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Oct 25, 2017 By Laura Studarus

Danish singer/songwriter Karen Marie Aagaard Ørsted Andersen or (MØ as she’s known professionally) is no stranger to strong sartorial style. For a while now she’s performed across the world sporting a high, braided ponytail—a style chosen for both optics (when she took stage at Roskilde festival in 2016 many fans in the crowd were wearing a similar style) and keeping the sweaty hair off her face while she dances onstage stage. But four months ago, feeling the tug of her return to Saturn, the twenty-nine-year-old decided it was time for a change.

“Oh my god, that’s my new hairstyle!” she says letting out a joking wail as she recounts the moment she spotted Juliette Lewis in Natural Born Killers. “That’s the new me! I was ready to challenge myself. Something new has to happen, seriously. There were a couple of years where I tried to color my hair blond and cut it a little bit but I couldn’t really find the right hairstyle.”

She doesn’t deny the symbolic nature of the makeover. After three years of heavy touring behind her 2014 album No Mythologies to Follow, it was time to usher in a new era. The album release established Andersen as a formidable electro pop vocalist with an outsiders’ ear for production, her songs dotted with double-dutch chants turned into beats, Detroit soul-style horns, and vocal loops creating a girl group-reminiscent backing choir. But it wasn’t until her 2015 collaboration with Major Lazer that she transcended “critical darling” status. On the tropically tinted house track (which both Rihanna and Nicki Minaj turned down) Andersen commands attention, her lightly accented English vocals carrying the song with an arena-act intensity.

“Lean On” marked a dramatic change for Andersen, an artist who once called Copenhagen’s infamous hippy commune Christiania home. The track became Spotify’s most-streamed song. (“A song was made out of pure love and fun, and it can actually become a big song worldwide,” Andersen says, pleasure evident in the words. “So that was a great experience.”) It also marked her transition into a viable top line vocalist and collaborator—a musical muscle that for a time she enjoyed exercising.

But despite releasing a handful of singles (including 2016’s “Drum” and “Final Song.”) Andersen missed creating full musical worlds. The desire that led her to begin working on When I Was Young earlier this year. Beats that range from hip-hop to house, child-like choirs make an appearance (“Runaway”), as do dramatic drops (“When I Was Young”), and slinky horns (“Turn My Heart to Stone”). Andersen has never been shy about letting listeners listen in on her internal monologue. (“I’m not just a fuck-up/I’m the fuck-up you need” she moans on Snakehips collaboration, “Don’t Leave.”) But for the first time, her emotive stories feature relatively fresh battle scars.

“In general in a lot of my songs, and my songwriting and my life, I’m nostalgic,” Andersen says. “I’m looking back and glorifying. Daydreaming about what’s going to happen. But I think for me this EP is very much about the journey I’ve been on for the past four years.”

From flirtations to breakups, it’s also a love-centric release, although Andersen connects more with her own feelings than the fates of her unnamed partners. For her part, she admits that she’s no stranger to romantic drama—her first proper kiss at thirteen wasn’t with the object of her affection, but rather his best friend. (We made out on the ferry on a school trip,” she moans. “And then I regretted it so much afterwards.”) But in a stable relationship for the last two years, she’s moved past rocky romance. Somewhat. As the artist reveals, the clattering heartbreak ballad “BB” was preemptively written in her now-boyfriend’s honor.

“I wrote the song when I was just getting together with the guy that I’m with now,” says Andersen. “I wrote it as a tribute to if he was going to break up with me, this would be my heartbreak song. I was so in love with him and if you don’t want me, I’m just going to be in love with you forever and it’ll be fine.”

Although she could easily become a mainstream pop hero, seemingly appearing everywhere at once (She jokes her super power would be “flying at the speed of light and go to different planets in the universe and different galaxies and find planets with life.”) Andersen’s ongoing goals include learning to slow down, focus, and fight the artistic FOMO that led her to a brief burnout in early 2016. Work on her sophomore album is well underway. And there’s a slowly expanding string of 2018 tour dates. And with a steadily growing career, she doesn’t have to do everything at the same time.

“Notoriously when it comes to art I’ve been super bad at saying no,” Andersen confesses. “I’m still immature. Oh, yeah—I’ll do it all! I forget to be practical. That’s something I’m learning. But I feel like I’m getting better. I’m learning to prioritize. But it’s taken me a while for sure.”

At this piece of brutal self-evaluation she laughs. “I’m a slow learner, but I do learn!”