AURORA on art, ‘Adolescence’ and activism: “Politics have a place in music, movies and art”

AURORA has spoken to NME about the power of her music being used in Adolescence, the place for politics in pop, and a “surprise” project she has in the works.

The Norwegian art-pop pioneer was speaking to NME at the launch of Some Type Of Skin – a special immersive London exhibition celebrating her Wembley Arena headline show by displaying her outfits and tracing her visual journey, as created by the artist alongside her sisters Miranda and Viktoria Aksnes.

“It’s quite rare. I’ve been an artist for 12 years and my sisters and I have been working together the whole time,” AURORA told NME. “It’s been the three of us making everything ourselves, so this is an exhibition about how a family can create something really special and pure. It’s just three women building my skin over the years.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by NME (@nmemagazine)

She continued: “I’ve seen how I’ve changed and I remember how I was thinking behind every album. I went from something very simple and asexual, almost agender. Then it changed to strength and I was able to be something really feminine. I was really proud to be a woman. I went from being really scared to be a woman due to the world’s expectations of how you should look.

“It’s like an AURORA theme park, but it’s actual hell for Aurora to be in here right now because it’s too much!”

Check out our full interview with AURORA below, where she tells about how she’s finding life as an arena act, her song ‘Through The Eyes Of A Child’ taking on a new life in the hit hard-hitting Netflix show Adolescence, the importance of freedom of expression, and new material on the way.

NME: Hello AURORA. Welcome back to London. What’s going on?

AURORA: “I’m in the middle of my first fucking arena tour, which is very weird. I’m feeling very overwhelmed by it – but in a very manageable way. It’s been magic and I don’t understand how it can all happen in one room.

“I don’t understand when it happened, why, or how, but it seems like it’s all changed over the last year. I feel very surprised constantly but very happy and grounded.”

Playing Wembley must feel like a real ‘moment’?

“It feels like it’s not me, or that I’m just going to do it. It’s over then you’re yourself again. I’m playing a lot of Stardew Valley at the moment, which is a lo-fi game. It has been an incredible tour, but I’m almost thinking more about this computer game every day because it’s keeping me so flourished.

“The shows are hard to connect with for me because they’re so large, but it doesn’t feel that way in the moment. It feels the same to sing for 10 people as it does 20,000. I will always play in a very soft way. My way. My mission when the venues get bigger is to play smaller. To make sure the important moments – besides freedom, dancing, screaming – are when we’re quiet, we cry and we get in touch with the things that we’re scared to normally. The bigger things get, the more it’s my job to make things smaller.”

Your growth has been quite organic, but then you’ve experienced these surprise moments of a rock hitting the water like your single ‘Runaway’ blowing up on TikTok or ‘Through The Eyes Of A Child’ finding a new life through Adolescence… 

“Yeah, how the fuck does that happen? I just let go. I feel very comfortable just letting go of what happens, why things happen and where my music goes. It’s not up to me. Once I’ve produced my children, it’s up to the world. The world keeps showing me that it’s out of my control. I’m having fun with it.

“Like now with Adolescence: I don’t like being pushy with a song because it’s more about someone doing something beautiful with it. It should be up to what other people do with your music.”

What can you tell us about the creative collaboration of how that song came to be married to that moment in the show that has created so many conversations? 

“They didn’t have any full songs in the show except mine. I talked to the beautiful director [Philip Barantini] about when he found me and he knew it was the song he wanted. It was very organic and healthy: they see something they’re looking for and make the meaning of it bigger than it was. It felt very human.

“The whole theme of the show is very in tune with something I’ve been talking about a lot: the emotional education and care of our children. If we talk specifically about men, you see so many angry politicians and leaders with big voices with so much anger and sadness in the words that they preach. You can trace that back to the beginning of our lives and see that it comes from pain and being misunderstood, misheard. You could do one wrong thing and not even know what it meant.

“I hope this show sparks conversation. We have to really take care of our boys in this world, because it’s hard to be blamed for everything and that makes it easier to be led into anger. It’s a very scary time for a lot of young girls and boys.”

Did you see that Netflix and the Prime Minister suggested the show be played in every secondary school in the UK?

“Really? That would be so good, but complicated. I would understand why someone might think that’s too extreme or too much – but no more than what the kids see online every day anyway. Imagine being so young but making a stand to be seen, judged and maybe bullied by the whole world. I’m really concerned about the youth. They move me a lot, they’ve come into a very difficult time, and they’re just trying their best.

“I know they’re going to save the world, but it’s just going to take some time.”

What can you tell us about your recent single ‘The Flood’ and the new era that it beckons? 

“My latest album ‘What Happened To The Heart?’ starts soft then turns hard. Hurting turned against you and made you insufferable to yourself and people around you without knowing. ‘The Flood’ brings up the point where you wonder who you are fighting all the time. Who’s making life so hard for you? In politics and everyday life as humans, we like finding someone or something to blame. It brings people together, but it’s so unfair.

“This song is about misjudged and misplaced blame. You realise it’s usually yourself that’s making you angry and hurt.

“There are two other new songs too. The one I really like is called ‘The Weight Of Missing’, which is about grief and a young person who went away way too early. I wrote a song for the family and for him. I asked if I was allowed to share it with the world and they said of course. Now it’s out and a part of him is eternal. It’s in honour of a great young man.”

Have you been working on a new album?

“I’m always on something new. I’m doing something that’s really new and going to surprise you. We don’t even know if it’s going to have my name on it. I’m already writing my next album as well, but there’s something very exciting and new ahead in between this album and the next. It’s ‘new’ new, and I’m very excited about it.”

When we spoke last year, you talked about how apathy is the enemy. There’s been a lot of discussion at the moment around freedom of expression and the place of politics in music…

“I believe politics have a place in music, movies and art. At some point, we must realise that politics is interfering people’s lives and rights as human beings directly. Whether that’s dealing with the rights of trans people, gay people, women, children, nations, cultures – something so emotional as human rights is on the border of not even being political anymore. It’s strictly emotional. It’s blasphemy to even have a conversation about whether or not we should respect human rights, and we’re doing that in the biggest countries in the world.

“We’re completely neglected the people of the earth, and the earth, and everything that’s important. When we’re so emotionally disconnected, it’s important for music to include political opinions. We need to bring it up that what the world is doing is absolutely insane. I’m really concerned for the years ahead and how it’s going to split people up. It’s very scary. Soon we’ll have no planet to make music on.

“The fact that we’re still debating people’s right to exist is deeply disturbing. Bring political opinions back into music. It gets to a point where it’s just emotion and decency.”

‘What Happened To The Heart’ is out now. AURORA’s 2025 tour continues throughout summer with European festival and headline dates. Visit here for tickets and more information. 

The post AURORA on art, ‘Adolescence’ and activism: “Politics have a place in music, movies and art” appeared first on NME.