Ida Maria - youlikewelike

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Ida Maria loves Britain. Manchester, Glasgow, London, you name it; she loves, although it sounds like she has a special place in her heart for Brighton. “It’s a fantastic place,” she shrieks. “I looked at my camera after I’d been there, and I’d taken hundreds and hundreds of pictures. I come from the coast in Norway, and I was missing the sea so much. I ran down to the sea and stayed by the pier. I bought candy floss too, but it blew away.”

The Norwegian bandleader visited Britain for a handful of live dates to support her single Oh My God and fell, well, in love.

“I wrote Oh My God when I was bored and depressed. I didn’t have a band, but I just had this idea that I should make music. No one else agreed or thought it was a good idea. It’s quite a desperate track, I guess. It’s very dark.”

If that’s dark, it’s nothing compared to the single’s haunting B-side, We’re All Going to Hell, which cranks it up a notch further. “I wrote it on New Year’s Eve after watching this news round-up of the year,” she says. “It was all about natural disasters, how the world was messed up and how we’ve fucked the place up from top to bottom. I was just so frustrated about watching the world go to hell. But I don’t like talking about what my songs are about…” she says, trailing off.

Maria was born in the tiny Norwegian town of Nesna, up in the Arctic Circle. It’s a village of just over 1,700, so it’s perhaps it’s no surprise to hear the aspiring rock and roller couldn’t wait to leave the place as a teenager.

“I moved further south to Bergen when I was 16. There was nothing for me to do in Nesna, as a 16-year-old girl who was interested in music.

“It’s an interesting place to hang out now, I guess, but I couldn’t find anyone in the area who’d even heard of Bob Dylan, so I just wanted to meet people the same age as me who liked the same things as me.”

Getting new music was virtually impossible, so during her formative years Maria spent lots of time going to the doctor’s house. It wasn’t medical advice he was handing out, however, but prescriptions of Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix – the sort of stuff that can cure any manner of ills.

“He was a big music fan and had thousands of CDs. I would go over and pick things and he’d recommend stuff. I listened to all the old classics and my dad had a load of old jazz records too. My mum is very into choral church music, so I really love all that too.”

Once in Bergen, Maria found herself in a vibrant city, but due to the difficulty in getting home to Nesna when needed – navigating around Norway’s fjords and mountains is a beautiful, but nevertheless arduous task – she decided to move to Sweden’s capital Stockholm, where she now resides with her boyfriend and guitarist (the trio run Nesna Records, named in honour of Maria’s hometown).

“We’ve had it for quite a while. I wanted it so people can’t tell me what to do. It’s about my view, and my music and people can’t fuck around with that. It’s just to say what I’m doing.

“We have different artists too, and some more people in mind. I think my boyfriend will be running it more than me!”

words: Andy Welch