Lovisa Altin treats every release as a portal into a wider creative universe.
Co-produced with Stefan Storm, the track follows Altin from a colourless dystopian world towards a mysterious spaceship that will connect future albums, sounds and visual eras.
In this FM PRO 10Q, she discusses cinematic production, creative world-building and why listeners can engage with the songs without decoding every layer of the story.
On her cinematic reinterpretation of The End of the World, the Swedish artist, producer, dancer and storyteller turns a song associated with childhood memories into the starting point for a genre-fluid, multi-album narrative.
I don’t feel like I have to limit myself to one sound or one version of myself.
Q1. What first attracted you to the emotional tension within The End of the World?
I grew up listening to The End of the World, and I always loved it, my grandma used to play it in her car, she always would have these different mixtapes with old songs on them and the end of the world was the song I always looked forward to listen too.
Q2. Which part of your own experience found its way into this interpretation?
I think the strongest part of myself in this interpretation is the feeling of searching for somewhere you truly belong. I’ve always been a dreamer and someone who creates different stories and worlds in my head, and I think there has always been a part of me that wonders what else might be out there. I’m very much a daydreamer and like to daydream while listening to music and the end of the world was or is a song that I still listen to put my mind somewhere else, it makes me get into my own world.
Q3. The story begins in a grey dystopian world before a mysterious light appears. What does that contrast represent for you?
The grey world represents that feeling of being somewhere you don’t truly belong. Everything is repetitive, colourless and almost predetermined, and Lovisa has this feeling that there has to be something more beyond the life she knows.
Then this mysterious light appears, and it is the first real colour and warmth i have seen in this world. To me, it represents hope, curiosity and the courage to follow something even when you don’t know where it will lead. I don’t know what the light is or why it has found me, but following it eventually leads me to a spaceship that allows me to leave this world and begin searching for somewhere i can finally call home.
I think that feeling is also very human. Sometimes you don’t necessarily know where you belong yet—you just know that you need to keep searching.
Q4. Your spaceship connects different albums, genres and universes. How clearly have you already mapped out the journey ahead?
I have quite a lot of the larger journey in my head already and, including worlds the genre/albums and parts of the story that audiences won’t see yet. But I also don’t want everything to be completely fixed because I want the universe to have the freedom to grow with me.
The spaceship is really the bridge between everything. It can travel through the cosmos and into completely different universes, which gives me the freedom to make one album feel like a completely different genre, time period or cinematic world from another while they are still chapters of the same story.
Some worlds may be beautiful and magical, others strange, futuristic, frightening or funny. I love that I don’t have to choose one aesthetic or even one genre for the rest of my career. The journey itself is what connects them all.
Q5. What sides of your identity do you hope to reveal by placing each album within a different universe?
I’ve always loved very different kinds of music, stories and aesthetics, so I think each universe allows me to exaggerate and explore a different part of myself.
One world might bring out something theatrical and glamorous, another could be vulnerable and intimate, another adventurous, strange or darker. The genres can change with those worlds too. I also love that I can express my stories like this, I always come up with stories and fairytales and I love how I can connect that to my music.
But Lovisa is always the same traveller moving through them. In a way, each universe reveals another piece of who I am. I don’t feel like I have to limit myself to one sound or one version of myself.
Q6. When creating a new universe, do you begin with its story, imagery, movement or musical sound?
It actually changes every time, which I really enjoy. Sometimes I hear a sound and immediately see a world around it. Other times I’ll see a photo, a costume, a place or even one little scene and start building stories and music around that, so sometimes the sound comes first then the story or it’s the story that comes first and I build music around that story
I’ve been creating stories and imaginary worlds since I was very little, so storytelling and music have always felt connected for me. Eventually I want the sound, visuals, choreography, costumes and story to feel like they couldn’t exist without each other.
Q7. How will you develop the wider narrative without allowing it to overwhelm the individual songs?
That’s really important to me because the songs still have to work as songs. I don’t want somebody to need to understand all of the lore or know the entire story before they can connect emotionally with the music.
The larger narrative is there for people who want to look deeper. You might notice symbols, characters or little clues connecting one era to another, while somebody else can simply hear a song and relate it to something in their own life.
I like the idea that there are different levels to it. You can simply listen to the music, or you can follow Lovisa into the spaceship and start discovering everything underneath it.
Q8. When listeners enter this first chapter, what do you hope they understand about the artist you are becoming?
I hope they understand that this is only the beginning.
I don’t really want to become an artist who can be explained by one genre or one visual aesthetic. I want people to enter each era without completely knowing what they’re going to find.
At the centre of everything, though, I want there to be emotion, storytelling and imagination. This first chapter introduces Lovisa as somebody who feels out of place and chooses to follow this mysterious light into the unknown. In a way, that’s also me asking the audience to come with me without knowing exactly where we’re going yet.
Q9. FM PRO TECH: You co-produced the track with Stefan Storm. Which production choices helped transform the original into cinematic pop?
I grew up listening to the original song, so it was important to me to respect what I already loved about it while also finding a way to make it feel like my own.
Q10. FM PRO TECH: How are you building a consistent visual and sonic language across the music, choreography and different fictional worlds?
The most important thing connecting everything is the story itself. Even though the genre, sound, visuals and entire world can change from album to album, it is still one continuous story following the same girl and the same journey.
She is travelling through the cosmos and different universes in her spaceship, searching for the place where she truly belongs—her forever home. Each album represents another world she enters and another chapter of that larger story.
That gives me a lot of creative freedom because one chapter could have a completely different musical genre, choreography, fashion and visual language from the next without losing the connection between them. The spaceship itself also becomes a constant—the place that carries her, and the audience, from one universe to another.
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