Icona Pop

About Icona Pop

Icona Pop is what happens when two Swedish singers meet at a music school party and decide they have better chemistry than whatever else they were planning to do with their lives. Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo formed the duo in 2009 after connecting at a party in Stockholm, bonding over their shared taste in music and realizing they could probably make something work together. They were right.

The duo spent a couple years building their sound in the Swedish club scene before breaking through in a way most artists only dream about. "I Love It" dropped in 2012 and became one of those songs that just refused to go away. Originally recorded with Swedish producer Patrik Berger and featuring Charli XCX on writing duties, the track is basically three minutes of gleeful destruction set to massive synth stabs. The hook about crashing a car into a bridge and not caring is the kind of petty revenge fantasy that translates across languages, which explains why it hit number one in the UK and went quadruple platinum in the US. HBO's Girls putting it in a key scene didn't hurt either.

Their debut album, This Is... Icona Pop, came out in 2013 and tried to replicate that lightning-in-a-bottle energy with mixed results. "Girlfriend" and "All Night" were solid follow-ups that kept them in rotation on pop radio and in clubs, even if neither quite matched the cultural penetration of their breakout hit. The album showcased their preference for big, straightforward dance-pop hooks without much pretense about being anything other than what it was.

The challenge with having a song as big as "I Love It" is that everything after gets measured against it. Their subsequent releases, including tracks like "Emergency" and "We Got the World," maintained their sound but existed in that weird space where they were still popular in clubs and with their core fanbase without necessarily dominating charts the way they briefly did. They've stayed consistent though, continuing to release music that serves the same purpose: making people move without overthinking it.

In recent years, Icona Pop has settled into a comfortable lane. They released their second album, Så mycket bättre 2021, Tolkningarna, showing they still have pull in Sweden, and they've kept dropping singles that do well enough in the dance-pop world. "Feels in My Body" and other recent tracks suggest they're not trying to reinvent themselves, just continuing to do what they've always done reasonably well.

They tour regularly, often hitting festivals and pride events where their brand of unsubtle, high-energy pop makes perfect sense. They've outlasted most of the acts they came up with in the early 2010s EDM-pop wave, which counts for something. Two friends from a Stockholm party turned into a nearly 15-year career. Could be worse.

Their shows run on pure audience participation. Every song becomes a sing-along, especially I Love It, which crowds clearly need therapeutically. They keep energy sharp and feed off the room. Don't expect introspection or staging tricks. Just a duo getting drunk on the fact that people are yelling their lyrics back at them.

Known for I Love It, Girlfriend, We Got Love, All Night, Drunk in Love

See Icona Pop Live