a multimedia format. I was obsessed by romantic love. Eyeye was my once-and-for-all occasion to put this obsession to rest. That’s also why my videos were looping. Even in my own life I have been looping, making the same mistakes over and over again. Finally I realized it was all a mirage and my idea was based on projection. Today I’m getting more interested in exploring the relationship with the self. “What is creation?”, “Who am I?”, “Where am I going?”.

S.G. Music, womanhood, motherhood and a multitude of experiences that language falls short of.

LYKKE LI I have two kids now and am moving into a new phase of my womanhood. I’m reading a lot about women who are older than me, grappling with death and the passing of time. I’ve been through many cycles in my life. The cycles themselves are what’s interesting about being an artist.

The ability to go through phases of death and rebirth, re-imagining who you are and going through different characters. Recreating different archetypes for yourself and exploring them is what I appreciate about this journey.

S.G. Indigenous cultures from South America say that we walk with the past in front of us, guiding our future.

LYKKE LI I’ve done a fair amount of psychedelics and ceremonies so I do understand that time is non-linear. When you start to go deep into your life and yourself, the more layers you uncover, you go back to the beginning of your lifetime, when you were born. The more therapy you do, the closer you are to your inner child. As a grown woman, I try as much as I can to hold the hand of this little girl that got so hurt at a very young age. Doing psychedelics is like living in black and white for all your life and then suddenly it turns to color. Or, imagine you live in silence and then someone turns on The Grateful Dead. When you’re in that space, you realize everyone’s been there too. Hello Jimi Hendrix. Hello Beatles. Hello Salvador Dalí. In a way, that’s the place where you go when you create so it’s almost a familiar place. I love having that down low.

Continue reading the interview on Lampoon, Issue 30

Sonia Garcia