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Ebba Tove Elsa Nilsson, “Tove Lo”, grew up sheltered in a posh household in Djursholm, Sweden. She was your average teenager who took risks, engaged in substances and had dramatic love affairs. Except, she was musically talented, and she knew it. Her emergence into the music scene was catalyzed by her presence in and around teenage bands. These risky adolescent behaviors manifested and are still present topics in her music, which now plays world-wide. Tove Lo creates nothing short of raw, unfiltered and honest songs; many, of which are autobiographical and explore seduction, love, desire and temptation. Unlike other pop artists, her music dives unapologetically deep into the realm of seduction through shallow metaphors and unfiltered language. Lo is unafraid to sing about love, sex and partying while flashing her US audiences due to her Swedish culture — a culture that is relatively open and unoffended about nudity and sex. Tove Lo’s music is often categorized as dance-pop or electropop, based on it’s upbeat and catchy rhythm. However, Tove Lo is the queen of “dark-pop”, pop that is brutally honest, idiosyncratic, raw and speaks to darker, taboo topics. Her ability to be raw with her music is seductive, to say the least. The balance between very high highs and very low lows creates an energetic and atmospheric listening experience. Overall, her music is hypnotizing through sound and lyrics, as she balances between very personal euphoric and melancholic experiences.
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The art of seduction is quiet, yet bold, all at once. The greatest power of seduction is the ability to entice and entrance others, but also to turn them away at any given moment. Seduction is a game. It isn’t about fulfilling desire — it’s about tempting desire and building tension. It’s about slowing down and anticipation. Temptation is seduction’s alter ego. It waits patiently, tense with anticipation, wondering if desire will ever be fulfilled. Seduction is a natural game. Lynxes carry themselves with dominance, power and allurement. They have seductive, captivating, golden eyes that once locked, can barely be released. The tension this creates is unbearable, yet enchanting for its prey. “Lo” is the Swedish name for “lynx”, one of the most dominant and seductive predators. When Tove Lo, the Swedish singer/songwriter was a young girl, she adopted her [now] stage name after the Swedish name for “lynx”.
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Her latest album, Sunshine Kitty (2019), has a new take on love, as it reclaims confidence, wisdom and newer, better romance for Lo, compared to past experiences. She pulls from old written journal entries of relationships and hook-ups from her teenage-hood to reflect on the irony and drama of young love. Although most of her music is female-forward, she uses this album as a platform to push female power and identity. Sunshine Kitty is the beginning of a new chapter for Tove Lo, as she uses her past to clean the slate of her love life through reflection, comparison and wisdom. “I don’t have it all figured out,’’ Lo captioned a care-free film photo of herself on Instagram. Her albums form a clear, chronological timeline of her love life, which is endlessly in flux. She often describes sexuality as fluid, although she labels herself as openly bi-sexual. Lo is completely transparent about these parts of her life through her music and ability to break societal boundaries.
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In 2017, she released her third album Blue Lips, which acted as a sequel to Lady Wood. This album was the ultimate party album that she described as “dramatic” and “highly emotional” to Paper Magazine. The album is riddled with sexual innuendos, drug metaphors and rager energy as Lo sings “I’m out on the dance floor, drinking my tears”, “Come on my sweet escape for a while, just to try it on”, “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and “In a loop going twenty-four seven, don’t want it to end”. Blue Lips stood out as the ultimate “I don’t give a fuck” album in comparison to Lo’s other works.
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Together, Lady Wood and Blue Lips became the soundtrack to my rise from low points in my life. In a way, I could relate to Tove Lo — I experienced what it felt like to feel stuck in the depths of exiting poor relationships and the struggle of picking myself up again. However, her music [Blue Lips] felt especially motivational during these periods of growth. Between these two albums, Lo’s carefree attitude and strong personality were contagious.
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Her breakthrough into US billboards was in 2013-14 with her debut album, Queen of the Clouds and hit single Habits (Stay High), both of which explore drugs, sex, love and pain. She described her music to Billboard Magazine, “as like a therapist where she could sing about things she would not normally dare to speak about”. From here, it was a continuum of top hits on US billboards for Tove Lo. Her albums to follow traversed the deepest parts of her love life. In 2016, she released her second album Lady Wood, which was split into several chapters to narrate the “highs, lows and ultimate demise of a relationship”. Lo told Fault Magazine that this album was inspired by “the chase, the rush, the peak, and the downfall [of the] emotional rollercoaster” in her love life. She tells the story of this rollercoaster through lyrics such as, “Perfect imperfections with mistakes and unlearned lessons”, “Keep playing my heartstrings faster and faster” and “All the cards with all the love cliches… with a hand like this, I’m foldin’”.
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The most important takeaway from Tove Lo’s music is that none of us have it all figured out, and that’s OK. Drawing from personal experience, honesty and vulnerability, Lo creates a nostalgic, dynamic environment for those who have experienced the highs and lows of love and pain. Tove Lo’s effortless representations of seduction are exceptional, yet simple. She has a way of simplifying complex situations into pure candidness that makes her use of taboo topics acceptable. Seduction is a tool, and she uses it to enchant her audience into melting right into her stories.
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SPECIAL THANKS PHOTOGRAPHY - NATHALIE O’MOORE (@NOMOORE)
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