First the voice, then the music

By Georg Cederskog
Published: DN September 12th 1999
Translation by Simon Wiklund

Self-willed and intensive. For the first time in five years female singer Stina Nordenstam speaks about her life and her music.

It´s the voice that attaches you first.

"The effect is like a very intimate one-way conversation with a telepathic alien poet who is very, very far away", writes Hiroshi from Japan on his homepage dedicated to the singer and songwriter Stina Nordenstam.

First the voice, then the music: the arrangements, the instrumentation.

From the cool jazzhaze on the debut album "Memories of a colour" (1991) she has travelled towards a more and more brutal beauty. On her latest "People are strange" (1998) - a cover collection - Rod Stewart´s worn "Sailing" is peeled to the breastbone.

Today Stina Nordenstam´s music is concentrated like pure alcohol. Never ingratiating, never diluted.

She communicates direct.

That´s the way I wanted to interview her. Questions and answers: Through a WM-D3-taperecorder and two C100-cassettes straight to the printer´s ink.

It´s over five years since she made public statement. During these silent five years Sweden´s most self-willed female singer and songwriter has become our least exploated international star. A thin, but deeply admired, artist in Scandinavia and countries like England, Japan, Germany and USA.

She has an english record company - the swedish music industry does not interest her, "there is no interesting climate or interesting dialogue in it", she says. She has had great write-ups - and bad - in all cardinal points and she has been nominated to the Grammyaward. She has been chosen as Sweden´s best woman by the Darling magazine for her independence, strength, because she is "the most beatiful, most intense artist in Sweden toady". And she has spread her music globally thorough the song "Little Star" in the award-winning film "William Shakespear´s Romeo and Juliet" (with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in the starrig roles).

We meet in a library in a suburb north of Stockholm, the child- and youth department. Thumbed copies of "Berts dagbok", cosy easy chairs, buzzing armatures and smell of paper turned yellow.

Hairdo: very brown and abruptly cut off in line with the jaw. Clothing: black tight leatherjacket with chinese collar, powderblue army trousers and space-like boots with the heels of 1999. Baggage: big bikerbag loaded with an angry mobile phone, a folder marked: "Album 5 - Stina Nordenstam", a snuffbox with Generalsnus and one with Rapé, "I blend the varieties".

I start the taperecorder. She leans forward in the armchair.

Your latest album "People are strange" (1998) is a collection of songs from artists like The Doors, Leonard Cohen, Prince and Rod Stewart. What started off the idea of a cover album?

- I see it as a social act. A yearning for a social act. To be allowed to do things that others have done before, but in my way. To come into contact with Rod Stewart. That was the driving force. I sat right here (sweeping gesture towards the children´s books in the shelves) and went through the books of music, "Vispop" 1-12, and powerballads and "Queens Songs" and like "hm, that rhyme looks good, actually". That´s how the selection was done. I browsed through the books, but didn´t sing.

- From having been sitting like this (strikes imaginary guitar strings) and searching within me that was a bit more social: I searched where others had already been.

Where are you heading, musically?

- (Long silence) I think I´m heading towards a destilation musically, to simplify to a certain degree. Some complexity can not be simplified, but can be peeled off. I have been dreaming the last five years of being more easily available, simultaneously there´s an acute need of complexity. It´s two counteracting forces.

Can you destil a voice?

- Yes, maybe. On my second album one could believe more could be peeled off... my voice is a little deeper now. Possibly I have recieved access to more feelings. In the beginning my voice expressed only a few different feelings: Sorrow. Yearing. Vulnerable, in some kind of double way.

- Before I was quite irritated because I couldn´t express more agressiveness. I could also feel jealous of almost any other singer. Sometimes I´ve thought I sound abnormal, but that all other singers are normal. As if anyone you could pick off the street an put in front of a microphone would have access to what I lack.

You are a distinctive singer.

- Yeah, but that is also followed by... it´s the same thing that I in some way in my whole life have been longing for normality. Some jealosy towards ordinary people.

