walking upstream…
Tove Lo
sourcesWikipedia · Bustle · Interview Magazine · Coup De Main
Ebba Tove Elsa Nilsson spent years as a hitmaking songwriter for other artists before "Habits (Stay High)" turned her own bruised nights into a 2013 breakout, pop candy about numbing out that hit far harder than its glossy production suggested it would. She writes from blackout benders, breakups, and queer desire with a bluntness she traces to a teenage diet of grunge, layering that rawness over the kind of aching, hook-forward Swedish pop she grew up idolizing. Now one of pop's most in-demand co-writers, she keeps releasing her own increasingly frank, theatrical records alongside the hits she pens for others.
the sound in question
2013
Habits (Stay High)Tove Lo
walk the tributaries ↓
Robyn2010s · Electropop / Dance-pop / Synth-pop
Lo has called Robyn her 'number one inspiration' and 'a pop artist with so much integrity,' framing her own confessional streak as part of the same lineage of Swedish women who write bluntly about heartbreak and desire without softening it into easy romance. She's said flatly that she was 'a grunge girl in high school, but I loved Robyn! And I still do' — the one pop artist who stayed a constant even as her own tastes swung toward rock.
listen: upstream & heresource: Rolling Stone AU ↗
2010
Dancing On My OwnRobyn
2014
Talking BodyTove Lo
listen forPlay 'Dancing On My Own' next to 'Talking Body' — both ride a stark, pulsing club beat under a vocal that's more wounded than triumphant, turning a dancefloor song into something closer to a diary entry set to a beat built for crying in a bathroom stall.
Nirvana1990s · Grunge / Alternative rock
Lo has said she 'was big into grunge, like Nirvana and Hole' as a teenager, and traces her whole approach to lyric-writing back to 'the rawness and honesty' of Kurt Cobain's songs — the willingness to sound wrecked instead of composed. Critics have picked up on the same DNA in her productions, describing her dynamic swings between hushed verses and thunderous choruses as indebted to the template of grunge music.
listen: upstream & here
1992
Come As You AreNirvana
2013
Habits (Stay High)Tove Lo
listen forLine up 'Come As You Are' with 'Habits (Stay High)' — both keep the verses low and confessional before the chorus detonates, using a loud-quiet-loud dynamic to sell a lyric about wanting to disappear rather than to triumph.
Charlotte Gainsbourg2000s–10s · Art pop / Chanson / Dream pop / Indie pop
Lo has singled out Charlotte Gainsbourg's 2009 album IRM as the main inspiration behind her career in music, saying its stark simplicity and quirky, plainspoken lyrics 'opened a new world' for her sonically — permission to let a song stay sparse and a little strange rather than filling every gap.
listen: upstream & here
2009
2017
9th of OctoberTove Lo
listen forSet the hushed, clattering electronic pulse of 'IRM' against the stripped piano-and-drum-machine ache of '9th of October' — both let a breathy, almost spoken-word vocal carry the weight instead of hiding it under a big pop arrangement.