Tove Lo has levelled up, had many a revelation and is now embracing her “whole self”. The Swedish-born, Los Angeles-based master crafter of pop recently released her fifth studio album, DIRT FEMME. The album is infused with Tove’s genius knack for futuristic electro-pop beats, this time with a more introspective vulnerability as she explores an energy shift around her concept of femininity.

“I’ve always been a strong woman but how I’m being a strong want is what’s changed,” Tove Lo tells 10 Magazine Australia from Los Angeles. “When I started out in the music industry I was quite often the only girl in the room. It’s quite a big boys club when you walk into A&R meetings, even in the touring world, most places. At the time you kind of had to play into your masculine traits to be respected, to be a girl who could ‘hang’ and play into that, even if it was toxic… but it was the way to get respect and get people to listen to you. Being able to handle the sexually insulting comments, you had to either double down on [them] or laugh it off to get ahead in the industry. I felt it helped me to be a girl who could take the joke, who could stand up to them in their way.”

Following the Me Too movement, as the cultural discussion around femininity and masculinity began to change, Tove was spending more time in the queer community, influencing her understanding of human beings. “I think in the queer community there is just so much more openness and acceptance to tune into the traits that are more natural to you. I think when you’re forcing a masculine energy, that’s when it becomes toxic, when you’re forcing the energy that isn’t natural to you. I feel like in the straight community - not all the straight community, obviously - but I feel like there’s less acceptance : a man is masculine and a woman is feminine and that’s it. That’s kind of boring and not how human beings are, naturally. We’re all a mix of both... What provoked the shift is life, where culture has gone and how I’ve changed. I’ve always been a strong woman but how I’m being a strong woman is what’s changed.”

DIRT FEMME has an innate strength to it, a feeling of determined self-assuredness of someone who now wholeheartedly accepts themselves. “I think getting older and becoming more comfortable in yourself, you go through parts of life where I’ve let someone else’s opinion of me define me instead of trusting that I know who I am,” she says. “I’m past that. I’m past leaning into destructive feelings when it comes to love and also not behaving destructively when things go wrong.” Working with trusted collaborate Ludvig Söderberg, who helped to develop Tove’s sound, the world of DIRT FEMME began to take form and Tove tested sonic boundaries. “I [also] work a lot with the guys from Wolf Cousins, we just understand each other, we speak the same language, in the fact that we’re all Swedish but also just melodically and how to create. We have the same creative language. That really helps when you want to test the boundaries. You have to dare to suck to come up with something really great, I think that’s something we all live by. We’re not impatient when we write, we let it take time. I think I need that when I make music.”

The album is a sonic feat, a wonderful technicolour world of heart-pumping synths, catchy riffs and classic Tove-esque ballads. Her deeply introspective lyrics shine, like on Grapefruit, which speaks on an eating disorder, and as Tove tells us, “was a bit more emotional to write… It’s really baring my past in such an honest way and I haven’t really touched on that subject before”. DIRT FEMME feels very protected and personal, only a few artists were chosen to feature and work on the album with Tove. “Honestly, I think it was about reaching out to artists I really listen to myself and love their sound and think their energy would add and make sense. I was lucky all of them wanted to be part of it. It was tricky because it’s all so personal and I feel like I could have done a lot more features if I felt it fit but I think this was the right amount for this.” The world of Tove Lo has evolved, while it’s evidently more vulnerable, it’s also more playful, sonically and lyrically felt and heard on I’m To Blame and True Romance, which Tove notes as two songs that represent her growth. "I’ve kept the imperfections in the voice and even the puff sounds of the mic and I think in some of the songs I've kept an untraditional both length these days and arrangement. But also daring to be just a full pop bitch. I love that and I don’t want to shy away from that.”

Listening to the album, Tove hopes people feel good about themselves and accepted. “I think accepting our differences and that we all comes from different walks of life, different traumas. We can all get together and dance still. I want my shows and music to be a space of freedom to feel and be fully yourself. Get rid of the anxiety for a second… [Listen to it ] at a party, in bed with someone, in a car, walking at sunset with your headphones in… Turn it up really loud. It’s for any time of life.” It’s for tapping into and turning on, full pop bitch mode activated.

Listen to Dirt Femme HERE.

@tovelo

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