Swedish pop wonder Loreen on life beyond Euphoria, buying a marina and finding her voice again

A black Jeep rolls down the street towards my house in the centre of Stockholm, one leather-clad elbow hanging out the window. After it struggles past the construction on the block, I find myself face-to-face with a pair of face-shielding Balenciaga sunglasses. We say our hellos before Swedish superstar Loreen proceeds to illegally park her truck while casually chatting with a tour bus driver on the other side of the street.

Out steps a pair of knee-high boots, black trousers and a 1980s-esque padded jacket, all rendered in leather. Her hair is wild and wavy, punctuated with a few knee-skimming braids. Every step Loreen takes is purposeful. Entering my home studio, she removes the jacket to reveal more leather – a blazer. She throws her things on the chair next to her, plopping down on the leopard print couch. “That’s kinky,” she says, stroking the pillow’s velvety fabric.

Now with coffee in hand, Loreen tells me she’s just arrived from Gotland, after getting up at four in the morning to catch the ferry back to Stockholm. She’s spent the last decade there – a grounded paradise compared to the insane amount of travel that she’s used to. “I’ve just bought a marina,” she says, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. “And I’m starting a restaurant, we’re opening next year.” Together with her boyfriend, Loreen is building a world of her own in Gotland, a contrast to the globe-trotting pop star life I had naively assumed she would prefer to lead.

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Yet “Mother Earth”, as she refers to the island, is just up Loreen’s alley – even if it drives her booking agent crazy when she cannot reach her European gigs due to cancelled ferries or flights. “I'm a nature girl. I prefer silence because it's so messed up in my head. As a creator, you just need your space,” she says when I ask about her move from Stockholm to Västerås as a child.

Loreen, born Lorine Talhaoui, is the oldest of six siblings. Her mother had her when she was only 16, after fleeing her Berber community in Morocco for Sweden at 14, running away from the prospect of a forced marriage. “Singing was a way of healing for me as a child,” Loreen says. “I had huge responsibilities when my mother was working, I was taking care of my brothers and sisters, bringing them home from kindergarten.” She cooked, cleaned, and cared for her brothers and sisters, all while being a child herself. Her voice became her sanctuary.

However, a professional career in music was never on the cards, until she visited her grandmother in Morocco one summer. Her grandmother declared words of wisdom in her native Berber: “A gift that is not only meant for you, but one that can create great change”. This was the prophecy that set Loreen on her path. Less than a year later, she appeared on television across the nation in the first season of Sweden’s Idol.

“My sister came up to me, and she's like, ‘I want you to be on Idol,’ and I'm like, ‘f*** that!’ But, she made me somehow. She psycho logically f***ed me over,” Loreen says laughing and clapping her hands together. She switches to a tone of seriousness. “It was very spiritual,” she says. “It happens once you say it, and once you feel it. Like, this is what I’m going to do, and you don’t even have to know how.”

What was supposed to be an incredible opportunity and the start of an explosive career turned into one of the greatest challenges of Loreen’s life. “All of a sudden, I had all these people telling me I’m not singing it right, and it confused me. I didn't even know how a microphone worked,” she says. Loreen is a force of nature, though, and not someone who easily backs down. “When something is that challenging, you either back out or you say ‘I’m going to f****ng learn this s**t, and then I'll be in control’.”

Loreen was eliminated from Idol on the eighth week, and finished fourth in the competition overall. Afterwards, she took the time to perfect her craft. “I went away. I started to learn how to produce, to understand my own voice. I wanted to be in control. I even taught myself how to edit movies,” she says. “I was a shy girl, you know. It took me years before I could watch those clips.”

Eight years later, a 29-year-old Loreen had mastered her voice, knew how to hold a microphone and how to be utterly uncompromising. This time, audiences across the world were paying attention. She was suddenly Sweden’s superstar, performing in the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku with her club anthem ‘Euphoria’.

As Loreen and I begin to lightly waltz towards the topic of Eurovision, she grabs her long braids and wraps them around her neck. Her eyes glazing over, it seems as if she’s transported to that moment on stage with confetti in the air and her voice ringing out on television screens across the globe. Like many Swedes, I remember watching with bated breath as the 12 points began pouring in, the Swedish flag rising to the very top of the scoreboard. Every nation granted the highest score to Sweden, except for Italy.

Loreen snaps back into the conversation. “I felt the performance and the whole thing,” she says, drawing a circle in the air with both of her hands. ‘Euphoria’ famously starts with dramatic strings, and then, suddenly, a gong. “I have a siren in the beginning that they didn’t want to use. But I said there’s a spiritual reason to why there is a siren. ‘Oh, what’s the reason?’ Because it neutralises the room,” she says.

