Danish pop icon MØ talks new song 'Who Said' and what's to come in 2025 • Interview • DIY Magazine

Wind back the clock by a decade and things were looking a little different for Danish pop icon MØ. Back in the halcyon days of 2014, the singer’s star was certainly on the rise; her insatiable debut ‘No Mythologies To Follow’ had been released to the world, but what would come next was unchartered territory. In March of the following year, her Major Lazer and DJ Snake collaboration ‘Lean On’ hit the airwaves. Soon, MØ found herself at the helm of one of the internet’s first viral giganta-hits.

Ten years and two albums later, the singer – aka Karen Marie Ørsted – has shifted firmly into a new era of her career, one which honours both her former and future selves. Earlier this year, she celebrated the tenth anniversary of that debut with a handful of intimate shows in London and her native Copenhagen, in what turned out to be a brilliantly cathartic process for the star. “It was really nice to revisit those old songs, but also the mood and the vibe of that whole era,” she explains. “Although ‘No Mythologies To Follow’ had a gloomy side to it, there was also a lot of hope, and I think that same state of mind is something that I still just find myself feeling so inspired by. There was also a carefreeness to [it], which was really delightful for me to jump back into.”

Much like the current viral conundrum that many young artists face nowadays, it’s no surprise that, after the intense success of ‘Lean On’, MØ found herself amping up an internalised pressure and shifting her own creative goalposts. “I think there were many years where I was so caught up in the business of everything, and I wanted to do well and keep riding the wave,” she agrees. “I felt like when all that was happening, I needed to cling to it. I felt so privileged to have been given that opportunity – for which I still feel very privileged – but for so many years I was very caught up in the whole ‘gotta keep doing this’ instead of just creating from a place of wanting to express myself and trusting the process more. I think ‘No Mythologies to Follow’, and that whole era, reminds me so much of that time and that very pure feeling, and it’s been nice revisiting it.”

“With Charli xcx and Chappell Roan, seeing how now they’re being celebrated for just doing their thing? It does have a healing power.”

There’s undoubtedly been a shift in pop’s waters in 2024, spearheaded by contemporaries like Charli xcx and Chappell Roan, who have torn up the rulebook in the name of self-empowerment; in the current climate, it’d be challenging not to be inspired. “It’s almost like it’s healing something in me to see it,” Karen nods. “Not to go on this big tirade about how suppressed I think that female or non-male artists were a couple of years ago, but I definitely felt that you couldn’t just be you.

“I know that this is wrong by the way – no one ever told me, ‘You should not be you’ – but there was just this underlying feeling that you needed to be a certain way and the music needed to sound a certain way in order for it to be successful or applauded,” she continues. “With Charli xcx and Chappell Roan, seeing how now they’re being celebrated for just doing their thing? It does have a healing power. It makes me so excited; it makes me even more, ‘Ahh, fuck it! I’m just gonna do what I want’. I’m sad that it took me some years to come to this conclusion, but better later than never.”

It feels particularly satisfying, then, that MØ’s newest release also harks back to those more carefree days of her early career. Originally written as a demo back in 2015, her latest track ‘Who Said’ was revisited in the recent sessions for her upcoming fourth album and given a whole new revamp. “I’ve always really loved the chorus that I wrote on that old demo so when it got this new life, it just felt so right,” she nods. A deliciously sassy kiss-off of a song, it doubles as the perfect way to usher in her next project – the follow-up to 2022’s ‘Motordrome’, which is set to land in 2025 – that sees her work alongside producer and James Murphy confidante Nick Sylvester.

“I think one of the things that’s a bit different between the new music and ‘Motordrome’ is that on this album I mainly just worked with the one producer, and we had very focused working time when we were together,” she notes. “It was really exciting for me to really go into it on a very focused level, and create a sound with one other person. That made the process more deep and wholesome for me.” As for the impact that Nick has had sonically on the album, “he was sort of trained by James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem, so [he brings this vibe of] electro-club-punk. Combined with my Scandinavian pop melodies, I just thought there was something so exciting about that combination and exploring how to match those worlds. That’s something that I love about ‘Who Said’; I think it has this really Scandi electronic thing to it, but at the same time – and I can’t even explain why – it also has this minimalistic American retro feel to it.”

While MØ has faced her share of challenges along the way, you get the undeniable sense that – ten years older and wiser – this really does mark a new creative chapter for her. “It’s your thirties for sure!” she laughs. “You just start not giving a shit!”

‘Who Said’ is out now via Sony Music.

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