Sigrid interview: I was scared telling the story behind ‘Don't Kill My Vibe’

Ahead of the release of her debut album, ‘Sucker Punch‘, the Norwegian singer, famous for her ‘f**k you’ anthem, tells Alexandra Pollard why the music industry can be a ‘bit tough’

Sigrid: ‘I’m not gonna change because someone thinks I should’ (Press)

Two years ago, just as the #MeToo movement was gathering speed, an unknown 20-year-old from Norway wrote a pop song that perfectly crystallised the prevailing mood. “You shut me down, you like the control,” declared Sigrid on “Don’t Kill My Vibe”, her voice sharp and clear over a faint synth riff and smothered beat. “You speak to me like I’m a child … I can’t shake it off and you feel threatened by me.” The song – written about a frustrating recording session with a group of older men – went viral, its poised fury striking a chord with every woman who’s been patronised, undermined or spoken over. And Sigrid’s star ascended.

Over the course of 2017, the singer (whose full name is Sigrid Solbakk Raabe) played Glastonbury and sang at the Nobel Peace Prize concert, and the following year won BBC Sound of 2018 and headlined London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire. And she owed it all to her boisterous, defiant “f**k you” anthem.

And yet, in the flesh, Sigrid isn’t exactly what you’d expect. When we meet in a recording studio in west London, it’s hard to reconcile the person who stomps and scowls across the stage, daring you to kill her vibe, with the polite, deferential person sitting in front of me sipping a black coffee. She dances around anything vaguely controversial, effuses over what an honour her life is, and even breaks off mid-answer to congratulate me, apropos of nothing, on being a journalist. But the way she sees it, that dichotomy is in everyone. “That song is 100 per cent, genuinely me,” she says, “but I can feel like that song in some moments, and in other moments I don’t. It’s all inspired by me, but I’m a storyteller, so you know, you make it a bit extra.”

“I was a bit scared of telling the story behind ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’,” she continues. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. But I thought it was important, because someone thought it was about an ex or something. I was like: ‘No! It’s about a writing session.’” Has she had similar experiences since? “I’ve had situations that can be a bit similar, where people that don’t know me have been very… opinionated,” she says vaguely. “That’s alright, but I’m not gonna change because someone thinks I should, you know? I’m very comfortable with myself.”

I wonder, given how quickly the song blew up, whether she ever worried it would overshadow everything else. “Oh! No! I try to take a chill pill,” she says, before suddenly looking alarmed. “I meant that as an expression, just so you know. I know what you mean, though, it became kind of a thing … because it got quite big really quick. I got a lot of attention, and then it was the pressure of like, what’s the next one? And to actually build a career on that one song. Which I think…” She pauses, unsure whether to allow herself a metaphorical pat on the back. “I did!”

The next step in that career is the release of her debut album, Sucker Punch, which is sprightly and sonically assertive, taking a sideways glance at classic pop tropes – break ups, movie romances, identity crises – without ever sneering at them. “It’s basically my brain,” she says. “It’s a bit all over the place.”

It must have been tempting, after she won the BBC’s Sound of 2018 poll, to capitalise on the attention and rush out a debut album. But that’s not Sigrid’s style. “I know some people think that it’s been a long time,” she says, “but we’ve all just been very quality oriented.” The “we” she’s referring to is her band, label and team of co-writers. She includes them in almost every answer. “We didn’t want to put out anything that wasn’t there yet, and I also certainly don’t want to put out an album that I felt uncomfortable with, so I’ve been taking my time.”

Her priority was nailing the melodies. “English is my second language,” she says, in an accent that sounds eerily Irish, “and therefore melodies are the first thing I listen to. All my favourite artists, like Adele, Ellie Goulding, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Florence and the Machine, the sort of stuff I listened to when I grew up, I had no idea what they were singing about. I didn’t know what ‘Rolling in the Deep’ properly meant until like last year. It was a fun way of learning English, listening to this music, but it was always about the melody.” Would she ever consider writing in Norwegian? “I’ve tried. But I think there’s a time and place for that. I’m 22. I’ve got a lot of time. In a few years, in 20 years, I dunno. We’ll see.”

Sigrid: ‘We share so much of our lives, and the line of what’s private and what’s not private is very blurry” (Press)

For now, though, she’s sticking to English. “You just want me to be sweeter, better, angel, yeah business dinners,” she sings over glitchy beats and aquatic pops (she’s definitely been fishing in the same instrumental pool as Sophie) on “Business Dinners”. “You just want me to be pictures, numbers, figures, yeah deeper, smarter … and I’ll just try to be me.” Is that indicative of her experience in the corporate side of the industry? “Of course I’ve had really nice business dinners too,” she demurs, “but the industry sometimes is a bit tough.” When I ask her to elaborate, she switches the focus to herself. “I’ve got to admit the toughest part is actually saying no to stuff. Because I’m very ambitious, and I want to work all the time, and I have so much I want to do and I just always love coming back to the studio.”

Sigrid is lively and loquacious, but she is a master of deflection and keeps her cards close to her chest. When we last spoke, back in 2017, she wouldn’t even tell me when that frustrating recording session happened, for fear of identifying the people involved. “We share so much of our lives,” she says now, “and the line of what’s private and what’s not private is just very blurry at the moment. For everyone. But it is very important to me that I have things that I don’t need to talk about. And you know, I guess it’s good to just have something for myself.”

It’s something she considers when it comes to writing lyrics, too. “In the studio, I was thinking: ‘What am I comfortable sharing?’ And of course, I will never tell who my songs are about, because you’ve got a responsibility. People that inspire me to write songs, they didn’t ask: ‘Hey, can you write a song about me?’ Like, that’s all on me. So I think that it’s important that I protect that a bit.”

Whether they know who, or what, each song is about, Sigrid hopes people appreciate the album. “You can’t force people to like it,” she says, laughing. “But I am very proud of it, and we’ll see how far we can take it... I’m not going anywhere.”

Sucker Punch is out now