MØ

MØ’s fourth studio album Plæygirl is a moment of reinvention and reintroduction. Across these 11 songs, the Danish pop singer and songwriter is adding thrilling new textures to her time-tested sonic approach, digging deeper within herself in the interest of total liberation. MØ’s music has always been as deeply felt as it has been purely pleasurable to listen to, but the lush, jagged sounds that make up Plæygirl are representative of new heights in her already-impressive career ten years after her star-making debut No Mythologies to Follow. It’s dancefloor-dominating music, imbued with the rich emotive streak that’s made her discography thus far such an immersive experience.

Work on Plæygirl began in earnest in late 2022, a full nine months and change after the release of that year’s iridescent and lovely Motordrome. “Usually, when I write albums, I start writing the next one while I’m making the last one,” MØ explains—but the intense emotional conditions under which Motordrome was created meant that a different creative process was necessary this time around. “During Motordrome, it was after a time where I had a stress reaction and was tapping out of my career for a moment,” she says. “So when I started writing Plæygirl, I wanted to have fun in a way that didn’t feel forced. I just wanted to make music that was true to me—music that feels free.”

After extensive demoing, MØ met with Plæygirl’s executive producer Nick Sylvester (The Dare, Shamir) during a trip to Los Angeles and found that the pair struck a sense of creative kismet almost immediately. “We had some really good conversations, and he was talking a lot about his philosophy regarding the creative process—and it fit so nicely with these thoughts that I’ve had myself,” she says. Ultimately, the decision to hunker down in the studio with a single producer, as opposed to the more collaborative efforts behind Motordrome and Forever Neverland, was a further gesture towards the artistic rebirth that Plæygirl represents: “I think Nick is a total genius, and I was just so excited about the prospect of working with one main person for this record.”

The pair eventually hunkered down in Copenhagen during the fall of 2023 and bore down together—not only on the sound, but the expressive lyrics that mark Plæygirl as a whole. “It helped me think about my lyrics in a different way, having someone to ping-pong ideas off of,” MØ says. “I’ve never tried something like that before, and it turned out to be a really exciting process for me.” Also pitching in on sessions: singer and songwriter Clementine Douglas, Yves Tumor collaborator Elliott Kozel, and longtime collaborator Ronni Vindhal, a credited producer on No Mythologies to Follow who helped get Plæygirl’s 11 songs to their most perfect zenith. “Sometimes, finishing music is difficult,” she states, “Especially after living with the songs for so long. So Ronni came in to help with the finish on some of these tunes as well.”

Along with embracing a carefree perspective aesthetically, Plæygirl is the clearest representation yet of MØ’s pitch-perfect balance between light and darkness. “The Danish have a bit of a Nordic gloom to us,” she says with a laugh. “We don’t want to be too optimistic about things, and ultimately, I really connect with music that has darkness and a sense of hope. I was trying to appreciate the hard times I went through that led to Motordrome while celebrating that I’m in a better place now”.

Sonically, Plæygirl tips deeper into the dark electro that’s marked her recent work as well as the clubbier vibes of her early music—and those all-night vibes will assuredly bleed into MØ’s affiliated Plæygirl live shows, which she describes as “a darkwave indie dance party for people who don’t like dance parties.” Capturing the hedonistic pleasures of early-2010s club culture with a Nordic twist, every element of the Plæygirl shows is intended to evoke the perfect atmosphere for listeners to communally lose themselves in the music.

The resulting aesthetic of this era is also heavily indebted to Scandinavian pop’s love for rich, melodic textures: “I really like when there’s a lot of melodic textures in my songs, whereas Nick works more minimalistically—so it was very exciting to find a middle ground, between the Scandi influence that I’ve always embraced and Nick’s electro-punk tendencies.”

The buzzsaw electro of “Keep Moving,” featuring production contributions from electro-pop scion The Dare, reflects a different sort of push-and-pull: “I was writing the song from the perspective of how I was feeling before I broke down from stress—from the endless hamster wheel, and that impulse to just keep grinding without taking care of yourself. The titular sentiment, obviously, is very ironic. You should definitely not keep moving if you’re not feeling like it.”

There’s the bouncy synth-disco of “Lose Yourself” and the effervescent build of “Sweet,” which features Irish producer and rapper Biig Piig; elsewhere, the elastic electro-pop of first single “Who Said” has roots in a demo she worked with Vindahl on in 2015 and was one of the first songs fully completed with Sylvester for Plæygirl. ““He just made this amazing riff inspired by the Knife, and Clementine helped me refine the verses so that it fit more into this album’s new direction,” she explains, before going more in-depth into the song’s thematic content.

“I wrote ‘Who Said’ back when I’d just started dating my current partner, and it was very much about having a fear of commitment—because, secretly, I was scared to be dumped and heartbroken. We’ve been together for 10 years, so now the song has turned into a reflection of my fear of commitment and of growing up. But, at the same time, I’m such a comfort freak, so it’s really about ignoring the natural change in yourself. I’m realizing that I need to just stop pretending.”

Plæygirl’s most sonically striking moment arrives at its close, with the tricky techno figure that anchors “Heartbreaks”—a song that embodies the album’s overall sentiment as well as the exact moment that MØ finds herself in at this point of her career. “For many years, I was trying to be in control and to make all the right moves,” she says. ”This song—and this record—represents an attempt to let go of that control-freak tendency a little bit and just try to have more fun while also being true to myself. I’m cool, but I’m also chaotic, and so is this album—and I think there’s something really freeing about that.”

”That’s part of life,” MØ continues while discussing the precipice she stands on throughout Plæygirl —leaving the past behind while looking towards a bright future. “You go through stuff, and you learn a lot, but you also learn that you actually don’t know so much. It’s an ongoing process, which I’m actually very delighted about, and after having gone through the pain of becoming a young adult—being so lost, in doubt, and insecure—I feel like I’m standing in front of a new era.”