- It causes huge feelings of being unaccepted and a negative feeling of being special. I have never felt any strength through that. I´m not very proud of what I´ve done. I can feel sorrow about that which I have recorded, maybe because of this vulnerability. That I have exposed yearning and expressed something that results in a disappointment. A very early child-adult-thing.

What relation do you have to your voice and singing?

- I find it kind of painful to sing. I never sing by myself. But when I have a child I will sing like crazy for that, I believe, but not exactly for myself. Yes, if I´m in an extreme party-mood... what´s the last thing I sang again? Yeah, that "Check it out now, the funk soul brothers..." Fatboy Slim! (Big laughter).

The last few years you´ve spent a lot of time filming and photographing.

- Mm. Seeing is the most important matter to me. To see pictures. When I write music I have a picture before me. But music is much more circumstantial, it´s based on an idea and a picture and then you have to write text and verses and it should rhyme and all that. To photograph is ideal in many ways. I have been the happiest when I have recorded film, directed videos; with Koop, Souls and my own three films. But I have always been into music, I can´t abandon that.

Why do you make music?

- To earn money and I also think it´s little interesting. It´s porbably the colsest I can come to feeling pride; it´s as if somebody has appointed me to bear the chief responsibility for a scienceproject and i have accepted the commission. It will be going on in an immense future, twenty years maybe - or forever. What I do is some sort of surrealism, a overreality that is distilled.

You sound like a military serviceman that has been given a apalling march order that has to be followed at any prize. Where is your creative spirit?

- What do you mean military, it´s tremendously interesting! What will happen with that project is the most interesting matter in my life. That is the creative spirit. Then I have a few more projects - as if I will have children and what will happen with my life.

Do you consider to start touring again?

- The only reason I wouldn´t want to do that is that it´s so laborious. I tend to work woth things in very intensive periods, emotionally intensive. And that is quite unpleasant.

- The last time of my life I have been closer to my feelings. One is that when I was young and began the music was my only - this sounds very drastic - but in some way it was my only way of coming into contact with my feelings.

Like a key.

- Yes, to be able to sit by yourself with the guitar and play and feel - while I in ordinary life kind of lacked access to those feelings. But that has changed through the years. Today I have access to my feelings in a much greater extent and therefore the music does not fill that funcion any more, as the one and only saviour.

You think your first album "Memories of a colour" (1991) is worthless.

- Yes, that album is not me. It was me back then, but it isn´t me. It´s a little tragic. But simultaneously it´s a driving force, to always keep going and also some kind of yearning for intensification and to come closer. That is a very strong driving force in me. But it also mean I generally have quite a bad self-esteem. I have huge demands for truth - with that I´m not saying I´m more fake than anyone else, I don´t think so.

- Hopefully you become more truthful through the years, but that has to do with what start you had. And I had bad basic conditions, a streneous growth. But concurrently with that you repair yourself you end up with a white paper to start over with. That the word "family" means something else, that things get another meaning and that that word is not only negative.

You are always called pretentious, not least because of your way of singing. Why do you think people are provoked by you?

- I´d say not humble, rather than pretentious. But that´s how it was already when I was little: "Stina! Do you always have to make things difficult and do stuff in your own way - aw, you´re being difficult agaaain!" (laughter). I may think that there´s something positive in making people upset, but I have to say it´s been tough sometimes.

- It´s also about a yearning after being allowed to express pain and strong forces for example - and it´s swedish to put the lid on. Sometimes I think I scare people. Why is it like that? I believe it has to do with that I say something about themselves.

How do you feel about the public idea of you: "Enormously timid". "Almost avoiding". "Difficult". "Fragile"?

- I´m satisfied with the question marks that surround me. It´s an ideal starting-point for anybody that is about to set about an artist. You wonder: "What the fuck is this?" You should prefer that rather than the already packaged and printed. But I´m dissatisfied with that me being "frail" and "low-voiced". That is like exposing your vulneranility. It´s easier to be called "tough" and "hard". That way it´s quite painful that my most fragile side is the one that makes the largest headlines.

