This Is... Icona Pop
In 2012, the Swedish EDM-pop duo Icona Pop (Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo) turned out one of the most empowering and brilliant tunes of the last decade: \"I Love It.\" A rallying cry for young women everywhere, the track quickly found its way to videogames, commercials, and TV shows (including an episode of *Girls*). Written by English techno-pop artist Charli XCX, the song pounds with rebellious attitude and confident dismissal: \"I crashed my car into the bridge/I don\'t care! I love it!\" shout the duo with unbridled glee. A second single from their U.S. album, “All Night,” showed a slightly softer (albeit just as bouncy) side to Icona Pop, as they pined in slightly sweeter tones, “We could do this all night!” It’s a fairly sugary, crowd-rousing moment, but other songs show more depth: “Just Another Night\" isn\'t as ebullient; it\'s a lament that features a single voice rather than the duo’s continual double whammy. The wistful “Just Another Night” also showcases some power-packed vocals.
Icona Pop's full-length debut is a collection of cranked-up, EDM-influenced pop that sounds like a cross between ABBA's Gold and Andrew WK's I Get Wet. And like most great party music, the Swedish duo's euphoria is mixed with a twinge of apocalypse.
Hit songs don’t get much more ubiquitous than Icona Pop’s “I Love It.” The mega-smash first found legs in the U.S. as a 2012 summer jam (and as the theme song to the Jersey Shore spin-off Snooki & JWoww), and then exploded in popularity this year thanks to pivotal appearances on Girls and Glee, as well as plenty of…
It's finally here, and it's undoubtedly one of the strongest pop records of 2013.
Check out our album review of Artist's This Is . . . Icona Pop on Rolling Stone.com.
Icona Pop's transformation into the feel-good band of the summer wasn't simply a case of the right song and the right show. Crucially, the manner in which "I Love It" was used in HBO's Girls-dialogue-free and couching a season-defining scene-was the real
While most of the concerns expressed in This Is… seem wafer-thin, the innovative production and diamond-hard songcraft suggest something else entirely.
As far as mainland European artists go, many struggle to gain widespread attention in the UK, let alone make it into the notoriously competitive charts of...
Icona Pop - This Is...Icona Pop review: “I Don’t Care” for 33 minutes - take it or leave it.