When Norwegian pop star Metteson was 18, he experienced an encounter at a competition that made him recognize the visceral influence songs can have. Though Emeli Sandé was executing Heaven, he kissed the boy he’d had a crush on for ages.
“I wasn’t on medicine but I was as higher as I have ever been and I had what was form of my initially sexual practical experience,” he states. “But the working day right after, I obtained brutally dumped when he advised me that he was in enjoy with another person else. The image of the night ahead of exploded and cracked.”
Feeling jilted, he went to look at Lana Del Rey: “She sang Summertime Disappointment and I was crying all alone. Both of those people of these tracks have caught with me. They’re emotional triggers and I wallow in them. I just love when music actually pushes activities to a further level.”
Metteson’s have new music feels destined to soundtrack identical scenes. Now 28, he generates kaleidoscopic pop that is unashamedly grand and theatrical. His debut EP, 2021’s Encourage Me, flirted with the Scandinavian synth melancholia popularised by Robyn and the Knife, when also pulling from the arty chamber pop of Patrick Wolf as well as Whitney Houston and George Michael. His most current one, the luxurious Beneath Your Shirt, is a symphonic nevertheless tender devotional that flawlessly captures the sparks of intimacy and the heart-pounding ache of craving.
“I attempted early on to make much more compact melodies and awesome club audio,” states Metteson, “but I would whack on a large refrain mainly because which is what the emotion phone calls for. I’m not a whispery, great and gritty singer. Whether that massive refrain arrives packaged as a club banger or a piano ballad, I want it to be a representation of myself.”
Born Sverre Breivik and raised in the coastal town of Moss in Norway, Metteson – the identify literally meaning the son of Mette, his mom – was constantly a imaginative child. He was enrolled in a variety of theatre and music groups and later examined at the Nationwide Academy of the Arts in Oslo. “I was a triple menace,” he laughs. “I was the loud, musical theatre kid, and I seriously feel I convey a lot of that into my songs now.”
Given that graduating, he has labored as a repertory actor at the Countrywide Theatre in Bergen. When we discuss, he is just finishing up a operate as Prior Walter in Tony Kushner’s Aids epic Angels in The united states – “one of the very first demonstrates that I ever saw and imagined that there was a location for me in the world of theatre,” he adds. “It’s been a large offer for me.”
Metteson to begin with struggled with his sexuality. “I can keep in mind recognizing from a quite early age that I was distinctive and that I appreciated boys putting on women’s clothing and sensing that was, in some way, mistaken,” he remembers. He remained closeted till he moved to Oslo to analyze. “It was not a prison, but I regret it. Now I’m identifying the joy and the pleasures of being younger.”
His new tunes, due in the coming months, is evidence that he has taken that leap: developing on the grandeur of Less than Your Shirt, tracks like Never Let Me Go and the baroque Next Coronary heart run on melodrama and escapism. He also supports fellow Norwegian pop star Aurora on her Uk tour this spring, a opportunity for British audiences to get a taste of that newfound liberty in motion with his sensual performances (assume a poppier Fragrance Genius).
“I assume I make tunes which is manufactured to be professional stay,” he says. “I hope that I can blow people today away with a fantastic pop practical experience.”