Interview: Sigrid on her upcoming album and creative control + answers questions from Astrid S and CYN.

June 25, 2018 | by Rose Riddell

Sigrid Solbakk Raabe, best known by just her first name, has had a whirlwind few years - releasing not one, but two EPs, each showcasing more and more of her songwriting talents. Fresh from winning the BBC’s prestigious Sound Of 2018 award, Sigrid also made her way down to New Zealand for the first time, to perform as part of Auckland City Limits 2018.

We caught up with Sigrid in New Zealand to discuss her ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’ EP, upcoming debut album, and other important happenings…

...the most important thing is to know that your opinion counts the most, ‘cuz you’re the artist.

COUP DE MAIN: Thank you for coming to New Zealand! How have you been enjoying our country so far?
SIGRID: I love it here! I feel like such a tourist saying it’s amazing here, but it is. It is, truly! I think this is the most beautiful country we’ve visited so far. Even the flight, we had to do double flights because we missed our first flight, but I was just happy to be like, ‘More flights, more view!’ It’s beautiful. We went to this beach in Dunedin. It’s nice being here playing this festival too.
CDM: It’s nice you got to go to the South Island.
SIGRID: I’m very happy.

IF I HAD A DAY OFF IN NEW ZEALAND…

CDM: It’s rad that you’ve been trying out new songs at your shows. Do you find it a good way to test songs with the audiences?
SIGRID: Definitely! I remember we did that with ‘Strangers’. We started playing ‘Strangers’ very early, almost right after it was written, and we wanted to test it with the crowd, like, ‘How do they respond to it?’ It turned out quite good, so it’s amazing to see how people respond to it now that the song is out. But the crowd today was so, so good.

CDM: Thank you for playing ‘Credit’! I think I told you on the phone last year, it’s my favourite unreleased song of yours.
SIGRID: Yes!!

CDM: I really love the sentiment of ‘Raw’, what was running through your mind writing that song?
SIGRID: I think sometimes it’s easy to be misunderstood. One of the hardest things is to be 100% honest. It’s easy to be honest, but that type of honesty, that’s all the negative sides of being honest as well.
CDM: It’s hard to acknowledge those sides of being honest.
SIGRID: Exactly, I wanted to make a song that was saying that I’m not picture perfect - everyone has their bad sides, and I just wanted to talk about that in a song.

CDM: I love that for every song on the EP - ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’, ‘Plot Twist’, ‘Fake Friends’ - you’ve had merchandise that you wear in the cover-art. The ‘Plot Twist’ scarf looked so cozy. What made you decide to want to do that?
SIGRID: Thank you! I have to thank my team for that. It’s all been thanks to my creative team, especially Island UK - there’s this guy called Charlie Drinkwater, he’s my Creative Director. Together with Charlotte Birch, who’s my Marketing Director, and also this guy called William Knight, who did all the designing together with Charlie and Charlotte. So it’s been a collaboration between us and the rest of the team - I just named a couple of names - and it’s been so much fun making this. We wanted to make an EP, with the titles on garments just to make it a bit different.

MY FAVOURITE SONG ON THE ‘DON’T KILL MY VIBE’ EP IS…

CDM: How has your album recording been going? It must be hard with all the touring!
SIGRID: Very exciting. We make time for it in the calendar - that’s one of the most important things that I do, maybe the most important thing. We need the songs. <laughs> We can’t go on tour if we don’t have songs. So I’ve spent a lot of time in the studio, it’s been very cool. I’ve worked with many talented writers and producers, and just been having a good time. I don’t have a date or anything for it yet.

HOW I FEEL ABOUT MY UPCOMING ALBUM…