Quotes from Tove Lo

I don't think I would live very long if I was a rock star.

I've always wanted my music to have that desperation, where you just want to strip your clothes off and run down the highway. I want the feeling where you don't really know what to do with yourself - in the vocals, in the production. Everything.

I was always drawn to the self-destructive kind of way. I thought there was something beautiful about it; I don't know why.

I am an open book, and I'm fine being me: I'm not a perfect person.

I always loved performing and being on stage.

I think that pop music in general sometimes like to keep things a bit more hidden, and, you know, you censor and you polish to make it fit more people or to not be too vulgar or make sure of, 'Can this really play on the radio?' And I like not doing that.

When people like your music because it has vulnerable honesty, and you're able to comfortably admit to flaws and imperfections, then that's the most liberating thing about being an artist.

When I play a song for someone the first time, if I make 'em laugh, I think, 'Yes, I've succeeded.'

I fight the same way as my dad! I've picked that up from him. We both get angry really fast and very intensely, and then get over it very quickly. You need to be good at apologising if you fight like that.

I definitely feel I'm outside of the polished pop girl group, which feels right. I don't think I could keep up that polished surface on purpose.

We lived by the water, and I was a pretty normal kid until my teenage years; then I dyed my hair pink and spiraled out of control.

I'm from a fancy, well-raised background. We were very well-behaved and not allowed to swear. It's the kind of place where people hide their problems under the rug and pretend it's all perfect. Eventually, you get sick of that.

A rock star is expected to act like a mess, sound like a mess and look like a mess. People don't expect you to show up on time and be a professional. But when you're a pop star, you have to do all that, look perfect and be a role model.

If you say, 'I listen to pop,' you picture this kind of perfect, colorful, polished song. I want to have that, but when you open it, you see this gritty dark - kind of like dancing your tears away. Disguise the sadness in a pop beat.

In the same way that I'm open when I speak, I'm that open on stage. I feed off the energy of the audience, too, so they're feeling what I'm feeling.

I find it really cool when people have this artist persona they can put on. They can go out and act like this other person; I can't pull that off... I can't censor myself.

I've had to learn how to say no to things, and have people around me that don't push me too hard, because I'll go until I just crash. I don't have a stop button.

I can't live just being content. I can't have a routine. I can't be settled because then I just get really frustrated.

Everything that has to do with sex is somehow... it's the best thing in the world, and it's still the one thing people don't want you to talk about.

The very first song I ever wrote was a song called 'Crazy' when I was 11 or 12 with my best girlfriends - we had a girl band. It was about loving a guy who everyone else thought you were crazy for being into.

I started to use music almost like a therapist, where it's like, everything that I don't really dare to say or speak about, I can sing about.

I wanted to write about relationships in a more honest, raw sort of way. Get away from all those cliches about how 'time heals' and how you can be the better person. Less sugar-coating and more 'feel the pain.'

I think there's always a bit of pain in everything that's ecstatic - relationships and love, they always come with pain.

I knew when I went to a very hippie high school that focused on music that I wanted to do something in the industry.