If there’s one thing that becomes quickly apparent when talking to Tove Styrke, it’s that she’s a woman who really loves what she does. And what she does is very, very good pop music.
As a genre, pop hasn’t always been looked on favourably by fans of more “serious” music, with critics having repeatedly thrown around words like “inauthentic”, “mass-produced” and “artificial” over the decades.
Tove Styrke is not of that mindset.
“I don’t know... they’re just stupid,” she says of pop’s more dismissive critics, when we catch up to discuss her upcoming album, ‘Sway’. “They need to widen their perspective, because… I mean, as well as I can find so much inspiration in music that isn’t pop music… everybody can find something in stuff that’s not their ‘main genre’.
“I feel like it’s immature to look down on something just because it’s very popular.”
Describing pop music as a “beautiful” thing, she continues: “I think with pop songs - a good pop song often has that thing… it’s like taking a shortcut to somebody’s feelings. To your heart.
“I think it’s so cool that you can write a song that you don’t have to read through the lyrics of five times to figure out what the metaphor is... you maybe just need to hear the chorus, and you understand the feeling. And you feel the feeling. That’s the cool thing about a good pop song.”
Tove Styrke has the sort of back story that would make your typical pop cynic’s eyes spin. When she was just 16 years old (“a little baby girl”, she notes), she finished in third place in the Swedish version of ‘Pop Idol’, before heading straight into the recording studio to work on her self-titled debut effort.
Many singers who come through the talent show machine here in the UK at some point or another feel the need to re-establish themselves as a “serious” and “credible” artist (just listen to the solo offerings from ex-One Direction stars Zayn Malik, Harry Styles and even Louis Tomlinson if you need proof), but Tove Styrke says that’s not a mindset she ever found herself in.
“I never reflected on that,” she says, “I was just working really hard afterwards. So I think everything has just come naturally for me.
“Like, if you make good stuff, if you make good music, and people like it, you don’t have to prove anything.”
And despite still being a teenager when her self-titled debut album was released, she says she’s not in a rush to disown her old material.
“I still actually love a lot of those songs,” she insists. “I mean there are some lyrics on there that, like, don’t make sense grammatically, but it doesn’t bother me.
“I feel like, with music, it’s a little bit like… like if you get tattoos, you can’t start hating your tattoos, they’re always going to be there.”
Gesturing to one of her own tattoos, she adds: “You have to just look at them as, like, charming, because you were 16 when you did it! And like, I still love my 16-year-old self. Show some respect to your old self!”
Almost a decade on from ‘Idol’, she’s now gearing up for the release of album number three. ‘Sway’ was trailed by the singles ‘Say My Name’, ‘Mistakes’ and ‘Changed My Mind’, the first of which was lauded by critics upon its release, even being named NME’s Song Of The Day and one of the top 20 single releases of 2017 by Rolling Stone magazine, eventually racking up more than 13 million streams on Spotify. Meanwhile, Tove is currently promoting ‘Sway’ with supporting slots on the world tours of two massive global acts, Lorde and Katy Perry.
But although some more impatient stars might be frustrated at their breakthrough moment coming with album number three, Tove is adamant that the timing for her feels “perfect”.
“With my last album, I kind of proved to myself that I can have a vision and I can make a plan, stick to the plan and do it,” she explains. “And so I got a lot of confidence from that. I learned a lot, and I feel like I really trust my own abilities now. So this feels like a very good place to be with this album.”
‘Sway’, she says, is a “romantic” album, referring to it as a “collection of little love stories” with each of the tracks focussing on different aspects of relationships.
“My last album was very outrospect… big and broad strokes in the lyrics, and bursts of emotion all over the place… whereas this time, I’ve just been so fascinated by people, and the monologues or dialogues that you have with yourself, and how you connect with people… that sort of ‘what are we?’ ’what is this other person thinking?, ’what is this situation? kind of thing.
“And I think that’s very relatable, because everybody has those little conversations in our heads, and I love those types of songs myself.! I think it’s so cool when you can pin down that feeling that everyone can relate to and apply to themselves.”
Tove says that her new material is “both for and anti-romance,” adding: “And that’s important, because romance is not always romantic. You know?”
What might surprise anyone who has listened to Tove Styrke’s music, in particular new cuts from ‘Sway’, is that unlike many of her contemporaries, she says her lyrics aren’t usually autobiographical, but instead created using a “patchwork” system, inspired by various people in her life, whose behaviour she says she finds especially intriguing.
“I pick up things all the time,” Tove says, “I have a couple of people that I think are weirdly interesting because I don’t really understand how they work.
“So I can, like, go back to the same person and use their behaviour for different songs, because I just like digging and trying to figure out people’s behaviour.
“Sometimes, it’s something funny that a friend has said or a weird story that’s happened to me or someone that I know, it’s different all the time. I just try and save the interesting things that I come across.”
Tove is evidently very proud to be part of the current pop scene, and points out she feels there has been a noticeable improvement in the recognition of female songwriters over the course of her career.
“When I started, I always felt like I needed to make people very aware that I write my own material”, she recalls, “Because they wouldn’t assume that. But now people know.
“I don’t even have to bring it up, I can just talk about the music, and talk about me, and how much I like singing or whatever, and people will most often assume that I write my own stuff. So that’s got better.”
However, Tove stipulates that there’s still a long way to go for women in music who work behind the scenes.
“There are a lot of women who produce their own material,” she says, “And what’s still lacking, I feel, is women who produce for others.
“During my whole career, I have met just one [woman] who’s a really skilled producer, who makes tracks for pop artists, and was in the same genre and the same vibe as me. One. And I’ve worked with so many people, so many people.
“And it’s not that I’m trying to not work with women, I love women, [working with women] is the best. But I’m like so excited about the day when production - and also, like, mixing, mastering, and all of that - is more balanced. Because I think… I’m curious as to if it would make a difference in how big pop music sounds.
“For all those who artists who don’t produce, the last filter is always male. Well not always, but mostly. And it’d be cool to see what happens when the whole chain of work can be just female. I do some [production], but I’m not technical like that.”
She continues: “I read that there are certain fields… that in general have been much slower for women to get into, because of how we view gender roles. So they have been slower, because you have to start so early.
“And so, if you want to become a really good music producer, most people start playing around when they are, like, 10. And if you’re not encouraged to do so [as a child], it’s hard to pick it up when you’re, like, 23 and think, ‘oh, I’m going to become the best producer ever’. That’s really difficult.
Despite this lack of women in music production, Tove remains optimistic that this is something that can change.
“We shouldn’t feel like it’s hopeless and that women can’t do this,” she insists. “It’s just a little behind.
“I don’t know, in the future, hopefully the near future, but eventually, there will be more balance. It’s getting there. It just takes a bit more time.”
Tove Styrke’s third album, ‘Sway’ is released on 4 May. Take a listen to her latest single, ‘Changed My Mind’ below: