Ane Brun

Ane Brun

Having celebrated two decades as an artist with a major retrospective in 2023, Ane Brun is turning her gaze once again to the journey still to come. For all the beauty and fulfillment that comes with the closing of a significant chapter, there’s only so much looking back that the curious mind can do. As a songwriter, Brun’s most creative work has often come out of periods of renewal. To compare her first and second decades as an artist is to see her work in dramatically different colours. The years have only made her braver and more playful in her self-expression, following her instincts to create freely and fearlessly across genres and art forms.

From busking on the streets of Barcelona as a law school dropout in her early twenties, to becoming one of Scandinavia’s best-loved musicians with ten studio albums to her name, Brun has built the kind of career that’s becoming increasingly rare, in an industry that’s almost unrecognisable from that of 20 years ago – and almost all of it on her own terms. Decisively independent from day one, the Norway-born artist put out her debut album Spending Time with Morgan on a label she co-owned with two friends in her adopted home of Stockholm, before launching her own Balloon Ranger Recordings imprint in 2005. That same year, her second album, A Temporary Dive, quickly went platinum in Norway and won her the equivalent of a Grammy. International success followed suit, and by the end of 2006 Brun was an established name across Europe and had wrapped her first US tour.

Early comparisons to Dolly Parton and Jeff Buckley have long been outgrown as Brun’s recordings have moved away from the savant acoustic folk that defined much of her first decade. The transformation began with 2011’s landmark It All Starts with One, which gave Brun her first #1 album in Sweden and a third in Norway. Inspired by revolution and rebirth, it introduced a more dynamic, emboldened sound for Brun, not only in the studio but also out on stage, where her lifelong love of rhythm and dance became an integral part of her craft.

Brun’s evolution continued with 2015’s When I’m Free, a brightly hued collection that tapped into her teenage love of ‘90s dance, trip hop and electronic music, and her 2020 release After the Great Storm, which distilled all those influences into some of her most ambitious and sophisticated songwriting to date. Described by MOJO as “an intense, trip-hoppy and orchestral examination of love in all its forms,” After the Great Storm was followed just a month later by the strikingly bittersweet How Beauty Holds the Hand of Sorrow, a largely stripped-down meditation on the parallels of loving and grief. Besides winning her two Swedish Grammys, a handful of the songs were translated into her native Norwegian for her 2022 album Nœrmere, reconnecting Brun to the homeland she returned to during the pandemic.

Brun’s refusal to fit neatly into any one mould speaks to the same unfiltered authenticity she brings to her connection with her global fanbase that continues to grow year by year. Besides her own songs, Brun’s reputation as one of the great northern interpreters of song is evidenced by an extraordinary catalogue of covers, collected across 2023’s Portrayals, two Rarities collections, and her 2017 album Leave Me Breathless – another top 5 hit in both Norway and Sweden. Inspired by artists like Cat Power and especially Nina Simone, who had an almost supernatural ability to wear any song as if it was her own, each of Brun’s covers is remade in her own emotional language. As far as Brun may wander from her acoustic singer-songwriter roots, it’s that language and the authority with which she wields it, that keeps her listeners following along.
Undeniably, Brun’s lightly fluttering voice is at the heart of her steadfast appeal – tender, beguiling and sometimes austere. Whether tackling the big questions of mortality and the climate crisis or the intimate complexities of love, her songs are hardwired with hope, a glimpse of salvation in the bones of each one.

To fully understand Brun as an artist you need to look beyond the albums, for a lifetime of fostering community and collaboration lives there. Over her 20 years in the business, Brun has become an almost matriarchal figure, seizing every opportunity to connect and celebrate her fellow artists. Regular members of her band include many of Scandinavia’s finest musicians, and her long list of collaborators includes ABBA’s Benny Andersson, José Gonzalez, Mando Diao, Ron Sexsmith, Dustin O’Halloran and Peter Gabriel, with whom she toured extensively throughout North American and Europe. She’s lent her voice, too, to songs by up-and-coming Nordic artists like Fay Wildhagen, Turab, Siv Jakobsen and Moa Lignell, and has been a regular performer at the Nobel Peace Prize and other prestigious events.

Away from the alternative and pop world, Brun has collaborated with dance music luminaries such as Oliver Heldens, Andrew Bayer and Dr. Kucho! and Gregor Salto, with whom she scored a top 5 UK hit in 2015 with the co-written ‘Can’t Stop Playing (Makes Me High)’. In a crossover with the classical world, a hit Stockholm residency with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra (as captured on 2018’s Live at Berwaldhallen, her third live album) led to a run of orchestral shows throughout Scandinavia. More recently, Brun’s willingness to expand her boundaries has seen her work move more decisively into theatre and world-class contemporary dance. In the winter of 2023, she staged a sold-out run of performances with the Gothenburg Opera Dance Company, immortalised in the strikingly choreographed video for her 2023 single, ‘Hand In The Fire’.

For all she has accomplished, Brun’s ambition still burns brightly, her hunger to write the next chapter undimmed. Whatever the next decade holds, it will be anything but predictable. And it starts now.