The girl in red is ready for the superstar season

M
arie Ulven is not a cold person. Over lunch at a posh New York spot filled with women in expensive black sportswear, he sways between Taylor Swift's bent arm on “The Man” from the Eras tour — a move made by Ulven, who opened for some of those dates last summer, she knows everything — and clutches her chest, panting. “I just try to deal with my anxiety when it comes,” she says. “Right now, my heart really hurts.”

Ulven doesn't have a heart attack, thank God. Sometimes, the Norwegian artist known as Girl in Red can just get a little overwhelmed. And with good reason. Today, no one in this glamorous restaurant recognizes the young woman in the blue Ralph Lauren sweater and LA Dodgers hat, but with a Swift Stadium tour under her belt and a new record, I'm doing it again baby!, in the future, this could well change. As her creative director and longtime friend Isak Jenssen tells me: “She goes between being the most confident person I know to being very insecure. At one point, she didn't think she had the greatest potential, like Taylor or Billie. But now, I think, he realizes that he does.”

Ulven, 25, has almost always taken music seriously – she's a true worker, like these superstars. The Oslo resident started writing songs when she was eight, played guitar at 14, and has been producing her own music for a decade. After uploading her first song, the sad and sweet 'I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend', to YouTube in 2018, things started moving very quickly for the then-teenager. She dropped two EPs in 2018 and 2019, followed by her debut album, If I could make it quiet, in 2021. A poppy therapy session of a record that tackled everything from macabre intrusive thoughts to the indignities of being a fucking friend, the LP cemented Ulven's place in a queer-girl pop canon that includes Olivia Rodrigo and Gayle . It's relatable, but not cliche.

If three years between albums seems too short for a budding artist, Ulven not only agrees with you, but she's already worried about everything else she hasn't done yet: headlining her own arena tours, buying a mid-century house. terre in Los Angeles and, oh my God, I turned 30. “I've got to learn to smell the fucking roses,” she says, debating whether to just eat the Caesar salad with her hands — the giant leaves are unwieldy — or use a fork. Opting for the former, he adds: “I saw this TikTok about how we're the only species on the planet, humans, that are never satisfied. We set a goal and we're really chasing that fucking goal. And then we achieve it, and then we say, “What's next? What's next?' There's something really depressing about it.”

In the end, Ulven returned to the studio when she was ready – when she was filled with experiences to translate into music. “I'm inspired by paper and envelopes, fonts and light,” she says, nibbling on a crouton. “I'm inspired by espresso, travel and trains. I am inspired by waiters who have etiquette. How he pours wine very nicely and lets you smell it first. I'm inspired by everything.”

A big inspiration these days is her girlfriend, whom Ulven met in an Oslo bar in 2021 after she decided to just say yes to life instead of hiding on her couch. The night they met went on and on, Ulven says, culminating on the beach where they hung out under the stars with her dog. “Before I met my girlfriend, I was very convinced that I was unlovable and really hated myself,” he says. “I never realized that hating yourself so much can really get you down.” That experience is captured on her new album with the sultry 'A Night to Remember', filled with lush keys that flutter like your heart when you're falling in love.

As usual, Ulven plays almost every instrument on the album, which she recorded in a couple of European studios and in her apartment in Oslo. But this time around, her signature bedroom pop has been polished to a high gloss that's only mildly worrying her fans will let her down. “I feel like I'm a completely different person,” she says. “So the music on this album, to me, doesn't sound that different from what I've done before. It just sounds exactly like what I would make right now.”

In her classic way, the album ping pongs between highs and lows. Opener “I'm Back” enters almost sheepishly, with Ulven declaring, “I'm back, I feel like myself/I'm gone for a minute/Because I went to get help.” The switch is flipped with “Doing It Again Baby,” a bombastic track of a song, and the first he wrote for the record after compulsively choosing the tune during the recordings. “This song is about feeling like I have so much self-worth that I feel like I'm a cocky bitch walking the streets with my sunglasses on,” she says.

The vibe isn't constant though – single 'Too Much' is all about that (her mum always told her to shut up), while tracks like 'Phantom Pain' and 'Pick Me' remind us that Ulven isn't was you are not always so lucky in love. Sabrina Carpenter helps her get over an ex, though, on “You Need Me Now.” The two singers both gained big new audiences last year as openers on separate legs of Swift's Eras tour, but they've been friends since around 2022 — Ulven says they formed a mutual appreciation society in each other's DMs before asking Carpenter to host on the dark rocker of a track for her new album.

“When he approached me, I felt like I was out of my mind, and I was immediately drawn to the record,” says Carpenter. “It was exciting to make because it pushed me into new sonic territory.”

Ulven is perhaps the same in the ominous, sonorous “Ugly Side”, in which she struggles with the sense of Jeykll and Hyde – torn between being “cute” and “lovable” and “boiling inside”.

In many ways, she always exists between dichotomies, whether that means she's clearly uncomfortable attending New York Fashion Week shows by trendy designers like Tory Burch, Khaite and Eckhaus Latta while she's in town (“I'm a very basic girl when it comes to clothes,” she says) or declaring on her album's title track: “My big fat ego makes me say/This '99 vintage has impeccable taste!”

“I have these insanely high, and then I have these really low,” Ulven says as the waiter whisks our plates away. “Maybe it's a good thing. I don't want to be just one thing. I don't want to just be that confident person who never doubts himself. I think the doubt can be great as it can be very paralyzing.”

He pauses for a moment. “Yeah. I just need to relax… I think that's exactly what I need to do.” There's a first time for everything.