Does pop music really need another tiny, sexy, kooky fashion plate? If that fashion plate is 25-year-old stunner Oh Land, then the answer is a big, resounding 'Yes.' Born in the outskirts of Copenhagen to an opera singer mother and a composer father, Oh Land (n'e Nanna 'land Fabricius) headed to Stockholm to study ballet at 16, but when a back injury ended her dancing career two years later she turned to songwriting. 'I still needed to express myself,' she says, 'so I started making up melodies and lyrics and dealt with the situation.'
The songs resulted in Fauna, an experimental EP she released in 2008 in Denmark. 'It was all little sounds, like buzzing flies and pots and pans,' Fabricius says. A move to Brooklyn, N.Y., eventually scored her a deal with Epic and her first U.S. full-length. With tracks like the toothache-sweet lead single 'Sun of a Gun' and the rom com'destined 'White Nights,' the self-titled record spins Oh Land into Top 40 territory. 'My first songs were about me learning the language of music,' she says. 'On my new album I'm starting to use the language to really say something.'
Then, of course, there's the fashion. For one recent appearance Fabricius turned up with a miniature house on her head. 'It's like in Alice in Wonderland when she has her entrance into her dreams and imagination,' she explains. 'When I write music I step into my own little house of fun and craziness where anything can happen.'
Oh Land recently won LOGO's "Artist on the Brink" Award at the 2011 New Now Next Awards. She will play headline NYC's gay pride rally in June. For more on the artist, visit her official website.
To see our Face to Face video interview with Oh Land and to see her perform three of her songs, click here.
READER COMMENTS (