Scorpio Manicness Abounds on Tove Lo’s Delightfully Stinging Dirt Femme

Tove Lo is among the many shining pops stars who hadn’t yet dipped their toe into an album release since the advent of The Pandemic in 2020. It was the year before that she released one of her most standout opuses, Sunshine Kitty, followed by a deluxe edition released in May of 2020. Since then, she’s made her debut as an actress in The Emigrants and eloped in Las Vegas with her boyfriend-turned-husband, Charlie Twaddle. Which is where a song like “Suburbia” enters into the equation on her fifth record, Dirt Femme, a release that also happens to mark her first album as an “independent” artist. That is to say, free from major record label constraints now that she’s moved to her very own company, fittingly titled Pretty Swede Records.

And yet, one would never have taken Tove Lo for someone who was constrained at any point during her career—always candid, raunchy and unapologetic. But with the yoke of Island Records off her neck, it seems Tove has become candid in a different sort of way. Dare one use that odious term “more mature”? Maybe it has to do with becoming a married woman. Then again, don’t let that fool you into believing that Tove is anywhere near hanging up her party girl hat.

To that point, although Tove Lo is very much a Scorpio (hence, the album cover that spotlights her wearing a robotic scorpion stinger), she’s opted to contrarily release the record during Libra season. How Scorpio indeed. Perhaps wanting to get a jump on the freakdom of the Scorpio era, she eases her listeners into the extent of her crazy, cold-hearted ways with Dirt Femme’s opening track and first single, “No One Dies From Love.” Featuring a video that takes the robotic hint on the album cover to a higher level, Tove Lo’s character gets intimate with a robot named Annie 3000, only to cast her aside when a newer model comes along. All just proof that Tove Lo really is a feminist in terms of portraying women as having the propensity for assholery just as much as men in relationships.

As though to prove one of the statements she made with regard to the album’s thematic diversity—“We all contain multitudes and each of these women is me”—Tove Lo follows this up with “Suburbia,” a song that portrays her in total wifey mode, albeit somewhat reluctantly. For it’s something she never would have imagined for herself. This includes the expected “companion piece” to that “wife” title: Mother. With an interpolation that sounds, ironically enough, like “Maneater,” Tove Lo proceeds to lay out some caveats for her husband, singing, “I-I don’t want suburbia/I don’t need routines and lies/I hope you know that I know/You are the love of my life/But I-I-I can’t be no Stepford wife, oh.” Too bad this song didn’t come out in time for Olivia Wilde to use it in Don’t Worry Darling. At the same time, Tove Lo’s self-assurance about who she is (or once saw herself as) already got gut-punched when she decided to get married in the first place—something she thought she would never do. Thus, the emotional bridge in “Suburbia” that goes, “What if I change my mind and want [a baby], but then I can’t have none?/Would you leave me then?/What if I don’t want the things I’m supposed to want?/What then?/But what if I do in the end?”

The theme of intense, distraught love persists on the Hot Butter-sampling “2 Die 4.” With two videos—one where she’s roving through the desert with a strap-on and another where she emulates many aspects of J. Lo’s “Waiting For Tonight” video—the song ultimately says the same thing: Tove Lo’s a ride or die for her boo. That’s why she sings, in a fashion lyrically reminiscent of Sunshine Kitty’s “Anywhere u go,” “You’re to die for every day/Drag you out at midnight to dance in headlights/And making out in the rain/Look alive and come with me.” So sure, Tove Lo is willing to “settle down,” but she refuses to ever let it get boring by way of losing her Romeo and Juliet sense of ardor.

And, talking of “True Romance,” that’s the next track to follow, with Tove obviously being inspired by the Tony Scott-Quentin Tarantino collaboration of the same name. As though singing from the perspective of Alabama “Bama” (Whitman) Worley (Patricia Arquette), Tove croon-wails in the chorus, “Running from the scene, more money that we could ever dream/In danger of a true romance/Bodies left to bleed, they all had it comin’/In danger of a true romance/Thought I watched you die, I killed a man with tears in my eyes/In danger of a true romance/Saved you from that room, the powder and gold and the men were all doomed/Against our love, they never stood a chance.” So yes, if Quentin ever decides to do a reboot of the film, this is surely the track to include.

