Molly Nilsson

“I hope you die by my side, the two of us at the exact same time, I hope we die not long from now, the two of us
at the exact same time”
By the time Molly Nilsson released History, she had already established a fledgling cult status built on homemade
YouTube videos and home-burnt Cdrs. Writing from a distance, it’s clear that History is the first classic album in
her canon and arguably a classic of the 21st Century underground music panorama.While the methodology on
History hadn’t changed from Nilsson’s previous 3 albums – it was recorded solo at The Lighthouse, Nilsson’s
home studio based on a Berlin crossroads – on this record the songwriting reached a new peak and the
emotional scythe cut deeper. Here, Nilsson managed to combine a cosmic, outward looking perspective with an
intimate knowledge of the human condition and its place in these turbulent times. In truth, no other songwriter has
excavated the modern psyche so clearly and perfectly.
The tracklist to Nilsson’s fourth album reads as an early greatest hits for Molly Nilsson followers and also serves
as the perfect entry point to a whole world the artist has been building for the last 10 years. In Real Life
crystalises the millenial obsession with relationships built online, with a generation paying for the baby boomer’s
excesses with their anxiety towards the harshness of every day life. It’s a call to arms for a generation who fell in
love on Skype. On I Hope You Die, one of Molly Nilsson’s most iconic songs, the songwriter flips the song title
into a tale of doomed romance, a relationship based on miscommunications and the thrill of the other. It’s also
one of the most heartfelt songs full of pathos written by anyone, an ode to obsession. Doomed romance, life lived
on the flipside of day and the role of the outsider in society are themes that crop up through-out History. On
Bottles Of Tomorrow, the narrator is sweeping up, in love with the night and examining the remains a society
leaves behind.
On City Of Atlantis, Nilsson veers from the plaintive balladry she had begun to make her name with, embracing
trance-like synth and dance music details to create an unlikely anthem using the mythological city as a means to
comment on the patriarchal rendering of history by power. With by now trademark panache, she turns
complicated subject matter into a glorious song that transforms into an ecstatic pop moment.
Hotel Home, another Nilsson classic, paints loneliness not as a debilitating anxiety, but as a powerful tool that
propels the artist forward through her travels. It’s a song that hints at an endearing self-awareness also; the writer
is never at home, living life on the road, content that “the world will find me when the time is ripe.”
There’s never been a greater time.