Lykke Li Announces The Afterparty With 'Lucky Again'
(High Rise) Internationally acclaimed artist Lykke Li has spent nearly two decades shaping a singular lane in pop: one defined by emotional extremity, melodic precision, and a fearless intimacy that has made her one of modern music's most enduring voices.
Now, she is back with "Lucky Again," the first track to be released from her forthcoming album The Afterparty (Neon Gold Records/Futures), marking a bold reinvention and era for the globally heralded artist. "I was twirling around in love addiction for all those albums," she says. "Now I'm going into my existential era."
In "Lucky Again," our first introduction to The Afterparty, Li sings "Lord I don't know how, and I can't say when, If we're lucky, we'll get lucky again," turning that samsara loop into maximalist pop: cascading disco strings, relentless momentum, zero restraint. The arrangement swells until it feels airborne, a bird's-eye view of survival. By the end, a Max Richter Four Seasons sample pushes the song toward the euphoric- time collapsing, rebirth in stereo. Lykke Li shares: "To me it's samsara in a song. The wheel of life; winning, losing, living, dying. Having had something and praying you'll have it again. Whether it's sex, money, vitality, love. I always said I wanted the Vivaldi song at my wedding or funeral but I think this is giving more revenge heist energy."
Since breaking out with her debut Youth Novels (2008) and achieving mainstream success with "I Follow Rivers," Li has cemented her reputation across the critically beloved Wounded Rhymes (2011), I Never Learn (2014), So Sad So Sexy (2018), and the immersive audiovisual album EYEEYE (2022), continually returning to the fault line between love and heartbreak, destruction and creation.
This time, writing from streetwise insight rather than romantic fantasy, The Afterparty is a confrontation with mortality, hedonism, and impermanence-soundtracked by disco-glowing strings, gospel brightness, and Balearic warmth, even as the lyrics fixate on loss, futility, and the search for meaning. At just 24 minutes, the album is exacting and unsparing, a study of shame, survival, and joy held together by sheer will.
On the The Afterparty cover, she is presented in striking form, her face warped by translucent tights. "I find that we're in an era where everyone is talking about, 'My higher self', F*** that. This is an album dealing with your lower self: your need for revenge, your shame, despair, all of it." These roles grant her license to inhabit thoughts that are otherwise untouchable. She calls her alter-ego on The Afterparty "a Ram Dass for f***boys."
Written in Los Angeles and recorded in Stockholm with a 17 piece string orchestra, maximalist arrangements, "apocalyptic bongos," and a whole lot of flute, The Afterparty is both her most triumphant and most despondent work to date: a dance record for the end of the world, and a radical new grammar of honesty in pop. The Afterparty asks the question the after-hours crowd must reckon with. It's 4am: can we have one last euphoric dance before the hangover crushes us?
LIVE DATES
04/10 - Coachella Music Festival - Indio, CA
04/17 - Coachella Music Festival - Indio, CA
05/22 - Vivo Rio - Rio de Janeiro
05/24 - Parque Ibirapuera - São Paulo
06/19 - Metronome Festival, Prague
07/05 - Finsbury Park - London^
07/10 - Pohoda Festival - Slovakia (Headline)
09/19 - Palacio de los Deportes - Mexico City, MX*
* w/Robyn
^Wolf Alice
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