AURORA is one of pop’s most ethereal songstresses.
An unmistakable voice and poetic candor has landed her both critical acclaim and commercial success. Her latest studio effort, What Happened To The Heart?, released in June this year reached the UK top 10. Inspired by a letter co-written by indigenous activists, it sees AURORA seek spirituality, connection and humanity and stands out in a year already stacked with high-quality pop releases. Ahead of her headlining What Happened To The Earth? Tour later this year, she has been completing the summer festival circuit, including a stellar set at Flow Festival in Helsinki.
Pop Crave sat down with the star backstage at the festival to chat about the record, performing, activism, and even BRAT summer.
You’ve been doing a festival run this summer, with your What Happened To The Earth? Tour coming up later this year. Is there a difference between performing at a festival compared to a show that’s specifically yours? Do you prepare for them differently?
Yes. I feel like a club tour is like having intercourse with a lover that you know and a festival is like having intercourse with a stranger. They’re both fun and magical, but very different.
Do you feel more pressure or nervous for a festival?
Not really, I don’t really feel nervous around being on stage anymore cause I know how to do it. I’m more nervous about talking to people or other things than being on stage. It’s different, you kind of need to preserve a lot of energy because you know that you have to really burst with it. Inside with club shows, I can sing more to myself as well but here you need to sing out, like put out the energy. It’s more heavy but it’s really beautiful, too.
You have a tour book that gets passed around your fans where they can put photos and messages. How did you come up with the idea for that?
I have no idea where it is! Obviously we all love our fans or supporters – I don’t know what’s the right name. I really appreciate my listeners because they take the art in with such grace and open minds and hearts, and I really appreciate having the chance to make music and art for a crowd that I feel really wants to understand it and gives it the time, which is rare in times where we don’t have much of an attention span. But they still give me their time and I’m really honored by that, so I just wanted a way to connect us more and to have something physical that reminds us that we are connected no matter where we are in the world. I don’t know where the book is now but I wanted to do something fun that connects all the fans.
It’s great that you have a physical piece to take with you after the tour.
Yes! I feel like now everything is online and there’s something special when an actual item has traveled through people’s hands.
You said when talking about your new album, “Historically, the heart was regarded as the center of intuition. This album is about the lack of spiritual connection in the world, and how we reclaim that and grow together.” Do you find in performing for your fans a sense of reclamation? Do you find heart and hope?
Very much so. I guess what really entices humans or is interesting to us, are the things that require you to believe in it for it to exist – something we cannot touch but we kind of feel that it’s there. That’s the thing about this world that intrigues me the most, like love or these invisible, large, beautiful things. And it’s the same with the spiritual connection because it’s untouchable, it’s unexplainable and now in this world, I feel like a lot of young people especially are growing up in a world that is so easy to get lost in because there is such a lack of realness sometimes.
I feel like it’s going to really mess with people’s heads and if we’re going to have hope for a future with no thing like war, the way they do it now, like bombing a whole country, which is insane. Or having a planet that breathes still and that lives still – all of these things that we still kind of want in the paradise. It can only be accomplished, I believe, if we have spiritual connection to ourselves, and each other, and the world because it’s so much easier to respect things cause people respect their god or fear their god. But, this is kind of without the fear just based on goodness, I guess.
You have been very vocal, in and out of your music, about your support for Gaza and Palestine. Do you feel that you have a responsibility as an artist with a platform or as a human being to speak about that?
As a human being.
Do you ever feel nervous about backlash or repercussions? There’s a lot of discourse surrounding artists being “contractually obligated” not to speak out. Does that not bother you?
No, and there’s a lot of trouble when you are vocal about things. You do get in a lot of trouble. But, as a human, nothing else makes sense and if I don’t do it, the music I write will stop making sense and even that won’t be real anymore. I think it’s kind of just being decent. It’s the bare minimum to be a human in your work as well. And obviously, I think it’s scary that we do rely on celebrities a lot to tell us what to think, which is scary because a lot of stupid people are famous and it f**ks everything up as well. It’s also scary that uneducated people lead the world now and not research-led, you know, the people who really understand and take the time to try to understand things.
