Album on Repeat: Lykke Li, I Never Learn

Lykke Li isn't new, she hasn't even released anything new. In fact, her latest album is still the 2014 'I Never Learn' . She is still a unique and listenable artist regardless. Gunshot in particular hit me when it came up on my discover weekly for fusing 80's sounds with contemporary indie sounds but my love grew when I listened through her 2014 album... and then all the rest without stopping. Few artists make me do that, Lykke Li does. She's Swedish, beautiful and a poet.

I Never Learn, 2014

Metaphors and contradictions lace her work:

"And the shot goes

Through my head and back". - Gunshot, I Never Learn, 2014

Her 2014 album tells the story of a woman realising her relationships isn't giving her everything she needs, emotionally. The woman begins to feel hardened, she fluxes from hopeful to hopeless, to wanting her lover to wanting to leave him. She sees herself as wicked for how she feels, "like a cancer". Eventually it is made clear that though she still holds the emotions that made her fall in love, she leaves the relationship and begins looking into herself for clarity. There is a sense in which, however, this isn't the first time this has happened, she "never learns" and the psychedelic aspects of the music may sign to something holistic, a cycle.

Gunshot

On the other hand, I Never Learn, the title track follows 70's styled guitar and vibes whilst retaining authenticity , opening the album with sincerity. This reflects Lykke Li's association with Transcendental Meditation and her desire to create something psychedelic (Genius lyrics).

No Rest For The Wicked begins to change the tone of the albums whilst retaining the original direction of I Never Learn. The beats are no longer composed from 70's folk guitar, piano takes over with a dark underlying track that modernises the album, paving the way for beats of Gunshot. "I had his heart but I broke it every time" No Rest For the Wicked, implies the protagonist (Lykke Li?) is the wicked.

No Rest For The Wicked

Just Like a Dream is a track feigning hope or at least, a song with hope that knows exactly how the hope will end, at the start of the song. Progressively the song's hope reduces when the contradicting emotions of ending a relationship come to the forefront, does she want to stay with her lover or not? Hopeful things will get better without luck.

Silver Line, with the hope that the dream will never end, without facing reality she continues her relationship knowing it is one sided. She's loyal and hopeful though she knows it isn't right and this hopeful loyalty may not last. Gunshot destroys this hope. Facing reality, she's done the deed, she's given up on the relationship that wasn't quite right. The lightness of Silver Line fades to the dark beats of Gunshot in which the singer is compared to cancer. She can't take it back.

Love Me Like I'm Not Made of Stone

Love Me Like I'm Not Made of Stone strips any ornament off and displays itself as a bare song filled with the emotion connected throughout the album though ironically, the protagonist of the song is 'made of stone' (thus emotionless). She can't take back her knowledge that things aren't going right and asks for her lover to fix things by giving her what she emotionally needs.

Emotions are bared again with a pessimism in Never Gonna Love Again which plays out like a hopeless power ballad.

Never Gonna Love Again

Heart of Steel further solidifies her heart's hardness but she asks her love or her heart to stay with her and not reduce itself to steel even though it may be a defence given her heartbreak caused by the lack of emotional intimacy she was receiving. A slight psychedelic feeling underlies the main melody with backing vocals to match.

Sleeping Alone ends the story of the album and it tells the listener what her decision was. She left the relationship, the gunshot couldn't be taken back and once the pot was stirred it couldn't be turned back to how it was. Sleeping Alone reflects the issue some people have that keeps them in relationships they aren't particularly fitting in with, a fear of being alone, of having spent so much time with someone that you don't know how to go about your life without them. But... it isn't your regular heartbreak, there is still hope that they'll "meet again". It is never fully over.

I Never Learn

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