Mø

It made for a slight respite from what’s been a very intense 12 months for Mø, including a run of headline and festival shows all around the globe, an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! with Iggy Azalea last October, and a collaboration with Major Lazer for the chart-topping single ‘Lean On’. But it’s simply a natural progression for someone who’s wanted to be a star since she was five years old.

Most people are usually red-faced when you ask them about their early music loves, having buried their Ricky Martin and ’N Sync albums far, far away. Not Mø. In fact, her entire musical career is founded on an undying infatuation with the most iconic pop group of the ’90s.

“The Spice Girls were the reason I started making music!” she says. “That was the first time I felt like a band was communicating with me, like they were talking directly to me. I wanted to be like them, I wanted to do what they did, and so then I was like, ‘OK, my purpose in life is to be a musician.’”

She’s not a pop princess by any stretch of the imagination, however. As a teenager, Mø idolised Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth and moved around the Danish punk circuit, exposing her to a whole new world of music and providing a platform from which she could agitate against conventional strictures and political issues. At 18, she formed the punk band Morwith her best friend and started making a lot of noise. “All our lyrics were one big fuck finger,” she says. “Really very political, and very angry about a lot of things.”

It’s kind of hard to reconcile the acerbic punk teenager with the dreamy, complex electropop for which Mø has become known, but she insists she is still reactionary at heart. “I still think a lot of my lyrics are very political, but it’s more in terms of how society influences young people’s minds, how we all are influenced by social media, and how much it can destroy you as a person if you’re not being strong,” she says.

It’s not an idea that is completely foreign to pop, and the most successful icons have all advocated for their own ideals. Indeed, it was the challenges Mø found trying to properly express herself in a group that led her to launch a solo project. Her 2014 debut album, No Mythologies To Follow, is an essay in successfully arranging punk and hip hop influences on a dazzling electronic canvas. For this Mø can credit a rich working relationship with Danish producer Ronni Vindahl – the mastermind behind several A$AP Rocky and Kendrick Lamar bangers – who helped develop her as a solo artist.

“I love the way that Ronni and I worked together,” says Mø. “I would make the song and the lyrics on the piano, and then I would send it off to him and he would start to produce it, and we would meet in the middle, so it was really two completely separate work processes. I could sit for hours on my own, and that’s the way I like to work.”

Mø quickly snared the attention of the production powerhouse Diplo, who produced Mø’s 2013 single ‘XXX 88’, and their most recent collaboration, ‘Lean On’, has been sitting comfortably at the top of the ARIA charts lately. Working with such domineering personalities as Diplo can risk relinquishing your own musical identity, but Mø insists that working with the Major Lazer man has been an entirely liberating experience.

“It’s not at all like a machine; you know, like, ‘OK, we’ll meet in the studio and we will not leave the studio until we have a hit.’ But this is what I think is so cool about Diplo – of course he’s all about making big songs and massive pop songs, but he always wants to push the limits, he’s always looking for something completely fresh and new, he wants to ask a question.”

This is the kind of attitude that Mø gravitates towards now; a provocative element – a remnant of her punk days – that provides the main ingredient for her current musical direction.

“With pop music I really think that you should try to make something that’s at least kind of different. It’s so boring when people just copy a form that works and keep doing the same thing because they want to make a hit and get rich. Fuck that – it’s about trying to communicate something new and produce new vibes so that people think differently. Even if it’s cheesy pop music, it’s still art, it comes from people and it’s something you make with your heart and soul, so it’s important to want to do something different.”

Mø’s success has seen her extend the ranks of Scandinavian female pop artists who have graced the international stage over the last few years, such as Lykke Li, Oh Land, Icona Pop, and Sweden’s Elliphant, with whom she is heading to Australia this week for Splendour In The Grass and joint sideshows. Is there a secret to this Nordic achievement?

“I don’t really know,” says Mø. “Maybe – and not to sound cynical – but maybe in Scandinavia we have a lot of spare time because we live in very rich countries, so we have a lot of ‘me’ time, and a lot of time to experience ourselves and pursue all our hobbies, as opposed to so many people who really have to fight for a living and who don’t have time for these things. Or maybe it’s just because we are good at English!”