LonelyTwin Is “Thinking Of A Place”

Today, Stockholm-based singer, songwriter and producer LonelyTwin (Madelene Eliasson) shares the wistful single + video “Thinking Of A Place.” It’s just the latest offering from her highly anticipated debut album This End Had No Beginning, out July 7 via Ultra Music (Calvin Harris, Deadmau5, Kaskade, Sofi Tukker). With yearning lyrics on California, sundresses, and goodbyes, the song recalls a nostalgia many know about a love lost. Eliasson says, “This is a very personal song to me. I wrote it for a girl I was kind of seeing at the time who was living in LA. I had just gotten back to Stockholm because the pandemic had just hit and I wrote it for her to just tell her that I missed her and I didn’t want her to forget about me.”

While the name LonelyTwin evokes longing (Madelene herself being a Gemini), This End Had No Beginning arrives fully formed: a genre-blurring combination of inventive trip-hop, smart indie pop, and evocative electronic folk that subtly slides between blue mood and hard-earned joy. With themes of love and heartbreak, the album reflects the aftermath of strained relationships and the emotions that follow, lyrics full of words left unsaid. Nostalgia-inspiring and daydream-inducing, the project came together over the course of three years and features a collection of songs that are reflective of the events that Eliasson went through during that time. “These songs are so close to my heart and I love the album and how it turned out. I’m so ready to let it go so it’s not just mine anymore.”

Eliasson’s songs are spectral yet heavy with emotion, and her lyrics aim for an honesty that’s elusive in real life—like confessions whispered in the dark to the twin sister you never had—and demonstrated on previously released singles “You!,” “I Will Be Better Than You At Letting Go,” “Pretty,” “Hurts Like It Hit Me,” and “If I Know Myself.”

Though LonelyTwin is new, it builds on Eliasson’s past lives in music: working with others like LÉON, BROODS, Anna Of The North, Winona Oak, and and teaming up with Jonathan Olofsson as Jo&Me, whose cover of Drake’s “Too Good” racked up blogosphere love in 2017. LonelyTwin’s additional releases include her nostalgic breakup bop “My Heart” and a remix of MGMT’s iconic track “Electric Feel,” which further hints not just at her vast array of influences, but the general vibe she’s going for: sensual, end-of-the-night party jams built from rich guitar loops and yearning, feather-light vocals. She doesn’t rule out collaboration for the far more personal LonelyTwin, but every song begins and ends with Eliasson, alone, in the studio. That approach harkens back to her youth in the wooded Swedish suburbs. As the youngest child, she was given space to get lost in her own world. “I like staying in that one moment of creativity for as long as I can,” she says. “There’s usually something magic in that moment.”