This month I’ve chosen the new album from Lykke Li, The Afterparty. For the second consecutive month we’ve been gifted an album from an artist much loved on the pod, yet one who has somehow never had a full album featured on either the podcast or the blog. Lykke Li is an artist who continues to evolve, though for me her first three albums remain permanent fixtures in my musical world.
I’ve always found Lykke Li’s music deeply intriguing. Her songs are musically welcoming whilst emotionally devastating — pop music that invites you in before quietly breaking your heart. Her work has long felt centred around a love of love itself; even when the beats are huge, the emotional energy often feels fragile, wounded, or collapsing inward. Where many artists turn heartbreak into empowerment, Lykke Li tends to stay inside the ache — dreamy, self-destructive, romantic, numb, and haunted.
The title The Afterparty immediately filled me with anxiety. Afterparties, in my experience, are rarely parties at all. They’re strange, liminal spaces where the adrenaline, glamour, and euphoria have worn off, leaving anxiety, exhaustion, regret, loneliness, and existential dread. Everyone is quietly planning their exit.
That feeling makes this album title especially fitting. In recent interviews, Lykke Li has hinted that The Afterparty may be her final album after more than two decades in an industry she has repeatedly admitted doesn’t suit her. Her Scandinavian bluntness has often cut through the mythology of music industry glamour. One of my favourite quotes from her remains: “The profession I have keeps dragging me into drama and taking me away from baking, flowering and gardening.”
What makes The Afterparty so compelling is how it feels like the culmination of everything she has explored across her career — from the icy melancholy of her earlier work to the widescreen pop and club textures of later releases and remixes. At just nine songs and roughly twenty-five minutes long, it achieves more than many albums manage in twice the runtime. The soundscape feels simultaneously expansive and tightly controlled, whilst lyrically it moves through themes of love, ageing, alienation, fame, and emotional exhaustion. Glamorous yet emotionally wrecked feels like the perfect description.
From the opening pulse of “Not Gon Cry”, the album immediately establishes its emotional contradiction: euphoric music carrying deeply bruised emotions. Anchored by the lead single “Lucky Again”, the remaining eight tracks orbit with near perfection around her core sound. Throughout, the album bleeds broken positivity — shimmering with hope whilst soaked in melancholy.
The brief spoken line at the beginning of “Famous Last Words” — “I don’t trust anything. I’m going to a dark place, do you need anything?” — perfectly captures the fragility running through the record. It’s darkly funny, vulnerable, and quietly devastating.
If The Afterparty is a comedown, it is an exquisitely crafted one — elegant, emotionally rich, and full of musical joy despite the darkness at its centre. If this truly is Lykke Li’s final album, she has left us with one of the most accomplished works of her career.
Though the eternal fan in me still hopes this isn’t her swan song.
thisisnothappening.net 