As for the motif of “not standing a chance,” Tove Lo illuminates this in another manner with regard to being felled by an eating disorder in her teen years via the extremely emotional “Grapefruit.” A title that overtly conjures the image of dieting and being “good” in terms of what one eats. Which is part of how it starts. An obsessive eating disorder, that is. Tove Lo noted of going back to that dark place in her youth for this composition, “I’ve tried to write this song for over ten years. I know I haven’t talked about it a lot in interviews or even in my music which is my most honest place. I guess I had to find the right way to share the feelings and the vicious circle of behavior I was stuck in. I’ve been free from my ED and my body issues for a very long time but they did take up too many of my teenage years… One of the many feelings I remember is needing to crawl out of my own skin. I felt so trapped in a body I hated.”

Tove Lo conveys this to perfection in video for the song, which showcases her trapped inside what looks like a literal flesh prison as she sings, “What I see is not me/What I see is not me/One, two, grapefruit/Wish I could change overnight/Three, four, lose more/Kill my obsession, please die/Five, six, hate this/How am I still in this fight?” Perchance because of mass media’s perpetual infiltration into the mind. Luckily, there are women like Tove who will advocate for body positivity… though, admittedly, it means more coming from someone like Lizzo.

On the subject of self-hate as related to staying thin, the next song is called “Cute & Cruel” and offers the first feature on the record via vocal contributions from First Aid Kit. Delving right into the matter, Tove announces, “Love can be cute and cruel.” That it can, but it’s mostly cute when Tove sings about it. Produced by Elvira (no, not the spooky one), the existential issues that Tove has always addressed in matters pertaining to love manifest in the queries, “What is love? [as Haddaway once famously asked]/How do you know?/Is it the way that all my feelings get blown up?/Is it real?/Or delusional?/To want it powerful, but never lose control?” First Aid Kit (a duo comprised of sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg) chimes in with, “What is true when I’m in pain?/When I get destructive and I ruin things again?/Do you stay or is it all on me?/To fix the curve on how love ends statistically?” As one of the sparser productions, “Cute & Cruel” provides a unique mix of balladry and danceability as Tove explores her preferred themes of self-destructive tendencies often having the potential to destruct relationships as well. And yet, the forgiving/punishing dichotomy of love is elucidated in the Tove’s reminder, “Love is a feeling, love is demeaning.” At the same time, “Love can forgive a lot, it’s why we go on at all.” Though some capitalists would beg to differ.

As for Tove Lo’s filmic influences peppered throughout Dirt Femme, Lady Bird is mentioned with reference to her color palettes (in addition to The Florida Project), and yet, thematically, the “Cute & Cruel” lyrics, “Stand in a crowd, the people are loud/But we got our own dimension/I know you know and you know I know/We both got the same intention/Take in the room, the people go ‘poof’/And there’s only us” harken back to a different Greta Gerwig movie altogether: Frances Ha. In it, the eponymous heroine explains of the “we got our own dimension” phenomenon, “It’s that thing when you’re with someone…and you love them and they know it…and they love you and you know it… but it’s a party and you’re both talking to other people…and you’re laughing and shining and you look across the room and catch each other’s eyes…but not because you’re possessive…or it’s precisely sexual…but because…that is your person in this life. And it’s funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it’s this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about. It’s sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don’t have the ability to perceive them.”

Tove knows about that dimension only too well, urging the object of her affection to “Call On Me,” as track seven insists. Featuring SG Lewis, this song reverts back to the more dance floor-ready sounds of “Suburbia” and “2 Die 4.” Except this particular number is far more unapologetically 80s (likely because SG Lewis is involved). Once again talking about the earnestness of her love, in this context, paired with the rave-ready rhythm, Tove suggests that ecstasy is at play in her love burst via the line, “Let’s slip the magic into water cups.” That she probably did as she proceeds to go back into Alabama-in-True Romance mode while declaring passionately, “Call on me, I’d die for you baby/Believe in love at night when you see me/Call on me, you know that I want it/I keep on comin’ back for your body.” As for initially trying to make the lyrics more complex, Tove “decided to just let it be what it is, which is a big, fun dance anthem that all my gays are going to love.” A sentiment that provides the perfect lead-in for “Attention Whore” featuring Channel Tres. And honestly, it’s remarkable that someone hasn’t made this a song title before. Especially considering that everybody is one now. It’s inescapable. The need to be “seen” (mostly online, a preferred “reality” because it can be constructed).

