I Won’t Be Like That is an incredible record, the sound of an artist introducing themselves as a singular voice. Throughout its stories of falling in and out of love, growing up and moving on, loss and experience, the musical shapes constantly shift, all underpinned by Othilde’s wonderful singing. Across its 10 songs, it moves from “Will I Be Hearing From You?” which could be a modern-day Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood song relocated in Oslo, to “A Look of Surprise”, which blends folk, a jazz interlude and epic guitars, to the sparse, acoustic yearning of “Young Love”.
Othilde describes her writing as a way of processing emotions, turning stories of the everyday into something universal, cathartic and relatable. “That’s the essence of my music and why I write. It's so simple to me, I write about my life and what I experience. It feels like the most important thing in my life is to express myself through music.”
As part of the writing process, Settem and Thorvik make suggestions on lyrics and production, but Othilde’s method is to paint the picture of the songs and then present them to her producers. “I say to them, ‘this is the song, what do you think?’ And then we take it from there. It's very difficult to let go of my own lyrics, because it's what I want to say and as long as I feel like I've expressed myself, I feel done with the song.”
This summer’s EP was more collaborative, written by Othilde, Thorvik and Settem. “That was so new to me, to write all of the lyrics together and be in the studio all day, every day, doing everything together”, she says. “I learned so much. You can't hold anything back, you have to be completely honest, you have to put yourself into the head of the other people and they also have to try to understand you. It feels like you're very vulnerable, but it was very good for me to work like that.”
As part of her writing process, Othilde does something refreshingly analogue, she keeps a diary and uses it both to document the everyday and as a source of inspiration for her songs. “When I'm sitting down to write music, I always pick up my diary. It's daily inspiration, you pick things up around you and I really love that. It's such a big part of my creative process, ‘Oh, this word sounded good in this context, or this sentence was interesting.”