Tove Styrke Renames Fifth Album 'I thought this story wasn't about me', Shares New Single Sunflower
Monday, 06 July 2026
Written by Jon Stickler
Photo: Frida Marklund
Tove Styrke has changed the title of her upcoming fifth album.
After realising the songs on the record were more personal than she had initially intended, the Swedish alt-pop star has scrapped the original title, 'The Afterparty', replacing it with 'I thought this story wasn't about me'. She explained:
"I feel like this entire album campaign is becoming a document of a person who can no longer hide. The story unfolds in real time, on the record but also in my actual life. I thought I was observing the protagonist until I realised I was her."
She continued: "I feel like we’re living in a really weird blip in time and the album reflects on what that does to a person. The story plays out as if you’re facing an entire life’s worth of thoughts during one night from dusk til dawn.
"This album started as an idea that was so vivid in my mind I could almost touch it. I saw it like a still from a movie scene, a distinct atmosphere and vibe and then the lyrics and the music just fell into place almost without any effort. It was all already there."
Co-produced by Styrke and co-writer Magnus Larsson, the follow-up to 2022's 'HARD' is set for release on November 6. It'll include this year's singles Prayer, Space, Song and Dance Man, Let's Go Camping, and the newly shared Sunflower, which serves up a more introspective and vulnerable side of her songwriting. She said: "Sunflower lingered in the background for a long time before it finally came into being. Deep down, I knew there was one more song left to write, one that would feel like a long embrace. When we finally set out to explore it in the studio, it was as if the song simply fell into my lap from above. Within a few hours, it existed."
She added: "I didn’t even understand what it was about until much later, when my partner and co-parent heard it and said, ‘Oh, how beautiful. You wrote a song for our daughter.’"
The album's cover art and tracklist are still under wraps, but following its release in November, Styrke will play a series of shows built around the record, beginning with a hometown performance at Värmeverket in Stockholm on November 20, with more dates to be announced.
In related news, the singer-songwriter has also formed a Swedish-language political rock band with her partner Sanna Sikborn Erixon, called Året Var (translated as The Year Was). They put out their debut four-track EP, 'Är Du Nöjd Nu?', in May, with an album set for release in September ahead of the Swedish election.
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