Swedish House Mafia: 'All this new music is amazing. And it's been a great time for us'

[Aquaboy]

Swedish House Mafia join Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss their highly anticipated return and their new song “It Gets Better”. They tell Zane about the origin of the song and its message, how the pandemic and missing each other and their fans influenced their return, and more.

Steve Angello Of Swedish House Mafia Tells Apple Music About Their Return…
I mean, this is the start. You know, it's like we had some time together now and during the pandemic, we got that. The only positive thing about the pandemic was we got the year. So just went in there and just dove and discovered and tweaked the synths. And we have something that we love and we feel is super unique and especially unique to us and something that we stand for. All this new music is amazing. And it's been a great time for us. …I was in LA for 10 years obviously. We bumped into each other there a couple of times. And guys were here and then after we split up last time, I was still living abroad. So it was... A natural progression of that would be like, I do my thing, they do theirs. And then I moved back to Sweden and we started these discussions again. And it just felt like we had never left. Which was weird, right? Because it's been so many years apart, but it was like we were on stage last week together. And then just doing all these shows. We came back. Obviously Ultra wasn't an announced show, but then we did 19. We did a couple of shows where we sold out to Swedish stadiums, and that was for us like a big hug from our friends showing appreciation that we're back. So for us that energy has built into this. Unfortunately, the pandemic hits, but for us, it was like those two years are long awaited two years for us to force each other to be in the studio together and come up and cook up this... And this was like the result of that, which has been incredible.

Axell of Swedish House Mafia Tells Apple Music About How The Pandemic Influenced The Group’s Return…
You know, because we used to make a quick fix, make a next song for the next show, make a booklet for the next show. Onto the next one. Never stopping the train. And so we were forced to stop the train, not voluntarily necessarily, but COVID actually helped us in this process as weird as it might sound because otherwise we might not have gotten where we are today. We had the time to quit. We had the time to pick up and start again. And we make and remake and retry and regroup and have hope and then quit again. And then grab that little hope that we had, bring it back, and start over and then find something. So this whole time, the time has really helped us to have gotten where we are with the sounds and with the songs and to a place where we feel proud. We love what we have done.

Sebastian Ingrosso of Swedish House Mafia Tells Apple Music How Missing Each Other and Their Fans Brought Them Back Together…
That was the first thing that we spoke about. We missed each other. First of all, we missed each other, then we missed the fans and we wanted to hang out together. And now we have the best two years together. We have done amazing things together, but this is like we made a baby together. You know what I mean? Finally.

Swedish House Mafia Tell Apple Music About “It Gets Better”…

Axwell: Like with everything, all of our songs that we do, they go through a process that is severely long. There might be like a guitar sample. It's like, okay, that's cool. That's cool. Okay. Whatever. And then one day a vocal sample comes along and you're like, that's also cool, whatever. And then we sit in the studio late at night and just... We throw everything onto the table and we're just like, how does this work with this? And then, oh, what about this with that? And then we're like, oh shit. That's the magic sauce. Those two together. That's what happens there.

Zane Lowe: What were the elements in "It Gets Better" that really... What was the, to quote The Dude, what was the rug that tied the room together?

Sebastian Ingrosso: The drums.

Steve Angello: But also the rhythm. It feels so original and it feels like... I don't know... I can't place... I can't genre place it.

Axwell: But also the lyric. The lyric just going "it gets better." Like who does not want things to get better? You know? Like I can relate to that. It gets better. Of course it will get better. Let's hope it gets better.

 

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