Loreen has recently had a realisation – that she doesn’t just make music, but instead „creates worlds“ that truly transport her listeners. „That’s why I love Eurovision so much – because it allows me to create an entire world when I’m on stage,“ Loreen says. As the only woman to win the iconic song contest twice, with Euphoria in 2012 and Tattoo in 2023, Loreen is acutely aware of Eurovision’s platform as a „beautiful loving space where people gather around sounds and images“. Now, every new song she puts out is conceived as an experience to be savoured on several levels. „As a listener, you have all the elements there: you can see it, hear it, feel it, smell it,“ she says. „My art isn’t about one thing – it’s the whole, it’s the layers, it’s the message.“

There’s no doubt this message is travelling far and wide: globally, Loreen has more than 2 billion streams to her name. Her intoxicating electropop gem Tattoo topped the charts in 10 countries including her native Sweden and peaked at number two in the UK. The music video for Is It Love?, her equally heady follow-up single, exceeded a million views in less than two weeks when it premiered in October and she will soon hit 1 million TikTok followers. But of course, stats alone only tell half the story. Loreen’s fans are so passionate that they make supercuts of her saying „darling“ – a term of endearment she picked up at Eurovision in Liverpool – and flood her posts with the LGBTQ+ community’s highest compliment: “Mother!” „At first when I saw that, I was like, ‚I’m not that old!'“ Loreen says with a laugh. „But then it hit me, that whenever I was performing Tattoo, I had so much love in my body for everyone collectively that there was a very motherly energy there.“

Loreen fans have also branded her emotive, evocative songs „spiritual pop“ – a description she fully approves of because it acknowledges that „there is no separation“ between her and the audience. „When they see a spiritual element in what I do, it means they understand and see it in themselves,“ she says. „I’m pretty sure that whatever I’m going through in life, we’re all going through it in a way.“ Loreen always knows precisely what energy she wants to give out to the world. She had devised a narrative for Forever, her transcendent new single set in the same world as Tattoo, before she even recorded it. „In the first chapter of the story, which is Tattoo, you meet this entity – she’s male, she’s female, she’s everything. She comes from the earth, from the dust, and it’s very spiritual,“ Loreen explains. „And now in the second chapter, Forever, there is an awakening. It’s about a moment where you’ve gone through all the earth and dust – you’ve gone through life – and you can see things clearly. You’re leaving all your illusions behind and you’re free.“

Loreen says she went into the studio knowing that Forever „needed to coexist with Tattoo“ sonically, but the actual songwriting process was „simple“ and really about „trusting my intuition“. Once she got on the mike, she sang „the melodies from beginning to end in one take“ and knew she had the „skeleton of the song“ nailed. „At that moment, which is almost like a divine moment, it’s so important not to have any negative energy in the studio,“ she says. „You need playful, almost childish energy to be able to access the beautiful information that you need.“ At this point, she and her collaborators began „stitching together“ lyrics, shards of melody and sonic details to make sure Forever told the right story. The result is a rousing, richly emotive rave anthem destined to become an enduring club classic like Euphoria, which still fills dance floors all over the world.

Loreen readily admits that unlocking her full creative potential has been a lifelong journey. Her mother, who fled Morocco for Sweden at 14 to avoid an arranged marriage, had her at 16 and tried to impose order on a packed and often chaotic household. „I had five siblings and my mother was very young, so it was kind of like Lord of the Flies with children raising children,“ Loreen recalls. Singing became her sanctuary and a way of connecting with her emotions. „The only moments I could be alone was when I sat in the bathroom, with the lights out, and just sang,“ she says. „I didn’t question it; it was just what I did for hour after hour. I never had any idea of wanting to become an artist. I was always the shy kid.“

When she was 15, Loreen’s grandmother planted an idea – or at least the seed of one – in her head. „She told me: ‚When you have a gift like that – your voice – it’s not only for you. Your purpose is to share it,'“ Loreen recalls. Three years later, she was beginning to realise her grandmother was right, but she credits her sister with giving her a „push“ into applying for Idol, a new TV singing competition. „She did that ego thing where she was like, ‚You’re scared, you’re a coward,‘ and it worked,“ Loreen says. Though she made it through to Idol’s live shows and ultimately finished fourth, she describes the experience as a „huge trauma“ for her. „I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I was already very spiritual and sensitive to energies,“ Loreen says. „And I was so shy that I hardly spoke to people, so imagine going into this situation where there’s cameras and lights and people asking you questions and judging you. I didn’t even know how a microphone worked. And all that anxious energy was a shock to my spirit.“

But at the same time, Loreen likens her time on the show to a „school“ for her future performing career. „I feel like the universe threw me into this situation where I didn’t know how anything worked and I had to fake it the whole time,“ she says. „Of course it was painful, but you can’t flourish until you go through that.“ After Idol, Loreen worked as a TV producer and director by day and honed her studio craft by night. „I paid an engineer to teach me how the equipment worked so I could get in the studio and hear what my voice sounded like – I’d never listened to myself sing before,“ she says. „So now, when I go into a recording session, no one can tell me something is ‚technically impossible‘ because I know how to do it myself.“ Working behind-the-scenes in TV gave her a similar skill set for creating the incredible, immersive performances we’ve seen from her at Eurovision: Loreen knows exactly how to use lighting, staging and camera angles to achieve her creative vision.

She describes her debut single, 2011’s cathartic dance-pop banger My Heart Is Refusing Me, as a partial but pivotal breakthrough. „It was the first time all my melodies came together in a song, but when I was performing it, I was still scared,“ she says. When Loreen watches her stunning, rain-drenched performance of Euphoria at the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest in Baku, she can still see fragments of this fear. „There’s a reason the stage was so dark – I was still hiding,“ she says. But eleven years later, when she returned to the contest in Liverpool last May, everything had changed. Loreen had continued to bloom with subsequent hits including Crying Out Your Name, Statements and Neon Lights, and felt ready to show every aspect of herself. „I wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable, sweaty and to look people in the eye,“ she says. „I believed in the connection between me and the audience and that energy really came through.“ Loreen’s intricately choreographed, chrysalis-like performance of Tattoo was an all-time great Eurovision moment.

So, as she readies more new music from her upcoming album, Loreen knows she has the skills, confidence and creative energy to deliver her vision. „Pain and love – how those two things are important – that’s my main focus right now,“ she says. „You cannot live a life without pain, because if you do, you won’t know what love is. But once you see pain as something that is necessary for your own happiness, you can come through the other side and experience everything else. That’s the narrative that drives everything I do at the moment. And I’m so excited to share it with people.“