For her NME Cover shoot, Waterbaby couldn’t have chosen a more magnificent location: the Julius Kronberg atelier in Skansen, the oldest open-air museum (and zoo) in her native Sweden – and a place that’s already immortalised in pop music history on the cover of ABBA’s 1981 album ‘The Visitors’. Just a few days before, though, we find the artist in far cosier environs: her Stockholm apartment, Waterbaby dressed in comfy hoodie and headphones, speaking quietly from her couch while her roommate sleeps nearby.
It’s an appropriate setting to discuss ‘Memory Be A Blade’, her first full-length album and a project where Waterbaby gets “personal on another level”. The album is more introspective and lyrically forthright than her 2023 debut EP ‘Foam’, which introduced the curious blends of sweet and dark, dreaminess and lucidity that continue to define Waterbaby’s sound, which glides fluidly across indie, R&B and bedroom pop.
Waterbaby on The Cover of NME. Credit: Nina Andersson Voigt for NME
This album is potent yet delicate, Waterbaby’s voice serene, almost angelic. Weaving vulnerability into soft, ethereal vignettes, it evokes the bright-eyed melancholy of Clairo, Adrienne Lenker, PinkPantheress or SZA. As its title suggests, it’s foremost a meditation on memory, a self-confessed nod to the artist’s preoccupation with the past. “Underlying almost every song is this nostalgia I have for past experiences and sensations,” she explains. “I’m a very sentimental person, and am always looking back and cherishing past moments. I’m in my head a lot too, always making up scenarios and daydreaming.”
That attention to detail comes through in conversation, too. She weighs her words carefully, parsing the difference between “lucky” and “fortunate”, doubling back to clarify points made earlier – almost as if already looking back from the future, wanting to be understood clearly in the present. The more we speak, the more her particular charm reveals itself: wry and deadpan, yet so earnest in wanting to express herself faithfully that you can’t help but warm to her.
Credit: Nina Andersson Voigt for NME
“Looking back on a lonely night / Looking back on that day / Memory be the sharpest knife / Memory be a blade,” goes the refrain on the gorgeous title track. The project charts her realisations about the destructive side of reminiscence. “I get almost a physical feeling, a dopamine kick, from looking back on past memories,” she reflects. “I started questioning: ‘But what is that about? Why can’t I look forward?’
“I think I’d been walking around with this false idea that reminiscing was a necessary part of processing and being able to move on,” she continues. “But that hasn’t turned out to be the case: it was actually hurting me. And, when you’re living in your head so much, you don’t feel as big a need to have that experience in real life. In a way, it halts you from having real experiences at all.”
While working on ‘Memory Be A Blade’, Waterbaby wound up caught between past and present. A new relationship flowered as she was still mulling over her last one; then, that ended too. The album ended up becoming something more – a capsule of field notes and realisations from multiple converging timelines and realities.
Credit: Nina Andersson Voigt for NME
The album itself came together “sporadically” over two years, written and recorded with her longtime collaborator Marcus White between studios in Sweden and Los Angeles. “At first, it took a while for me to accept that we were making an album instead of an EP or mixtape,” she admits. “I always had this idea that you need to be ‘ready’ to release your debut album, in every single part of your life. But the music just kept growing in our hands as we were making it, until I could no longer doubt it anymore.”
Something about this music felt more “natural”, whether it was the comfort of freestyling on the mic for the first time, or feeling ready to share more of herself with the world compared to her previous work. “I haven’t shared much on social media so far,” she says. “I preferred focusing on the music itself and didn’t want to be in front as much. But I’ve opened up in a lot of ways with this album.”
That’s partly from a newfound commitment to honesty, not just in the album-making process but more broadly in her life. “In my late twenties now, being untrue to myself hurts me in a tangible way,” she reveals. “People have always told me I’m too nice, but I’ve learned that as a people pleaser, no one was actually pleased with me. I was just making myself smaller and easier to deal with to avoid friction. Whereas now, the friction is from suppressing myself in the ways I used to.” As she sings on ‘Clay’: “I’m like clay how you mould me / I twist and I bend… It’s been hard to say sometimes but I mind.”
