What She Wanted

The last time I really paid attention to Lykke Li was 2014, when I Never Learn came out with songs like Love Me Like I’m Not Made of Stone—the kind of album that stays with you because every track feels necessary. Then she went quiet, or at least I stopped listening. It happens.

She’s back with a song called Utopia, which is painfully on-the-nose in title, but the video is just her and a child in a room, which is where all the subtlety lives. She’s a mother now, to a kid with the musician Jeff Bhasker, and I think that changes what you’re trying to make, whether you plan for it or not.

The song is basically a wish—a very specific wish, the kind you sing when things are hard but you’ve decided to imagine differently anyway. We could be the most psychedelic, we could glow brighter than glitter. There’s no cynicism in it. No desperation either. Just a direct statement of wanting something better. When she sings it, there’s no apology. She’s not asking permission to believe.

I don’t know the whole album yet—it’s called So Sad So Sexy, which tells you something—but Utopia buries itself in you without announcing itself. You put it on meaning to listen once and end up playing it again without thinking. There’s something about the way she’s moved toward hopefulness that feels earned rather than forced. Like she didn’t decide to be optimistic; she just looked at what she has and sang about protecting it.

It’s different from her earlier work. Less raw, sharper. Whether that’s growth or loss depends on the day you ask, but right now it feels necessary. Sometimes the music you actually need isn’t the most beautiful music. It’s the music that tells you it’s okay to want something better, even when you understand the cost.