Photo credit: Fryd Frydendahl
COMPANION TO THIS YEAR’S MUCH LAUDED MOTORDROME LP
Dødsdrom, the new EP from Danish superstar MØ, is out today—listen here. The EP’s four new songs include “Spaceman,” which features an interpolation of the 1996 #1 hit of the same name by Babylon Zoo. The track arrives alongside a video directed by previous collaborators Fa & Fon.
“I wrote my version of the song with Noonie Bao, Ilsey Juber and Oscar Holter, building on the original version written by Jas Mann,” MØ says of “Spaceman.” “It was Oscar Holter who had the brilliant idea to use the hook from Babylon Zoo’s cult classic ‘Spaceman’ as the chorus, and we all loved that idea! We wrote our demo back in 2017, but the timing just didn’t feel right. Then came 2022, and all of a sudden, I was like, ‘It’s now!’ We decided to rework the production a little bit, describing the vibe we were going for as ‘Gotham rave party,’ and that’s how we arrived at the final version.”
Dødsdrom, which means “Motordrome”—the name of MØ’s critically acclaimed last album—in Danish, is a selection of singles and B-sides from her catalogue spanning her years from her first ever artist project, fronting the punk band MOR, to the Motordrome sessions and beyond. Ahead of the EP’s release, MØ shared “True Romance,” a fan favourite she has been performing live for years and recently reimagined and recorded with bandmate Rasmus Littauer
Released earlier this year, Motordrome—praised by Jezebel as “a flustered drive through sadness, temporary joy, nostalgia, and indifference” and by American Songwriter as “tight, insightful, and lively”—was a reflection on MØ’s career to date as well as a view forward. Almost instantly launched into the stratosphere from the very start with her monumental 2014 debut album No Mythologies To Follow and a very prominent feature on Major Lazer’s “Lean On”—one of the most successful singles of all time—soon after, MØ found herself completely burned out in 2019 after five years of nonstop touring. Making Motordrome proved to be MØ’s escape from a deepening spiral and effectively bridged the gap between her years as a teen punk touring anarchist squats across Europe and the bright Scandipop she’d come to be known for.
As the companion project to Motordrome, the Dødsdrom EP finds MØ picking up where she left off, continuing to find empowerment through vulnerability. Before she began writing on these projects, MØ had a conversation with her mom about the dødstrome—an old carnival trick in which a stuntperson rides a motorcycle around the vertical walls of a motordrome at death-defying speeds—which accurately represented her battles with anxiety at the time. More importantly, it served as a guiding reminder to MØ that everyone has to deal with their own dødsdrom, that there is no perfect remedy for life’s struggles, and that’s OK—beautiful, even.
1. Spaceman
2. True Romance
3. Bad Moon
4. Real Love
