Nina Nesbitt is set to take her continuing rising star status to the next level with the news that she will release her eagerly anticipated new album ‘Älskar’ on September 2nd. Alongside the announcement, she shared the new single “Pressure Makes Diamonds” as well as an accompanying official video.
“Pressure Makes Diamonds” is one of the forthcoming album’s brightest moments, all refined alt-pop sparkle and alluring effervescent melodies which are capped by Nina’s quick-flowing freestyle vocal. It’s a song of contrasts. Its sound is immediately catchy and fun, but it expresses a powerful message: the stereotypical expectations that so many young women are expected to conform to as they reach their mid-twenties. Nina wrote the song with its producers Jack & Coke (Charli XCX, Tove Lo) and the Swedish artist SHY Martin. It was then mixed by the award-winning Manon Grandjean (Stormzy, Dave).
Nina adds, “I wrote ‘Pressure Makes Diamonds’ about trying to navigate my way through the societal pressures I started to feel as a woman in my mid-twenties.”
The “Pressure Makes Diamonds” video uses a lighter tone to deliver Nina’s point. She plays a host of stereotypical female characters which are all common in fiction, but which are closer to one-dimensional clichés than they are to real people. By playing such a range of characters, Nina shows that everyone is infinitely more nuanced than such limited tropes suggest. The video is her latest collaboration with director Wolf James, and was created with the help of a predominantly female crew.
Made in the show of the introspection, loss and fear of lockdown, ‘Älskar’ celebrates life in all of its complexities as well as love in every form imaginable. As we’ve heard from its previous singles “Dinner Table” and “When You Lose Someone”, ‘Älskar’ (meaning “to love” in Swedish, a reflection of Nina’s half-Swedish heritage) shimmers with both tender, intimate ballads and huge escapist ‘80s-tinged bangers that beg for the dancefloor.
Nina says, “Making this album was a completely different experience to anything I’ve made before, although a lot of the music was created remotely, I feel that I’ve processed so much and learnt a lot about the relationships in my life during the last few years. I wanted to capture all types of love in their raw forms, whether it be romantic, heartbreak, friendship, coming of age, familial or self love.”
In addition to the previously released singles, ‘Älskar’ introduces highlights at every turn. The early landmark moment “Teenage Chemistry” celebrates Nina’s current long-term relationship with beat-driven dreamy elegance and the instantly relatable lyrics. It then journeys through the minimalist ambient pop of “No Time (For My Life To Suck)”, an intimate, acoustic arrangement on “I Should Be A Bird”, and cinematic balladeering with “Colours of You”. By the time the album closes with the gorgeously glacial title track, it’s evident that Nina Nesbitt has created an album that primes her for a much bigger future.
The album emerged in stages. It started in the summer of 2019 when Nina started writing in Sweden during a visit to see her grandmother. Plans for a second trip to Sweden in 2020 were halted by the pandemic, forcing Nina to focus on Zoom sessions from a spare room in her mum’s house. It was a tricky but liberating experience that gave Nina the freedom to truly expose her emotions through the cathartic release of music. She wrote or co-wrote every song that features on the album, and produced or co-produced many of its tracks.
‘Älskar’ is now available to pre-save or pre-order here. Fans who pre-order the album will receive instant downloads of “Pressure Makes Diamonds”, “Dinner Table” and “When You Lose Someone”. The album will be available to download, stream and buy physically on CD, LP and Tape. There will also be exclusive signed and colour Vinyl LP formats and a CD Deluxe Edition.
Steadily growing her fanbase across Asia, Nina’s Top 10 Streaming Markets worldwide now include Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia.
