The dramatic and intense Swedish pop star Lykke Li has been relatively quiet lately. Back in 2020, she released “BRON,” her first-ever Swedish-language single. Since then, it’s been crickets. Today, though, Lykke Li has surprise-released a new single called “No Hotel.” It’s very pretty and very, very sad.
There’s not a whole lot of instrumentation on “No Hotel”; it’s mostly just Lykke Li’s voice and one guitar with a whole lot of sustain on it. A song like that doesn’t offer a singer any place to hide, and Lykke Li has no interest in hiding. Instead, she sings in plain and concrete terms about heartbreak: “Heartbeat half-dead, I carry blue/ With every step, I’m not over you.”
On “No Hotel,” Lykke Li’s narrator pines for an ex who’s in love with someone else, and she pleads for that ex to come back. Her voice is tremulous and wounded, and it all sounds very real. Lykke Li co-wrote and co-produced the song with Björn Yttling of Peter, Björn & John, a longtime collaborator. Listen to it below.
“No Hotel” is out now on Play It Again Sam/Crush Music.
