Girl in Red: 'My mom said she saw lots of me in Billie Eilish'
Girl in Red, aka Marie Ulven.
Marie Ulven, aka Girl in Red, would never be mistaken for Billie Eilish’s musical doppelgänger. And yet the Norwegian indie star caught reflections of herself in the Los Angeles singer’s recent documentary, The World’s A Little Blurry. As a young woman with a huge global fanbase and (pre-Covid) a gruelling touring schedule, Ulven’s world can get a little blurry too.
“Even though she has a career at a whole other level, it really struck a chord with me,” says Ulven (22) of the film’s unflinching honesty about the grind of life on the road. “It was intriguing to see someone else go through the things. My mom said she saw lots of me in Billie, which is interesting. My mom probably has a better perspective.”
Ulven is first to point out that she is quite a distance from Eilish’s status as festival headliner and arena-level draw. And yet she’s confidently blazing her own trail. A May 2022 concert in Dublin’s Olympia is already a sell-out, while Rolling Stone recently praised her debut album, If I Could Make It Go Quiet, for its “super-charged indie rock honesty”.
As a queer artist, her success is bigger than her music. One of her anthems, I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend, is a valentine to self-assertion and living your best life.
“I’m happy to be whatever anyone needs me to be,” she says over Zoom from her home town of Horten in eastern Norway. “If me making music that gives people clarity in their life – I think that’s really f**king cool. I celebrate that shit.”
Yet for all the acclaim – she has two million Instagram followers and her new LP is confidently expected to be a top ten hit – Ulven’s achievements to date have been grounded in the very specific genre of lo-fi “bedroom” pop.
That blueprint is, however, ripped up gleefully on If I Could Make It Go Quiet. Here Ulven casts herself in the lead role of glossy pop star. And she works with Billie Eilish’s brother – producer Finneas O’Connell.
“Me and Billie have the same same agent. I met Finneas at Pukkelpop [Belgium’s answer to Electric Picnic]. It was the first and last time we met in person. But we struck up a connection. He said he liked my music. Obviously I like his music and his production on Billie’s debut.”
The fruits of their collaboration can be sampled on extraordinary single Serotonin. An alt.pop banger, it’s wonderfully catchy even as the lyrics plunge deep into Ulven’s subconscious.
“I get intrusive thoughts / like cutting my hands off/ Like jumping in front of a bus,” she sings.
“I have anxieties and I’ve never read about stuff like that from an artist’s point of view," she explains. "Which is weird because I’m pretty sure lots of people have those intrusive thoughts. They’re actually quite common. It’s strange we aren’t exposed to people talking about them.”
Her new album is a masterclass in maximalist pop yet with hurt and vulnerability at its core. Does she worry about alienating fans who know her for gentler older songs such as We Fell In Love In October and Summer Depression?
“The music that has been out and that people have heard is more lo-fi,” she says. “Behind the scenes, I have made music and progressed without people hearing that side of what I do. To me, it feels like a no-brainer. It’s about me getting older and the effect it has on my music. It sounds like who I am now – just like the music I put out earlier was true to who I was when I was 18,19 or 20.”
- If I Could Make It Go Quiet is out now
