You probably know Aurora as the young elf queen of Scandi music. Maybe you’ve got the beautiful “Runaway” from her 2016 debut, All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend, stuck in your head thanks to its popularity on TikTok. But did you know that it’s Aurora you can thank for inspiring a 12-year-old Billie Eilish to make music in the first place? Were you aware that she performed at the 2020 Oscars alongside Idina Menzel? Talk about versatility.
Today, two years since she released her two-part second album, A Different Kind of Human, Aurora is back with a new single, a brand new chapter and a rather iconic harlequin-like aesthetic. After dwelling on the idea of shame for a little too long, the now 25-year-old went to Australia (those were the pre-pandemic days!) and wrote “Cure For Me”, a playful twisted carnival of a song about unshackling from said shame. The lyrics, she explains, are about “shutting down the inner and the outer voices telling us we aren’t allowed to be just who we are; who we were born as. And that our way of being, and our way of loving is wrong, just because it’s a little different. It’s about acceptance. And the difficult matter of learning how to love yourself.”
And it really has been a transformative couple of years for Aurora — a time full of growth spent making music as well as, you know, “contemplating revenge, learning how to sew, painting self-portraits and thinking about world peace!” For real though, she’s evolved. “I’ve learnt a lot about my mind this last year,” Aurora tells us, “and I’ve never found it easier to see both myself and the world more clearly than right now! After getting the chance to take a step back and view the world in all its beautiful mess. It’s impacted my next album so so so much!”
To celebrate this new era, Aurora curated a playlist of some of her favourite music right now. “It’s a little mix of songs I find beautiful, strange and playful,” she says. “I feel playful every day! Just waking up and simply being alive can sometimes inspire that feeling. Lately I’ve decided to incorporate some of that playfulness into the music. And both my newest single and my next album are very much influenced by this side of me!” Does Aurora, we wonder, think the very nature of being playful is underrated? “Yes I do!!!!!” You heard her… embrace your playful side! Love who you are!
Sitting at one-hour-and-twenty-minutes long, it kicks off with a jazzy Japanese pop banger from all the way back in 1979 courtesy of Miki Matsubara, before ending a little more apocalyptically with “As The World Caves In” by young Londoner Matt Maltese. Of course there’s some good times courtesy of Phoebe Bridgers, David Bowie, Iris and Fleetwood Mac thrown in there along the way. Remember: you don’t need a cure for you, you just need this playlist.