Swedish singer Lykke Li is changing her “whole life”
If you like good music, go see Lykke Li perform her echoey mood music Tuesday night at the Cosmopolitan hotel’s fourth-floor rooftop pool, one of the best music venues on the Strip.
Lykke Li is a critics darling from Sweden, raised by art-punk-photography parents, and I’m a fan.
She gave me a good scoop to tell you: She’s in the process of changing her “whole life.”
That’s because she has been recording albums, touring, shooting videos and photos, and doing a zillion interviews for seven years straight.
In January, she was telling the world she was exhausted and had pushed herself to the point of suffering physically.
So she went to LA, took in the sun, sold some of her clothes, and now she’s rested and ready.
“I feel better,” she said.
And she’s resolved to take better care of her well-being and her creativity, because, “I don’t want to be in the sick bed just watching TV because I’m so exhausted, you know?”
I do know.
Artists her age have to be business savvy these days, but she actually finds the business side of music to be interesting to learn.
“I guess part of growing up is, life is full of compromises. There is a trade-off for paradise.”
But she’s not sure if stardom is more artistically fulfilling than her early amateur status was.
“I don’t know if I’m more creatively satisfied now than when I was 17. Probably more when I was 17, because that was my private thing. I would go to my room and write songs, and I would feel better, and that was it,” she said.
She wanted to make sure everyone knows she does find much joy in the music business. But she is altering her approach to all of it.
“I’m restructuring my whole life, and personae, and artistry, for sure,” Li told me.
“Where my passion is right now is to become a better songwriter. I want to be like (John) Lennon and (Paul) McCartney and spend three hours every day just writing. That will open up where I want to go, instead of being a road horse traveling around the world.”
She is interested in more conceptual methods. How so? She muses thus:
“Maybe I’ll play like 10 shows in L.A. in a warehouse and I’ll build an installation, and it’s more insular, and intimate, and more creative. That’s rock and roll, baby.”
But this week, she’s “so excited” to play the Cosmopolitan ($30, with opener Ryn Weaver).
“I will be wearing a gold suit. I’m making a special Vegas costume. It’s kind of similar to what Prince was wearing at the Grammys. I encourage the audience to be dressed in gold. Anyone who can should.”
The gauntlet had been cast, Lykke Li fans. Gold it is.
Contact Doug Elfman at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman. Find him on Twitter: @VegasAnonymous.
