Before the World

I’m about to sound like the world’s most insufferable hipster, but I was already obsessed with Lykke Li when you were still discovering Electric Feel in Berlin clubs that have disappeared. You could look it up—I have the proof somewhere. My whole world was Little Bit, I’m Good, I’m Gone, Dance, Dance, Dance. I had Youth Novels memorized completely. If I had a functional memory, I’d argue it’s the best album I’ve ever heard, and somehow it still doesn’t embarrass me.

That was seven years ago now. Seven years. And since Lykke Li became famous—since the world knew her name—I’ve felt this weight. This emptiness. Not tragedy or anything, just that hollow thing that happens when someone you loved first becomes someone everyone loves.

There’s this running joke where she and I were meant to be, obviously, assuming Scarlett Johansson wasn’t in the picture. But the real thing early discovery does to you is make you feel like you own something nobody else does. Like you have a version of someone that’s entirely yours.

She just released Never Gonna Love Again, and the video is one of those perfect emotional storms. The kind that stays with you.