They Love It

This past year's just been crazy, I can hardly believe half the things we've gone through,” says Caroline Hjelt. The 25-year-old is one half of Swedish pop duo Icona Pop, whose crazy past year has pretty much centred entirely around their bona fide hit single I Love It, which has achieved the kind of pop-cultural omnipresence of a song like Outkast's Hey Ya!.

I Love It went multi-platinum in Australia, Canada and the US. When it wasn't on sale in the UK, a bunch of covers dented the lower rungs of the UK charts; and it spawned 15 official remixes. It's soundtracked countless commercials, been publicly loved by everyone from Taylor Swift to Nicole Kidman, been performed in Glee and parodied on Sesame Street, and danced to by a coked-out Lena Dunham in Girls. First released in May 2012, yet only hitting number one in the UK in July 2013, it's been everywhere for a year-and-a-half: if you bought a pair of jeans or went to a house party, you heard it. “We noticed it when we first started playing it live,” recounts Hjelt – who splits the duo with Aino Jawo – on the I Love It phenomenon. “After it came out, anytime we'd perform it we'd see how crazy the crowd would go. Then it started ending up on all these blogs, and we knew that something was going on with it. It's so crazy that it's still going. We put out the song in Sweden almost a year-and-a-half ago; and yet people are still playing it on the radio, it's still everywhere on television, it's still being played at parties.

“In some ways, we don't really understand how big I Love It has been. Even though we [learn] of all these places that it's ending up, we're not out there, in the world, hearing it. We've been in our own little bubble: touring, working 24/7, trying to get the album done, trying to cross over not just in one country or territory but globally. We've been just working so hard that we have this really naïve reaction when we hear it playing; we're still like, 'Wow, they're playing our song on the radio!' But I think, with the album coming out, we're starting to reflect a bit more on what we've been through, and so we're starting to become aware of just how many different places in the world, and in how many different forums, our song has been playing. It's an incredible feeling to think about.”

Now, finally, comes the release of Icona Pop's debut album, This Is... Icona Pop. Hjelt sees it as the culmination of her existence (“all I ever wanted to do was make music; it's been my whole life”), the destination from a journey that began when, at eight years old, a neighbour invited her into a basement record-studio and helped record the first song she ever wrote (“in Swedish, the lyrics translated as Leave Me Alone; those were basically all the lyrics”).

Hjelt and Aino first met at a party in February of 2009, bonding over mutual heartbreak and musical obsession. They started recording the next day, taking their first steps toward global domination with no such ambition. “We've always just wanted to make good pop music,” Hjelt offers. “We want it to be smart, and thoughtful, and to make people feel; and to put our own feelings into it. We weren't just in the studio for four months, setting out to pursue just one idea. We've been, essentially, working on this album for five years, since we first met each other. The album is like a lot snapshots of thoughts and feelings that we've had, situations that we've been through. We've been writing on it from self-experience: going to different parts of the world, ups-and-downs, being heartbroken and breaking hearts. Writing on the road has been like writing a diary: we haven't been in the studio, being like, 'Let's write a party song!' or, 'Let's try and make something like blah-blah-blah...' We've written when we've really needed to, when there's been something in our bodies aching to come out.”

So, even though This Is... Icona Pop features the work of ten producers, the Tupac-sampling single Girlfriend has 11 credited songwriters, and I Love It itself was written by Charli XCX and producer Patrik Berger, Hjelt calls it a “very, very personal” LP. “If you think of an album as like a diary, then when you release it it's like letting the world read your diary. But as much as it's scary, it's also exciting and gratifying.”