Tove Lo Lets The Light In With Sunshine Kitty

By Deepa Lakshmin


Tove Lo left the stage. A sold-out crowd waited in the pit, expecting her musical group to kick off one last song to wrap up her concert, nevertheless she had something more exhilarating suggested for her album release party on Thursday, September 19. Several minutes later, the "Glad He's Gone" singer — green glitter tears down her cheeks and plastic cup in her hand — surprised each person by the bar at Manhattan's Bowery Ballroom. Giant silver balloons spelled out the title of her fourth LP in five transformative years: Sunshine Kitty, out now.


In between taking selfies with people on the floor, Tove crashed fans' pics at a photo booth featuring her feisty cartoon modify ego, a "mini savage Care Bear-like thing," she called it ahead of the show. The animal graces Sunshine Kitty's cover next to Tove herself, sporting Lady Wood's logo on its belly — a nod to her 2016 sophomore album. "We've run into a lot of problems with censorship around her," Tove told MTV News. "I thought she could have the ability to get away with more than me, however no, it's getting banned... Because it looks like a vagina."


"I've been on a little bit of a search, looking at symbols. As soon as I search 'penis' and there's a cactus that grows and then a flower comes out of it, isn't that as much alluding as this symbol is?" She mentioned. "Because it's based on the female sign, not based on the vagina. Issues."


Tove Lo — real name: Ebba Tove Elsa Nilsson — is no stranger to censorship. Fairy Dust, her first short film that accompanied Lady Wood, was briefly pulled from YouTube thanks to a masturbation scene soundtracked by "Bitches," a song from 2017's Blue Lips. Her clever album names speak to how differently society talks about male versus female pleasure. Sunshine Kitty, influenced by the phrase "pussy power," continues this wordplay. Earlier this year, she told MTV News the title came to her right after watching a Girls episode where Hannah Horvath recounts hearing about the practice of soaking up the sun through her, well, you know.


"Bitches" soon got a second set of bold visuals any time Charli XCX, Icona Pop, Elliphant, and ALMA hopped on the remix. In a wild music video about a sex clinic, they star as experts who teach a male how to go down on his girl. It's sassy, it's humorous, and it's nothing like "Bad because the Men — Tove Lo's mellow next group effort with ALMA and second Sunshine Kitty single.


"I know she used me for some fun / She was bad because the males Tove sings about her heartbreak. ALMA has her own side of the story: "Love hurts any time you're fingering / Although she kiss him." Tove penned these candid lines soon after reading what she wrote in her old journals, which often fuel her songwriting process. "I had read the location where I talk about my first girl crush If I was a teenager and realizing that I was also into ladies she mentioned. The song became one of five collabs on Sunshine Kitty, which loops in artists as varied as Kylie Minogue and "Brazilian funker" MC Zaac.


"I wanted another girl on ['Bad because the Boys'] who also was into ladies Tove continued. "I wanted it to feel real, so ALMA is a good friend of mine — astonishing voice, and [she's] gay — so I reached out to her, 'Hey do, you feel like you could relate to this song?' And she's like, 'Oh my god, fuck yeah, this is great.'"


"Bad because the Gentlemen is an earworm, nevertheless in back of that, the emotions in back of it especially resonate with fans excited to be able to see themselves represented in commercial pop. Numerous YouTube comments hail it as a "bisexual anthem," with at least one designating it the best tune for Rue and Jules' complex relationship on Euphoria. "The most typical thing once it's girl plus a girl, it's sexy or flirty," Tove mentioned. "It's just more [of] a sexual thing than an emotional thing. I think maybe that was a big thing that felt like it was needed in a way."


With Bi Visibility Day on my mind, I say I've found men often ask bisexual ladies if they've ever hooked up with females. "It's funny," she replied. "A lot of straight dudes feel like they're being accepting because they're into girl-on-girl porn, and you're like, please don't bring that into the conversation we're having right now."


In her art, Tove has routinely done "what comes organic to her, from celebrating all types of love in her 2015 "Timebomb" music video to flashing audiences as soon as the moment feels right. "I have a lot of companions that are bi," she mentioned. "Or maybe they don't really desire to figure out, or perhaps they lean more one way than the other, although it's not a big deal... I think whichever you want should be the way that you must have the ability to live."


It's fitting that some of her love songs avoid pronouns, like her latest Sunshine Kitty single, the hot-and-cold "Sweettalk My Heart." Its chorus gets you in the gut: "Sweeter than love / Is the taste of all those promises / That pulls you in for good." That sincerity helped Tove realize she was willing to write her fourth LP. "You're both choosing to promise each other things for the future... Now, it's the truth, yet no one understands what’s going to happen," she explained about the song's meaning.


Tove's music is driven first and foremost by her susceptible lyrics. "Gotta stay high all of the time to keep you off my mind" — the line that launched her career from her breakout 2014 hit "Habits (Stay High)" — was hauntingly sincere, a retreat into darkness at a time of glossy pop. Nevertheless what makes Sunshine Kitty a refreshing leap forward is how optimistic it is. Even the breakup that prompts "Glad He's Gone" feels upbeat, something made more evident by Tove slotting the song first at her release show.


Even though Tove played old favorites from her entire discography, the Bowery crowd hadn't heard several of the Sunshine Kitty songs she played that night. Their collective reaction to "Stay Over" and "Are U Gonna Tell Her?" Was understandably to dance it out. However others, like "Mateo" or "Mistaken" — the album's sole ballad, "about jealousy and not feeling like you're enough" — took time to process and understand the weight of her words.


The album ends with the unexpected tearjerker "Anywhere U Go," which Tove performed against a glowing orange and yellow backdrop — a private sunset for her party. "Stay with each other / You make me better," she sings about a "young love" that fills her with warmth. No wonder she says her biggest hope for Sunshine Kitty is to "[open] up people's hearts a little Right following the journey lose taken us on, and also her own path to positivity, listening to that song's final a capella notes felt like lying in a ray of sunlight.