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Dec 20, 2017 By Laura Studarus

Tove Lo isn’t a fan of rules. A self-described fan of sexual expression, the Swedish singer-songwriter had to be reminded before a recent performance on Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that her habit of taking off her top-mid set doesn’t fly on American television. (“As soon as you go on TV here, that’s when you notice how a big chunk of the country still finds sex and female sexuality shameful and scandalous,” she notes.) And then there’s her album Blue Lips, which features the driving single “Disco Tits,” perhaps, the only time you’ll get to use the term in polite company. But this is to be expected. Through three hook-filled albums full of stories of self-destruction, love, lust, Lo has proved she’ll say whatever she wants. It doesn’t hurt that she’s got the kind of songwriting skills that Icona Pop, Ellie Goulding, and Lorde have all tapped for assistance.

But right now, at the end of breakneck year, the Swedish singer/songwriter is being prevented from speaking her mind quite literally after being put on strict vocal rest. (Which might explain why, when asked about her current mental state, she me sends a meme featuring a blissed-out llama-like character with the caption, “Bruh, what if Mike was short for Micycle?”)

This isn’t her first time going silent. In 2015, Lo played a string of shows with Katy Perry in Australia and New Zealand, only to fly home to have surgery on a cyst on her vocal chords. But, typing from her new bed in downtown Los Angeles, she admits even the temporary roadblock between her and music make life difficult.

“I’m deep in poetry land at the moment,” she says, adding a semi-ironic ‘ha ha.’ “No, the truth is I feel very frustrated and unhappy when I can’t sing. Luckily it’s not as serious this time so I’m not worried…but I’m writing a lot.”

Prolific output has never been a problem for Lo. Since her debut album Queen of the Clouds in 2015, she’s steadily released a new album every year. Lady Wood came in 2016, and Blue Lips, Lady Wood’s sequel emerged at the end of 2017. Given that her work has no lack of sexually forthright lines (See: “I’m wet through all my clothes/I’m fully charged, nipples are hard/Ready to go,”) and uptempo melodies that reference both shiny 90s production and 1970s disco, it’s hard to believe there was ever a time she doubted herself. But like so many others, Lo says there was a time, shortly before high school, when she was convinced she had to fit in the social binary.

“I shifted between being in an exciting dream and a panic,” she admits of her life before pop. “Like not wanting what was around me. But when I found music for real in high school I never questioned it.”

Hitting a project full force has become the singer’s MO, whether it’s her own music, or guest appearing on tracks by Coldplay, Adam Lambert, and, most recently, on Charli XCX’s guest-heavy mixtape Pop 2. There have been down moments, like learning to take care of herself physically and emotionally, a topic explored on Blue Lips’ closing ballad “Hey You Got Drugs?” But possessing Iggy Pop levels of lust for life has garnered the singer both Grammy nods and Billboard chart slots, in addition to her fair share of life experience.

“I honestly just dive right in before I even have time to think, ‘What could go wrong?’” Lo admits. “If it’s something I love doing, I do it.”

That life mantra was recently applied to her newest endeavor, a line of jewelry in collaboration with her childhood friend Emelie Törling, under the name Tove Lo x Leontine. The collection, she says, was inspired by a drunken night going through her lyrics and the tattoo on her upper arm, a stylized line drawing of a vagina that also appeared on the cover of her sophomore album Lady Wood. She describes it as her way of pushing back against the idea that women have to have balls to be brave.

“It’s about embracing the feminine and pushing the boundaries of it at the same time,” Lo explains. “That symbol stands for so much and I wanted a way to eternalize it and Emelie helped me do that.”

To date, Tove Lo x Leontine have created four pieces, with deliberately low price points ranging from $25 to $79. In the look book, Lo poses with a rugged model, the pair showcasing ear cuffs, bracelets, rings, and a nose ring with names like “Fine as Fuck” and “No Dinner Parties.”

“The collection is for every ballerina savage and boy princess in this world,” she declares. “I love the contrast of the rough and wild with the beautiful and elegant.”

Like everything else in her life, Lo is attacking her new job title as designer with unbridled gusto. To hear her tell it, this initial offering was so much fun to create that the friends are already considering expansion.

“We’ve got big plans,” she says when asked what’s next.

In true expressive Lo fashion, she adds an emoji to the end of that statement. It’s a smiley face.