- (Fast) I have two sides. But I don´t know if the other side can be called tougher and stronger because there is always a certain amount of self-destructiveness in driving dangerous and trying the limits. I´m very experimental on all levels, that´s what I think, everything should be viewed and reviewd. I wasn´t like that before and it surely takes some strength to be so experimental.

- I think I´ve walked a long road. The important thing is that I´ve become stronger, that I have gained this trength to experiment and try and that that alone is an intrinsic value. That I´m able to record albums and all that really isn´t so damned important. But it´s great that you can see the result of the personal ambition in the artistic practise. That is a bonus.

On your new homepage www.nordenstam.com people will be able to correspond with you trhough e-mail in a mulstimediacooperation with the IT-office Moonwalk. Are you opening up more to the world around you?

- Yeah, I´ve felt that I want to become more available also for my own sake. I want to comunicate with people, it feels like I haven´t done that in thirty years. I have been way too lonely. But it must be on my conditions, sensible communication. Not taking part and become Babe of the Week. With the press´ sole right on how information is to be spread it´s tremendously important that you find your own ways. This is an attempt I´ve crossed my fingers for. I´m not very reasonable - but that´s why some things become intact.

- I´ve not wanted to achieve anything through being quiet these years. Record companies have some kind of idea that the more attention drawn to a artist, the better, but even if I haven´t taken part of this it hasn´t been bad for me.

- It´s difficult to critisize the medias in a proper way. It surprises me enormously that there´re not more critical voices around the powerelite of the medias and that all these artists simply agree with letting themselves be explained.

The blackness and the physical charge has increased in your music.

- You think so? Yes, maybe. A song like "Mary Bell" (song from the album "Dynamite" from 1996 about an English case that attracted a lot of attention [the case attracted attention, not the song]) surely is black. It´s also recorded with a chainsaw (ieeeeeh). Lonely. You make me happy when you say that thing about the physical, it probably applies even more to my new songs. But someone like Björk has a more playful realtionship with her sexuality I do - that´s of course because of my experiences.

- One reason why I´m fascinated by the dark world has to do with feeling strange towards normality. And that you look for peers, yourself, by searching where it´s as non-normal as possible. You feel that you´re not lonely.

Is your feeling of being left oustide that strong?

- Yes, it´s been that strong, above all. Probably, it still is, but I don´t care much about it anymore. I have been tremendously lonely and isolated. But from being only negative as it was like earlier, it has become a little more positive. I can feel that I´m a little special in a postitive way. Not just something horrible that the dog has fetched.

- That´s what I thought before: when I went on a bus it felt like everybody was looking at me as if there was something wrong with me. Especially all middle-aged women.

Why middle-aged women?

- I completely lack some sort of involvment with other women. Presumably it has to do with my mother, I haven´t met anybody in my family for three years. Instead I´ve been looking for for male contexts, as the music industry is for example. It took a long time before I realized that that was the reason why I entered this career - that I didn´t feel at home with other women. I still mostly have male friends, that grieves me.

Some year ago the neo-feministic magazine Darling appointed you The best Woman in Sweden. Do you feel involved with the young feminists?

- No, I don´t feel involved with that movement. It´s the same with politics. I find it difficult to say I´m something that ends with -ist, that I´m something that others are. But on the other hand when you pick out the basic basic ideas in feminism I agree with all that.

You are a musical dipso.

- Yes, I´m probably the most uninterested musician there is (laughter). Everything else has higher priority:

Photograph. Paint. Run in the forest. If anything, I can have ideas about music, see a film for example and come to think of some music that ought to be written, but to poke and putter, that doesn´t appeal to me. I write the songs, sing them and then it´s finnished. It´s as if you have a close friend that you seldom speak with, but when you speak it´s... the best! That is my relationship with the music.

- But what I do with it afterwards, musical meetings and where the music is heading, that is just wide open. And I hope it will remain like that: thesis-antithesis-synthesis. So that it afterwards won´t be as when Dylan started playing electrical. That it becomes a dividing line and that poeple therafter consider me "commercial". I want to surprise.

Can one take music too seriously?

