It is true that the beginnings of this young woman of 25 years as an artist in her native Norway were marked by melancholic singles who have since amassed hundreds of millions of Spotify streams (and also thanks to a relatively successful jack-of-all-trades career). Dream tunes like 2018’s “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend” still haunt the playlists of the young and languid: “I don’t want to be your friend/I want to kiss your lips,” Ulven sings, his hushed voice evoking all the tortured . artistic talent of a teenager in love.
But in the six years since, Ulven has grown – as a songwriter, as a producer, and as a human being.
“It’s like I have to update my profile picture, but I have to do it with my whole discography,” she says over Zoom with a slight SoCal surfer inflection. It’s early April and Ulven is in Nashville rehearsing for an arena tour that will take her across the country before summer and all over Europe. in autumn. She continues talking between mouthfuls of room service pancakes. “I feel like this new album is what’s going to define all of this,” she says. “So that when people think of Girl in Red, they don’t think of a demo I posted in 2016.”
Released last week, “I Do It Again Baby!” is a maximalist second album which, while delivering 27 minutes of refined pop, veers into strange and satisfying new territories for Ulven: his voice spreads like bubble gum on danceable tracks with hints of Rodrigo-style punk. She is joined by Sabrina Carpenter, another Eras alumna. In short, it’s a lot of fun.
That’s not to say there aren’t songs like 2018’s gentle but uncomfortable “Summer Depression” — songs that address Ulven’s mental health struggles head-on. In “Ugly Side,” there’s a particularly vulnerable example of spoken word: “The people I love the most are the ones who get the worst of me/And I don’t like that.” »
So, despite the gender shift, for Ulven, it’s the right next step. This is largely due to her growth as a producer; she has now worked with renowned producers like Finneas (Billie Eilish’s brother) and, more recently, Norwegian composer Matias Tellez.
“I hear things differently now,” Ulven says. “It’s a natural progression for me, sonically, because I’m just better at what I do.”
Ulven has remained busy despite the three-year gap between albums. On the one hand, it hit the festival circuit hard. On the other hand, she was picked up by reigning Queen of Pop Swift for her record-breaking Eras Tour last summer. Even though she had conflicting headliners, she couldn’t say no. In June, she flew to Chicago to embark on a series of shows in the Northwest.
“If [Swift] comes knocking, you do whatever she tells you, Ulven said half-jokingly.
As Ulven herself points out, we live in a time where the biggest names in pop are owned by women. And while she’s eager to join those ranks, she’s hesitant to be put in a box with her queer contemporaries. It’s true that explicitly queer female artists are having a blast in pop: look no further than Reneé Rapp or Chappell Roan. But there was a time, not long ago, when the Internet memorized the phrase “Do you like Girl in Red?” » which means: “Are you gay?” For Ulven, it was becoming tedious.
“I was constantly getting messages from people saying, ‘I’m not gay, but I really like [your 2018 single] “We fell in love in October,” she says. “I was like, ‘Why are you saying that? It’s very strange.'”
Instead, his sexuality is just a background to his art as his love songs are about women – like the new album’s delicate “A Night to Remember”, a bop full of hope and battery about meeting his girlfriend in a bar.
But Ulven’s favorite song on the record, she says, clutching a vinyl copy to her chest, is the opener, “I’m Back,” which explains her absence from music (“I’ve been gone for a minute because I went to get help”). It’s just gentle enough to ease listeners into the rest of the energetic pieces on the tracklist, a sort of introductory lullaby to an album that has an explicitly enthusiastic name. Ulven says she cries when she listens to it and cries when she plays it. “It feels like it’s the song that most accurately and truly reflects my reality,” she says.
“I’m Back” is also joyous, sure, but in a way that feels earned. “Sometimes I get bitten by the darkness/It spreads through my heart, invades me,” Ulven sings, then responds to his own doubts: “I think I’ll laugh/I think it will pass/I think that there is hope for me.”
April 20 and 21 at 8 p.m. at Anthem, 901 Wharf St. SW. theanthemdc.com. Full Saturday; Sunday tickets $45 to $95.