“I get almost a physical feeling, a dopamine kick, from looking back on past memories”
As a people-pleaser in recovery, making music for public consumption can feel daunting. Nevertheless, music has always had a central place in Waterbaby’s life. As a child, she applied to one of Stockholm’s foremost choir schools at her mother’s insistence, where she learned fundamentals in classical technique and harmonising. She auditioned with the song ‘Zangaléwa’, the Cameroonian song famously sampled on Shakira’s FIFA World Cup theme ‘Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)’. “I sang the original one, which my dad taught me. I was ahead of my time!” she jokes.
While choir was her anchor, she gravitated towards the freedom and stylishness of R&B music. In particular, her first memory of a musical lightbulb moment was hearing R&B singer-songwriter H.E.R. “She changed everything for me. When I was first shown her song ‘Focus’, I was like ‘Y’all can leave the room. I’m going to be here putting this on repeat’.”
Credit: Nina Andersson Voigt for NME
Waterbaby began writing songs at 17 after experiencing her first heartbreak, and followed her passion through to songwriting school and then a music career, buoyed throughout by the support of her family. With a great-grandfather who was a jazz pianist, and relatives who dabbled in concert promotion, “I was raised to have a healthy amount of delusion,” she shares. “My family has always believed in me and never tried to angle me into anything else. But they also understand that side of music. It wouldn’t sound crazy to them if, like, I told them I’ve been broke for years trying to do this.”
Breakthrough features with Swedish indie and R&B peers Seinabo Sey and Hannes, on ‘Sweet Life’ and ‘Stockholmsvy’ respectively, opened up new avenues for her. “Through these opportunities with my friends, born of pure love and passion, I got to see the mechanics of presenting your work in front of people, without the pressure of it being my own release. It was like a soft launch!” Out of the label bids that ensued, she signed with American indie powerhouse Sub Pop, all while still working as a sales clerk at a perfume store. She enjoyed it, but decided it would be her last job once she made enough money to quit. “But then, they beat me to it! A bunch of us were let go from our contracts, just as I was about to go on tour.”
Credit: Nina Andersson Voigt for NME
Waterbaby is honest about the grind it takes being an artist still in the emerging phase. “When I tell you that I’ve been walking by faith and not by sight, I truly mean it,” she explains. “I give music my everything; I don’t have anything else to spare. It would get to a stage where I didn’t know how I’d make rent. Then, I’d get a scholarship that held me over for a few more months.” She describes more opportunities and big breaks, each one giving her more time on the clock: her mega-viral collab with Hannes in 2022, ‘Stockholmsvy’; “a new option” in her music publishing. (And though they don’t come up in conversation, her two Swedish Grammy nominations in 2024 couldn’t have hurt.) “It’s been at least two and a half years of this motto, and I’m still very much piecing it together even now.”
“The music just kept growing in our hands as we were making it, until I could no longer doubt it”
Her current place on her journey – with fans of her own, headline shows under her belt and an upcoming EU/UK tour – feels all the more hard-earned. “It’s been life affirming,” she shares. “Performing as a support was already trippy, but doing my own shows – just knowing that people have actually bought tickets, put it in the calendar and showed up – is mindblowing, even overwhelming.”
When asked what she’s looking forward to most in this moment, Waterbaby’s face lights up. “My biggest dream right now is to get to play this music in the way I want. Touring is expensive, but so many people have put so much time and love into making the album feel so beautiful and instrumental,” she says, referring to the small ensemble whose horns, strings and woodwinds decorate the record. “I want to present it in a way that does the music justice.”
In the grander scheme of things, she reflects: “I’m excited to discover more about my own sound.” She has faith in the process, though, and is in no rush. Instead of mining the past for relief, she’s looking no further than herself for the answer. “What’s my thing? Well, it’s me. It’s gonna show itself. The red thread has to be me.”
Waterbaby’s ‘Memory Be A Blade’ is out March 6 via Sub Pop.
Listen to Waterbaby’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Cordelia Lam
Photography: Nina Andersson Voigt
Photography Assistance: Amelie Karlsbro
Styling: Emelie Ericsson
Styling Assistance: Enya Borg
Hair & Makeup: Josephine Golan
Creative Direction: Martin Falck
Production: Fanny Blom, Slutet
Label: Sub Pop
Location: Skansen
Special thanks to Skansen and Helene Winberg
The post Waterbaby pours herself into intimate songs about memory and moving on appeared first on NME.