- I don´t know what to answer that question. I have another relationship with music too, as when I go out to dance. I don´t go out often, but when I do it always ends up with me dancing like crazy somewhere. Then it should be heavy grooves. Like Chemical Brothers.

What is your greatest challange?

- That I haven´t done my best yet. That´s how I see it and it´s tremendously hopeful. It´s like Whitney Houston, she has her pipe and is on a high level, she surely is very talanted - but from there you don´t have many ways to choose from. I see myself as the opposite: I know that I have a talant. It´s up to me to manage it. I haven´t fully made use of it yet.

Why do people buy your records?

- That is to say, I can´t answer that. (Long, long silence) I know I am unique, there is no one that sounds like me. That sees the world like I do. My strength is my limitations and inability to participate in all kinds of contexts, in a way. Is that enough?

Nah. That you are unique probably isn´t the whole answer.

- This is the most difficult question I´ve been asked. No, I can´t answer it. It´s painful to answer on such questions because it touches things within me: some kind of yearning I have to reach other people, to move other people.

Who is Stina Nordenstam?

- A very intensive person.

What makes this Stina Nordenstam really, really happy?

- When I have that white paper we spoke of before me. When you come up to a level where maybe people are equal; that you belong with somebody and belong to somebody. Normal things. When I left Kopenhagen the day before yesterday I returned two videofilms that me and my friend had rented and then I paid a debt to the videostore that he had, without him knowing that. When I cycled away from there I laughed out loud (smile) in some way only because I could do something for him.

- For me that was peculiar.

Georg Cederskog


Facts/Stina Nordenstam

* Stina Nordenstam has released four albums: Stina nordenstam: "Memories of a colour" (1991), "And she closed her eyes" (1994), "Dynamite" (1996) and "People are strange" (1998)

* At the end of September she begins the recording of her fifth album. Cameron McVey is proposed as producer. Amongst his earlier works you should notice Neneh Cherry and Massive Attack: "I have made fifteen half-finnished songs for it. We are going to record a testsong at first, to see if McVey is good. People say he´s insane - I think it seems positive (smile)."

* Stina Nordenstam is 30 years old and grew up on Rågsved and Fisksätra outside Stockholm.

* She sells about 70 000 copies of each album usually divided into approximately 15 000 in Sweden, 20 000 in England and the rest in the rest of the world.

* On the japanese edition of "People are strange" is a version of Elvis Presley´s "Treat me nice".

* She sang "I dream of Jeannie", the second track on "People are strange", with her class as a student in Adolf Fredriks Musikskola.

* Favourite albums: "The latest one was probably Radiohead´s last album, i really liked it very much.
I´ve always liked Thåström very much. He´s the best singer there is, all languages. He´s fabulous. He is also a proof for that it´s profitable to keep on. i like Fireside too."

* Favourite swedish female singers: "No, absolutely not. Excuse me for saying it, but I think swedish female singers are exceptionally bad."

* On recording the songs in both churches, on attics and in apartments: "What you do when you record in a studio is to peel off all moods. To wash oneself in... Chlorin. It´s a very strange sound philosophy even though it has it´s advantages. The latest album maybe has a bit too much noise, it´s a hell to mix when you hear children screaming and cars in the background."

* Nordenstam has written one song in swedish. She gave it to Monica Zetterlund.


Info notes

Info on "Berts Dagbok": (English: "Bert´s diary") Nationally famous swedish child/youth book]

Info on snuff: Generalsnus ("General snuff" in english) and Rapé are swedish snuff. For those who don´t know what snuff is you could describe it as finely ground tobacco either rationed in small bags ("portionssnus" in swedish) or as a moist dough to "bake" your own pinch. Snuff is applied between the gums and the lips. It corrodes your gums to inject the nicotine directly into your blood. Rapé tastes of juniper berry. Generalsnus tastes of shite (translator´s opinion).]

Info on "Vispop": (Sounds kind of silly in english (too): something like "Tunepop".) Nationally famous swedish collection of famous (not only swedish) songs. The set of books stretches up to number 12 (at least).]

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