I feel like, as a human: always show your support when you can because that’s the whole backbone in our humanity. But as a public person, take the time to learn about things, and learn about the multiple sides of things so you can actually speak about the world in a way people deserve that isn’t misleading or too black-and-white, because nothing is. Except for the fact that genocide is wrong, that’s quite clear. It doesn’t really have any nuances to its color. I wish we understood where the world was heading, to whom the people pay attention and who they trust. And people don’t really trust their leaders anymore because they’ve led us here. And so many of us have been treated so wrongly for just being who we are. There are so many issues in our politics that I understand that people go somewhere else to be led but I feel like we have to speak about things in a way people deserve.
Speaking of humanity and being a human: In this album, you ask a lot of questions and search for answers that many of us seek for. Did you find any in making the album? Did any surprise you?
It did surprise me – some things, actually. I kind of realized that, every issue I was asking a question about and every issue I had personally with my own pain and my wounds, everything kind of has one answer. Then it all came back to the main question of the album – what happened to the heart? Because everything that is painful for us and that makes life painful for us human beings now, except for if you’re really unlucky in life and you just get the worst of the worst on your way and you still fight through it, you see that bad experiences that we can’t control, that doesn’t make bad people. They’re often some of the strongest, kindest people even though their wounds are visible. You can see that they’re struggling but still there is so much goodness there.
It’s one of the things that we can control, how we see each other and how we see ourselves. I guess, what happened to the heart? What happened to compassion and where we put our value? Because now our values are so messed up, we go in such weird directions searching for things that are going to make us happy, and it’s never going to make us happy. We haven’t valued the Earth – that’s why we’ve almost killed her. We haven’t valued, through history, people of different colors, religions, genders, sexualities, and you see how the world treats them, us. It comes a lot to value. People who don’t value themselves find people they hope are going to love them, but they treat them badly and they think they deserve it so they won’t leave the situation because they don’t think they’re worth it. So I think value surprised me, that it all came to that. It’s a deep answer, I guess, but it’s also surprisingly simple.
Sometimes it takes a certain eye to be able to see something simple, or an experience or perspective.
Yes. And also the thing you see on the surface after having been in the deep, people can notice when you speak about the same things again that there is a soul in the words that wasn’t there before because now you understand. We can feel when people haven’t been through the exploration, so we all need to kind of take a moment I think. And now, like in London, again we’re being racist and everything is the immigrants’ fault. It’s super odd how much we have to hold on to our progress, which is scary. That’s why we can’t stop fighting. People are like, ‘Pride Month again? But isn’t it OK now?’ No, you have to do it forever or it can be taken away from us again.
We have so much trauma from the past, especially with racism, that still lingers in the air that we are supposed to just know is there but behave normally and just pretend. It’s a trauma that’s just there that we don’t talk about everyday, which must be odd for so many people that have been through it. And now, even though they’re [the far-right rioters] outnumbered who wish better for England, even if this calm downs, it’s not going to be gone for the people who are scared. It’s going to linger with them for so long. It’s such a big step back emotionally. I feel so sad on behalf of our friends.
If you could name one thing where you find heart, what would it be?
When I look at the crowds. We’re so used to being watched now and presenting ourselves to the world, being judged for how we look, how we dress. When people don’t know they’re being looked at – because they think I can’t see them – but I look at them and they just live and cry and dance and talk. How beautiful it is when we are human without being aware of ourselves. It’s so inspiring. I think this career has really helped me fall in love with people again and kind of like people. There are so many cool people out there, beyond what numbers describe.
And finally, what music have you been enjoying recently?
I’ve been really into Nick Drake lately. His voice is like velvet. I just read that he had quite a hard life and he struggled a lot with his mind, poor thing. But he made such beautiful art and I’ve been really diving into his world lately and it’s enhanced my world and how I see it. So that’s been really rewarding. I do like Chappell Roan, of course. I think it’s a new light in this world that is needed. She really touches my heart in a really cool way, I think she’s beautiful. And also Billie Eilish owning her sexuality. She always has done I think but being like she is now about it I think is really cool. I feel like I can hear people having fun in the music now, which I think the world needs. I like that you can hear that. BRAT summer as well is really fun.
Have you been having a BRAT summer?
Every summer is BRAT summer for me. I’m a rat girl. I’m born in the year of the rat. So I am a rat/brat, always.
AURORA’s new album What Happened To The Heart? is out now. Get tickets for her tour.