With a sort of “I Feel Love” backbeat, Tove makes this her cautionary tale about Hollywood, complete with a “How could it hurt you when it looks so good?” vibe. Channel Tres corroborates with lyrics like, “Yeah, the freaks like Hollywood, yes, they do/They like the attention/I’m the new addition/Baby, wanna visit?” Tove certainly does—but as the song pivots to being about jealousy, it’s clear she doesn’t want other women looking at Channel Tres the way she looks at him, declaring, “I’m an attention whore/And I want what I’m askin’ for.” Of course, it’s difficult to maintain anyone’s consistent attention in a place like L.A. (where parts of Dirt Femme were recorded).

Teaming up with SG Lewis again to continue the fruit motif (if MARINA hadn’t already called an album Froot, maybe Tove would have), “Pineapple Slice” is, as to be expected coming from Lo, a pussy reference. Because, yes, for those who aren’t aware and should be, eating pineapple is supposed to make one’s junk taste oh so sweet (or at least, sweeter than “plain” junk). Which is why Tove demands, “Now wrap your lips ’round me in my bed/I prepared for tonight/Ate a pineapple slice for you/I lift my hips, that’s your sexy cue/You gotta taste what’s in front of you/Hold your head with my thighs.” To be sure, this is a woman in total control, and who feels she’s owed a reward for bothering to eat a pineapple (it’s not easy to come by, after all). To add to the porno feel of the sonic landscape, the 70s-tinged beats (veering away from the 80s, for once) remind the listener of something Donna Summer or Anita Ward (think: “Ring My Bell”) would be at home singing along with.

Revealing her vulnerable side out of nowhere afterward (she’s a woman, nay, Scorpio, who loves manic contrasts), Tove presents us with the dramatic “I’m To Blame,” an Oasis-esque ditty that serves as an exploration of wanting forgiveness after a breakup that happened gradually then suddenly. Tove, wishing to get back together with the one who has cast her out, ruefully asks, “Why do you leave me to wonder/If this is worth fightin’ for?/Know I deserve what’s comin’/But after thе pain, is there more?” in between belting out the affecting chorus, “Feelings change, winter comes/Now your heart’s colder than stone/Leavin’ me outside/I’m to blame all along/Kept my own coat of ice on/Left our love to die.” And yet, even dead things can be revived upon occasion. As evidenced by the opening lyrics to the next track, “Kick in the Head, which go, “Please bring me back to life/I’m stuck too deep inside/Please take my hand” (one can’t help but think of Samantha Jones being [socially] resuscitated by “Leonardo DiCaprio” in this image). The mid-tempo rhythm also recalls that of 90s house standards as Tove speaks on a combination of potentially applicable subjects, including depression, a creative block and an addiction to the party life that results in daily hangovers. Thus, the chorus, “Try to look fresher/Try to live better/I gotta get out of bed/I need a good kick, kick in the head/Try to lose pressure/Try to move faster/I gotta get out of bed/I need a good kick, kick in the head.”

The kind of kick, apparently, that suddenly makes one realize their significant other has been cheating on them for a while now. This being the Euphoria-inspired topic of Dirt Femme’s finale, “How Long.” As a somewhat unexpected way to close the record (“I’m To Blame” comes across as better “conclusion material”), it leads one to speculate if Tove will inevitably go the deluxe edition route with this album as well (as her beloved contemporaries, Charli XCX and MARINA, recently did with Crash and Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, respectively). And it would be just so Scorpio to give us an all-too-brief taste only to have planned all along to offer us more somewhere down the road.