Stockholm-based singer-songwriter Dandelion has penned songs for some of pop’s biggest names. Now, she’s stepping into the spotlight to carve out a space of her own on the global stage. Today, she unveils the first part of her debut record, My Sadness Needs Your Full Attention, alongside its focus track, ‘Heavy Hearts Club’. Part one offers intimate glimpses into a wider emotional world where healing doesn’t have to come first, sadness is given space to exist, and contradictions are allowed to remain unresolved.
In an exclusive for 1883 Magazine, Dandelion breaks down each track on the record, offering a deeper look into the stories, feelings and moments that shape her debut.
‘Heavy Hearts Club’
I’ve always found something strangely comforting about sadness. Not necessarily being sad, but knowing that somewhere, someone else is feeling exactly as miserable as you are. I think that’s what Heavy Hearts Club is about. This imaginary little club for people who feel everything a little too much, love a little too hard, and somehow never learn their lesson.
There’s something almost funny about how tragic we can make our own lives. I wanted this song to feel like an invitation to a party where everyone is crying in the bathroom. No one’s having a particularly good time, but at least we’re all there together.
‘Little Too Much’
I think I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling like I’m a little too much of everything. Too emotional, too intense, too sensitive, too whatever. It’s exhausting trying to make yourself smaller so that other people can love you more comfortably.
There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes with feeling like your natural state is somehow an inconvenience to everyone else. I think this song lives somewhere in that feeling. The strange space between wanting someone to love you exactly as you are and secretly suspecting that maybe they’re right about you.
‘Scissors’
I wrote Scissors with Zacke about four years ago, when we were still in that beautiful, slightly delusional stage of being in love where you think another person might actually be able to fix everything that’s ever been wrong with you. At the time, I think I saw it as a song about healing.
About someone coming into your life and making all the ugly parts feel a little less ugly. But listening to it now, I hear something else. I think it’s more about acceptance. Realising that love doesn’t necessarily put you back together, and maybe it isn’t supposed to. Sometimes someone just sits beside you in the wreckage and decides to stay. I find that much more romantic anyway.
‘ONONON’
I’ve always been fascinated by the things we keep doing to ourselves even when we know exactly how they’re going to end. I think there’s something very human, and slightly ridiculous, about repeating the same mistakes and expecting a different outcome. ONONON feels like that endless emotional loop. The kind where you know you should leave, or stop, or grow up, or do literally anything differently, but instead you just keep going. And going. And going.
I love the contrast between making something sound almost euphoric while the feeling underneath is much darker. I think that’s a recurring theme in my music. Making sadness sound like something you could dance to. Maybe that’s my idea of coping.
Keep up to date with Dandelion at dandelion.lnk.to/MSNYFA.