“For example, when you start meditating and then there’s a gong ongoing, something happens,” she explains, imitating the movement of hitting a gong, her jewellery jangling along to the rhythm. “Some say that this is where life started. That an ‘Om’ was the f irst thing that happened before the earth. Like this is science, this is not mumbo jumbo. There is some ancient energy going on.”

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Eurovision is known for its flamethrowers, sequins and over-the-top kitsch. Loreen’s performance, however, was something completely different. She cut through the spectacle with a song that was true to her spirit. It was raw. “I think that for the whole performance, what I added was spirituality,” she says. “You know, you couldn’t see my eyes. And some people say that it’s scary not to see the eyes. You know, I was barefoot.”

The producers of the show had asked her to wear tighter clothes, something that was more “feminine”, she reveals, making air quotes to emphasise her disapproval. “What is that?” Loreen exclaims. “I don’t even know what that is. You know, you’re whatever you want to be. And so I said, ‘No, just no.’ I want to present some thing bigger than feminine. I’m a woman, you know, but it’s a power which we all have, that we’ve forgotten that we have.” She throws her leather-covered arms up in the air. Finally, she smiles and says, “So people don’t need to see me. They will feel.”

And feel they did. ‘Euphoria’ stands the test of time, like a sonic tidal wave across oceans. Loreen hit the souls of people around the world.

A decade later ‘Euphoria’ is still Loreen’s most recognised song. However, with such international success, there is a dark underbelly to, well, euphoria. The pressure for a follow up naturally ensues, and one’s greatest moment can turn into a lifetime of disappointment. However, this does not faze Loreen, who’s decided to turn the mirror away from herself and onto her critics. “You start questioning yourself and then you realise, ‘Oh my God, my ego is on fire’,” she says, laughing.

“So, it has happened at times, where I think it’s been a reflection of people’s expectations of me. Like people compare everything you do, even subconsciously. Every time you come out with something that is a little bit darker and something completely different, they have a hard time accepting it.” Loreen has been able to survive due to her connection with energies. Her spirituality is embedded in everything she does, even dedicating 30 days of each year to getting away and meditating to understand her mind.

“You know, let’s call it mind control. Observing my own thoughts, to see how unpredictable they are.” Lately Loreen’s spirit has been reaching for a new passion: acting. Last year, she took on her first-ever role in the remake of the beloved 1996 film Vinterviken, a classic tale of two star-crossed lovers. The hardships of womanhood, she says, are a constant source of inspiration for her craft and what gave her the courage to take this next step in her career. “I’ve seen a lot of things,” she says. “I've seen my mother and her struggle, grandmother, and my great-grandmother.”

This launches Loreen into a tale that seems like the stuff of movies. “She dressed up as a man,” she says. “My great-grandmother’s husband died in the war, so she was forced to marry another man. I still have a picture of her because she had a gold tooth, and she was dressed up as a man until she died.” Dressed in a “turban and kaftan,” her great-grandmother trekked with her two children to another city to finally live out her own dreams and desires.

“She opened up a small store, and continued to dress up as a man. She got sanctuary from another relative, and so she raised her two children. Most people thought she was a man until she got really old and nobody wanted to marry her, obviously. Until she died, she wore traditional men’s clothing.” We lose ourselves in conversation about her nomad ancestors before returning to talk about her forays onto the big screen.

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“Alicia Vikander’s agent reached out to me, and she said, ‘You should keep doing this. You should work with me,’” Loreen says. When a major Hollywood agent tells you to keep pursuing what many would consider to be a pipe-dream, you do not decline. She finds herself vulnerable in acting, much more than in singing. “It’s so much more naked to stand there, and be in your emotions,” she says. Even though she cannot tell me specifically what she is working on, I can see in her eyes that she has her heart set on Hollywood. She graciously reveals that she has a few American television series in the pipeline, as well as some other, potentially major franchises. “When it hap pens, I’m going to call you, and cry,” she promises.

What was supposed to be a one hour long conversation brims over more than two hours, before Loreen has to rush off to her next appointment. We walk up the stairs from the basement studio. The storm that was promised has arrived. It seems as if Loreen barely notices, walking boots-first out of the house and into the downpour. Exiting the gate, she soon realises she has left one of her two leather jackets behind. I run back inside to grab it for her, leaving her happily standing in the rain, sunglasses on, despite the grey skies.

Once reunited, she slips on the jacket, her hair soaking wet. Loreen walks up the hill back to her parked car, hoping she didn’t get a parking ticket. She waves goodbye, noting that she most likely has forgotten something else, and that she’ll be back before I know it. In the meantime though, I’ll be waiting for that promised phone call detailing her next big thing.