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MØ: "The best songs I write are always when I'm feeling very emotional"

What's going on with MØ? Lot's of Emotion, apparently.

"The best songs I write are always when I'm feeling very emotional about something," MØ considers, driving down the Californian highway on speakerphone.

"Of course, when you're in love or you're heartbroken: that's the classic because you feel so much so strongly at such a vulnerable time. Another is that feeling of longing...

MØ writes chart-smashing electronic pop filled with gorgeous lyrics. Songs like ‘Lean On' - a collaboration with Major Lazer and DJ Snake - which has been streamed over a billion times on Spotify.

Day-to-day, when she's living life as Karen Marie Aagaard Ørsted, she's still a poetic inspiration. It turns out there's a reason for that: MØ is "an emo". Her words, but words nonetheless difficult to disagree with: this is an artist who has been positively fizzing with fervour since birth.

As a kid, her favourite Destiny's Child song was (what else) ‘Emotion'. It meant so much to her that she used to wake up in the middle of the night if it came on the radio. The "several times" this happened, it made her cry. How emo is that!

A darn shame, then, that she missed the part of Beyoncé's Coachella performance that saw Destiny's Child enter stage right. Because before she walked away, MØ gushes, that show "was so overwhelming; so perfect; so amazing; so astonishing. I had my hands on my face before I walked away like ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!"

Oh, by the way, MØ was one of the warm-ups for that Beyoncé show.

Of the Californian festival, she glows with ardour: "Staring out over the mountains and the Ferris wheel and the sky that is starting to go dark is something I'm never going to forget. It was at that hour of the day when it was still light, but it was, like, the magic hour, so it was a special moment. Not to get sentimental, but I'm from Denmark and playing music at Coachella is like a fucking…" Overcome, she stops there.

If you're wondering just how you go from Denmark to Coachella, then you should consider writing music the way MØ does: "straight from the heart." Although you're probably not talented or emotional enough. Sorry.

When MØ is writing a song (sometimes alone, sometimes "with a bunch of people" and "sometimes with one producer"), she promises herself "to go with whatever the fucking feelings are saying."

Apparently, what MØ's feelings say are things like: "I wish I could turn my heart to stone" and "I wander on, and I will never come back."

Both of those lyrics come from recent EP ‘When I Was Young'. The first is from (you've guessed it) ‘Turn My Heart To Stone', which is "about being in a relationship with someone who you know isn't good for you, but you just want to play dumb and pretend it's fine."

The second, from ‘Run Away', a song laced with longing, is inspired by her childhood best friend (also the inspiration for 2017 banger ‘Nights With You') and their youthful desire to escape suburbia ("fuck the suburbs" she says, cheerfully).

Now she's as far away from the suburbs as she's physically able to be, she's planning on staying there. Another album should do the trick. There's no "official statement" yet, but you'd better believe it's coming. And soon.

With "no time for a proper vacation this year", she's writing songs, playing shows and doing promo so that you, dear reader, can "feel liberated and about your phone or where you're going next."

At her live shows, she wants you to "bask in the moment… to feel a connection… to let completely loose and not worry about how you look or being perfect."

It sounds, in effect, as though MØ wants to resurrect from the grave your ability to feel emotion. If anyone can do it, it's going to be her.

Taken from the June issue of Dork - order your copy below.

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