Oh Land
The Brooklyn-Via-Copenhagen Chanteuse Proves There Is Nothing Like This Dane
By Alex Scordelis
Photographed by christopher starbody
One cursory listen to "Sun of a Gun," the first single off
Brooklyn-via-Copenhagen chanteuse Oh Land's new eponymous
LP, and you'd be quick to nominate the track as a leading
candidate for 2011's song of the summer. With its pulsating
beat, ebullient synth-driven bleeps and bloops and Oh Land's
enchanting croon, it's easy to imagine it bumping out of boom
boxes at the beach. But a closer listen to the tune reveals all
is not sunny for this striking Danish singer. "I want to live in
darkness," she chirps in a sing-song voice. "This time, I won't
save you when you drown, you son of a gun." "I often write happy melodies with dark lyrics or dark melodies with happy lyrics," Oh Land explains on the phone from her parents' house in Copenhagen. "I'm drawn to contradictions." True to her statement, Oh Land's life has been a study in contrasts. Born Nanna Fabricus (Oh Land is a play on her middle name, Øland) and raised in Denmark, she trained as a child to be a ballerina, not a musician, and she pursued that career path with an intense passion until a severe back injury derailed her dancing dreams. "I'm still heartbroken about it," Oh Land admits. "A lot of the darkness in my lyrics comes from the trauma of that experience."
After suffering the slipped disc, Oh Land shifted her focus to songwriting. In 2008, she released her first album, Fauna, which received rave reviews in Denmark but garnered little notice elsewhere. So, like so many artists before her, she set out across the Atlantic to make a name for herself in Austin, Texas, at a South by Southwest showcase in 2009. "There were seven people at that show, so I thought it was a failure," she says. "But those seven people turned out to be on the staff of Epic Records, so everything ended up working out."
After landing a major label record deal, Oh Land relocated to Brooklyn in early 2010 and set out to work on her new batch of mirthful-slash-melancholic melodies, which she explains were largely inspired not by other musicians but by visual artists. "I'm very inspired by film directors -- everyone from Michel Gondry to Tim Burton to David Lynch," she says. "I've always been drawn to visuals. When I write songs, I see a whole landscape around them. I have a little film in my head for each song."
Since that fateful SXSW show, Oh Land's life has been a blur: her new LP dropped in March, she's prepping for her role as the opening act on Katy Perry's upcoming world tour and she just celebrated her 26th birthday in style by wearing a Phillip Lim dress to the 2011 Met Ball. "It was like Madame Tussauds, but all the wax figures were alive," Oh Land says of the experience. "I went to the bathroom and waited in line with Penélope Cruz, Salma Hayek and Rihanna. I don't normally get starstruck, but that was surreal."
WHAT'S ON HER SUMMER PLAYLIST
"Solitude Is a Bliss," Tame Impala
"Where Is My Mind?" Pixies
"Soon We'll Be Found," Sia
"I Never Learnt to Share," James Blake
"Changes," Tupac
"Love out of Lust," Lykke Li
BACK TO PAPER'S SUMMER PLAYLIST
Your Comment