Tove Styrke Releases New Album 'Hard'

Swedish popstar Tove Styrke has released her highly anticipated new album HARD alongside lead track Free, which is out now via RCA/Sony Music.

The album follows recent singles YouYouYou, Hardcore, Show Me Love and Start Walking and her US, European and UK tour dates supporting MARINA.

The new album is made with producers/co-writers like Elvira Anderfjärd (a Max Martin protégé known for her work with Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran), Jakob Jerlström (Lorde, MARINA), Oscar Scheller (Ashnikko, Rina Sawayama), and Elof Loelv (Rihanna, Katy Perry).

Tove brings her fiercely intimate lyrics to a truly visionary sound, spiked with elements of everything from left-of-center club music to experimental art-pop to early-'60s girl-group records. At turns explosive, poetic, and transcendent, the result is Tove Styrke's most electrifying work to date, fully embodying the ineffable wildness of romantic love itself. With its exploration of desire and obsession and delirious longing HARD closely examines the savage complexity of love, a quality referenced in its title.

Tove says;

"I need something more than my imagination, even if it breaks my heart." is a line from "Show Me Love" that I think sums up a lot of what this record is about. Putting yourself and your heart at risk for a chance to feel something real. Life, feelings, bodies. Everything's hard. This album is about the pleasure and the pain, the euphoria and the misery, the love stories and the heart breaks. The contrasts. And it's about the liberation in being a free, flawed and beautiful human."

"With this album I really pushed myself to stray from the pop formula and get as creative as possible, while also making something that's unapologetically fun and joyous. It's very much all over the place, which is what I envisioned from the beginning. To me it feels so alive."

A platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated, and national radio P3 Guld 'Pop Artist of the Year' recipient in her native Sweden, Tove Styrke has been on a meteoric rise since the release of her 2015 album, "Kiddo", led by singles "Borderline," "Ego," and "Number One". Since then, Tove has embarked on multiple headline tours, made SXSW appearances, performed on Late Night with Seth Meyers, and has received vocal support from artist peers such as Sam Smith, Tove Lo, and Shawn Mendes. She has also released several collaborations including Cheat Codes & Travis Baker ("All Things $ Can Do"), ALMA ("Good Vibes"), NOTD ("Been There Done That"), Clean Bandit ("Last Goodbye"), and Lost Kings ("Stuck").

Tove Styrke's 2018 album, "Sway", a project which solidified her place among the top rising forward-thinking pop artists. The album was bolstered by iconic tracks such as "Sway," "Mistakes" and fan-favorite, "Say My Name," which Rolling Stone named to its #11 spot on its 'Top Songs of 2017' list.

The album has since garnered 120M+ combined streams, drawing widespread critical praise from outlets including Pitchfork (7.5 review), The FADER (Gen F), NME (5 stars), as well as support from Zane Lowe/Apple Music and BBC Radio 1. The album also launched a run of 7 tours, including support for Lorde and Katy Perry and sold-out headline tours in North America, UK, Australia and Scandinavia.

Listen to the new album here:

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