Lightness and Edge

I grew up listening to the music Sigrid’s parents raised her on—Neil Young, Joni Mitchell. You can hear that foundation everywhere in her work: the conviction that a song needs to be built on something real. She started piano at seven in Bergen, just naturally good at it. By her teens she was covering Coldplay and Adele, but then something clicked—she realized she’d rather take songs apart, steal the pieces she liked, rearrange them into something hers. That’s always the right move.

Her brother Tellef’s a musician. When she was sixteen he asked her to open for him, two weeks’ notice, and she had to write original material to do it. That kind of deadline works sometimes. She wrote, and then she kept writing.

A couple years of real work and she had a deal. Now she splits time between Bergen and London, shaped by the music that raised her but doing something entirely her own. Her first single, ’Don’t Kill My Vibe,’ was immediate—over a million streams in days because the song itself is just good. It has lightness and edge in the same breath, which is rare. That’s what all her music is. Pop that doesn’t feel like it was designed by committee.

She told someone once that what’s always inspired her are just really well-written pop songs, and playing piano and singing whatever comes to mind—that’s the best. That’s her whole thing. Now her debut album, Sucker Punch, is out. I’ve been waiting for this, and it’s the thing I hoped it would be.