Sarah Klang has announced that her new album Mercedes will be dropping on 20th October via Nettwerk. Klang has enjoyed plenty of success in her career to date, with three Top 5 albums in her homeland of Sweden, as well as winning the Swedish Grammy for Best Album twice. Yet none of that could prepare her for an entirely different journey. Leaving her twenties behind and becoming a mother with her first child, whom the album is named for, became the catalyst for a new cycle of songs all grounded in personal, but also general shared human experiences. Sarah delivers these songs with the steam-of-conscious storytelling style that has endeared her to so many, but now with more candour.
Sarah Klang
Making music is how Klang has always processed changes in her life – like moving to the country and changing schools as a young girl. The experience had a profound impact on her life, not least because of how tough her school was – a place where bullying was rife. Being an expectant mother took her squarely back to that period, recalling what she experienced in vivid detail after years of suppressing the memories. Nowhere is this more apparent than on her emotive new single Halloween Costume, which deals with themes of teenage bullying and mental health musically wrapped in bright americana-pop warmth.
Check out the official lyric video for Halloween Costume below:
“I had trauma and PTSD from my teenage years – something I didn’t realise for many years,” Klang explains. “After therapy, I remembered that I genuinely thought I would go mad during that time in my adolescence. I had definitely blocked it all out, but after therapy, I started to process it all in a way I had never done previously. At the time of it happening when I was young, music was what I used to cope. I would lose myself in songwriting and compositions, listening to dance, Americana and great nineties beats.” She adds, “I guess it’s about defiance in a way too. About overcoming something as monumental as this. I started to feel a kindness towards myself that I hadn’t felt before, after years of blaming myself for what happened. I started to feel compassion towards my younger self. A lot of peace came as a result.”
Klang has previously shared the song Magic Stone, a gently uplifting and hopeful ode to her baby girl told through her hypnotising brand of americana-influenced vintage pop, and lead single Mercedes, a soaring synth-driven track that radiates with optimism for her daughter’s future. She also recently announced headline shows across the UK and Europe, kicking off on the 25th October in Brighton, UK and includes a date in London at Hackney’s Oslo. She has earned fans all over Europe for her live sets that are at once exhilarating, moving and intimate. All dates are below.
Klang has always had a talent for autobiographical song writing, like on her acclaimed 2018 debut Love in The Milky Way, which won Best Album at the Swedish Grammis awards. It continued on the following year’s Creamy Blue, her second album that earned another nomination for Best Album and Best Alternative Pop at the Grammis awards, and another nod for European Album Of The Year at the IMPALA Awards. While her sound had previously touched upon a mix of influences (‘60 and ‘70s pop, Americana, an undercurrent of country), 2021’s VIRGO – her most well-received album to date – then broadened her scope to include elements of ‘80s synth-pop (again winning a Swedish Grammy for Best Alternative Pop).
Upcoming UK Tour Dates:
OCTOBER
25th – Latest Music Bar, Brighton
26th – Oslo, London
28th – The Glad Cafe, Glasgow
29th – YES, Manchester
30th – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
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