Hugo Cassavetti described Frida Hyvönen as “disarming” in Télérama after interviewing her at the Institut suédois almost fifteen years ago. “Seldom have we heard a singer combine hot and cold to this extent. This “tall Swedish blonde ” – as she decsribes herself, with as much fatalism as wry humour –, sings about horrors with infinite gentleness and laughs about things so that they don’t make her cry.”
Frida Hyvönen, who was born in 1977, is a singer-songwriter who, like Sara-Vide Ericson, comes from the north of Sweden. Her first album, Until Death Comes, was released in 2005 and was awarded a prize by Nöjesguiden, the national arts guide. The following year, she wrote the music for the dance performance Pudel choreographed by Dorte Olesen, which she also produced as a record. In 2008, she received the culture prize from the major daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter for her third album Silence is Wild. In 2009 she worked with the photographer Elin Berge on a literary and musical project titled Drottninglandet. She became the first pop singer to perform at Dramaten, the Swedish royal theatre. After many tours in the US and Europe, she wrote her first album in Swedish, Kvinnor och barn (2026), which won several Grammis.
Her latest album, Dream of Independence, was ranked as one of the best albums of 2021 by the respected UK website The Arts Desk. “Dream Of Independence is instantly accessible and tune-packed, with its direct lyrics given added force by Hyvönen’s blunt delivery […] Elsewhere, during “Painter,” Hyvönen declares “I am really a painter, not a songwriter.” Well, the album is a collection of songs but, yes, it is more.”
Listen to Frida Hyvönen on YouTube
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