The unapologetic singer talks about her third record, Blue Lips.

Sitting in front of Tove Lo, in a booth at The Williamsburg Hotel, as she sips a hot tea, one would never guess she&rsquo;s the pasty-wearing sex-loving Scorpio pop star who has built a career on not censoring herself. The only hint at who she might be is the lynx tattoo covering her left hand&mdash;it&rsquo;s her spirit animal.&nbsp;

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At her birthday party, just a few weeks ago, her now signature nearly-nude accessory was perfectly in tow. &ldquo;I gave away at least 200 pairs of them at my birthday party a couple weeks ago,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;It ended up with everyone at the party walking around topless with different cuts of pasties on.&rdquo;&nbsp;

Just a few days prior she was on stage in Bushwick singing about having hard nipples and getting high all the time in celebration of her third studio record, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/blue-lips-lady-wood-phase-ii/1310132917">Blue Lips</a>. Where her contemporaries rely on euphemisms and ambiguity, Tove sings about doing drugs, sex, and heartbreak dramatically well. It works because it&#39;s real: she&#39;s lived it.

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At 30 years old, Tove has become a household name, at least in the pop industry. Before her debut release, Queen Of The Clouds, and explicit follow-up Lady Wood, Tove was writing pop songs for Icona Pop, and most recently the likes of Lorde and fellow Swede Zara Larsson. She&#39;s responsible for tracks like Lorde&rsquo;s &ldquo;Homemade Dynamite&rdquo; on Melodrama (which was just nominated for a Grammy), Ellie Goulding&rsquo;s multi-platinum highest-selling single &ldquo;Love Me Like You Do,&rdquo; and Hilary Duff&rsquo;s critic favorite &ldquo;Sparks.&rdquo; And while she does still write songs for the biggest names in pop, her career is front and center &mdash; and she&#39;s not panning to the prude.

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In 2016, Tove put out her provocative multidimensional project Lady Wood along with the short film Fairy Dust. Through out the 31-minute narrative video, she explores the highs and lows of lust and self-love&mdash;the final scene sees her masturbating on a bed. The project was broken into chapters, and the finale of Lady Wood was not the conclusion of her story. In late November, she released her third record &mdash; a companion piece to Lady Wood called Blue Lips. Tove&rsquo;s third record is about always chasing a rush and never really feeling satisfied. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s also just a wink to Lady Wood and blue balls because that was kind of funny and clever,&rdquo; she laughs. But Tove isn&rsquo;t making her music sexual just for the sake of scandal: she&rsquo;s doing it because she&rsquo;s not afraid to be open about it. And unlike other artists, she drops the metaphors and focuses on her reality.

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The bulk of Blue Lips comes from the plethora of songs written during her Lady Wood phase, ones she didn&rsquo;t want to cram together for the sake of it. &ldquo;I want to have my intros, outros, and interludes, and make it an experience you can listen through, take it all in and listen to again,&rdquo; she explains. Blue Lips is very much the whole part of Tove&rsquo;s story; it&rsquo;s basically the continuing emotional rollercoaster ride that Lady Wood was, but even more dramatic and chaotic. &ldquo;With this album it&rsquo;s funny because I always want people to listen to it backwards because &lsquo;Pitch Black,&rsquo; where the album ends, is about a breakup that I was going through during Lady Wood, and &lsquo;Light Beams&rsquo; is kind of where I&rsquo;m at now: a happier, more naive state of being in love and just enjoying life,&rdquo; Tove says.

"Disco Tits"

Blue Lips&rsquo; lead single &ldquo;Disco Tits&rdquo; particularly turned heads with its hypnotic chorus, &ldquo;I&#39;m sweat from head to toe/I&#39;m wet through all my clothes/I&#39;m fully charged, nipples are hard/Ready to go.&rdquo; For the track, she broke from the typical pop structure and focused on what would make her want to keep dancing. Tove credits lead single &ldquo;Disco Tits&rdquo; as the &ldquo;happiest&rdquo; single she&rsquo;s ever written: a song derived from a nickname she gained at Coachella after wearing a see-through top engulfed in disco mirrors. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s free and it&rsquo;s a little bit of a different style than anything I&rsquo;ve done before, but it still feels very me,&rdquo; she says. Tove takes things a step further in the video, having sexcapades with a Muppet-esque puppet who eventually turns into a human &mdash; something your conservative mother would surely find appalling.

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But &ldquo;Disco Tits&rdquo; isn&rsquo;t the only song that pushed buttons, &ldquo;Bitches&rdquo; hears Tove taking on a cultural sex faux pas. On it she sings, &ldquo;Know your own love, but I don&rsquo;t fuck with no glove.&rdquo; &ldquo;In Sweden it&rsquo;s very common for people to have unprotected sex and that would always be the reason you would not go down with a girl on the first night, but you would have unprotected sex with her on the first night,&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s kind of me nodding to that and just fucking pushing your head down, in a way.&rdquo; She once again delves into her affinity for substances with &ldquo;Hey You Got Drugs?&rdquo; and sexual exploration on &ldquo;Shivering Gold.&rdquo; Each track is raunchier and rawer than the previous ones, meaning she&rsquo;s finding more confidence in honesty.&nbsp;

&ldquo;With this album, I always want people to listen to it backwards because &lsquo;Pitch Black,&rsquo; where the album ends, is about a breakup that I was going through during Lady Wood, and &lsquo;Light Beams&rsquo; is where I&rsquo;m at now: a happier, more naive state of being in love and just enjoying life.&rdquo;

With two bombastic albums in just two years, Tove is taking a breather from writing now, and currently dreaming about who she&rsquo;d love to collaborate with: Sia and Robyn being at the top of her list. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d love to do like a big just like Scandi album,&rdquo; she confesses. &ldquo;There are just so many amazing artists that I think are great writers and are cool on output, like Icona Pop, Zara Larsson, Elliphant, M&Oslash; &mdash; she&rsquo;s Danish though. We should do an album together, all of us.&rdquo; Regardless of who is included, it will probably be extra in all the best possible ways.

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Whether it&rsquo;s singing about sex or a part of her daily routine, Tove isn&rsquo;t going to stop being blunt. &ldquo;I write out of my own perspective and things that I&rsquo;ve been through,&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;It can be the smallest shit that doesn&rsquo;t matter &mdash; just like, not real problems &mdash; but they&rsquo;re still my problems.&rdquo;

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She&rsquo;s wise enough to know her privilege and stay away from subjects that she hasn&rsquo;t experienced firsthand, like racism and segregation in Sweden and throughout the world. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t experienced that being a white woman from Sweden,&rdquo; she admits. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what it&rsquo;s like, so I feel like that&rsquo;s something I have a lot of feelings about, but I wouldn&rsquo;t make a song about it because that&rsquo;s not my perspective.&rdquo; For her own life though, she will continue to write about what she knows. And for her music, the less the boundaries, the better.

Tove Lo Is the Sex-Positive Pop Star Shocking All the Prudes

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