girl in red

After attracting fans with catchy, candid bedroom pop about crushes and everyday struggles with mental health, Norway's girl in red turned up the volume while embracing a colorful, pop-forward production palette and remaining uniquely plain-spoken and a little hard to pigeonhole genre-wise. She was a teenager when she first went viral with her debut track, 2017's "I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend," which she followed with a series of likewise personal singles, adding to her streaming counts and social media followers along the way. In 2021, she released her first full-length and studio effort, if i could make it go quiet, which hit number two in Norway and the Top Ten in the U.K. and Australia while also appearing on the Billboard 200. Following an opening slot on Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour in 2023, girl in red returned with a thematically self-assured, even more sonically dynamic sophomore album, 2024's I'M DOING IT AGAIN BABY!, which fused her frank divulgences with dance-rock and volatile alt-pop.

Hailing from Horten, Norway, just south of Oslo, Marie Ulven began writing songs as a 16-year-old in 2015. She shared her first song as girl in red, "I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend," in September 2017. The following February, the track was featured on NRK Urørt, a website dedicated to emerging Norwegian artists, leading to a surge in streams and social media followers. In the meantime, girl in red had uploaded more tracks at the rate of about a song a month. February 2018's "Summer Depression" and June's "Girls" joined her debut single in earning millions of streams before the end of the year. Mid-year, "I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend" was also included on Pride: A Compilation of LGBTQ Artists for GLSEN alongside artists such as MUNA, Cyn, and Pentatonix spin-off Superfruit. Around that time, Ulven relocated to Oslo for school while continuing to work on her music. "Eleanor and Park," a collaboration with fellow bedroom recordist beabadoobee (formerly Bea), followed in October 2018. Also that year, she released the Chapter 1 EP and landed at number 14 on the Billboard Hot Rock Songs chart with her non-album single "We Fell in Love in October." A second EP, Chapter 2, arrived in 2019. She was nominated for Newcomer of the Year at Norway's Spellemann Awards in 2020.

In 2021, Ulven released her first album, if i could make it go quiet. It debuted in the Top Ten in Norway, the U.K., and Australia, and reached the top half of the U.S. Billboard 200. Co-produced by Matias Tellez, it found Ulven expanding her intimate bedroom pop style and embracing a more sonically ambitious, instrumentally varied sound. Included was the single "Serotonin," a Top 20 Billboard alternative song that featured additional production by Finneas. In 2022, she delivered the non-album single "October Passed Me By," a sequel to her 2018 song "We Fell in Love in October." The newer song was co-produced by Ulven and the National's Aaron Dessner.

In 2023, girl in red joined Taylor Swift on tour as an opening act during the first leg of Swift's The Eras Tour. Buoyed by the exposure, Ulven returned to the studio with Tellez and a more confident, self-assured perspective acquired through treatment and time. Inserting even more wide-ranging sounds -- isolated piano, blurting synths, clubby electronics, funky rock, and more -- into a vibrant mix of alt-pop and dance-rock, I'M DOING IT AGAIN BABY! arrived on Columbia in April 2024. Later in the year, girl in red was included on the A24 compilation Everyone’s Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense. ~ Marcy Donelson, Rovi