Against the relentlessly maximal pop music of the 2010s, Li always stood apart for fusing a free-spirited electro-funk with a willingness to directly confront life’s darker elements. Now, with the Swedish pop star’s new and possibly final album, The Afterparty, coming in May, her music feels more necessary than ever.
Name an influence of yours that might surprise people.
I think so much about directors and filmmakers when I write, produce, and mix. There’s things that David Lynch, Haneke, and Malick have said or they way they do things that will never leave my soul. I am so interested in storytelling, arcs, and the building of a character. Each album is a 360 world for me. Since I don’t really have the budget, it kind of all needs to just live in between those chords and harmonies. But man, if I did have the budget…
What’s one work of art that got you through an important moment in your life?
It’s how I get through life at any given moment, but the books that I can really remember helping me are Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart, Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, and the last one that blew my mind was Marina Abramović’s Walk Through Walls. I sound like a basic bitch but sometimes you just have to go back to the basics.
Who do you call the most?
I have a few spiritual advisors and best friends, and I’ve kind of turned my poor managers into my therapists. I probably do 20 minutes of unhinged, unpaid therapy daily with them. I am by far their most unsettled client.
What grounds you, and what invigorates you?
I love dancing. I love guided meditation. I love spending a whole day in bed, cocooned. Holding my kids’ hands. Blasting loud music. All my speakers are busted by now, so basically all I hear is this crackle of a frequency, but I think it does something for my chakras.
What do you think is your biggest contribution to culture?
I’ve always been the underdog, slipping under the radar, not really changing culture, but more of a guardian angel mirroring heartbreak. That’s really what I do: I write sad songs to help me feel less lonely and crazy, and I hope it does something for someone else. I love the fact that people know my music and not my face—it makes my life very free. It’s really all about the music for me. I want to stay eternally intangible.
What keeps you up at night?
This is my absolute specialty, lying awake at night thinking of the absolute worst things that could happen to my kids and family and my life in general. I wrote a song about it called “Future Fear” in hopes that it would maybe release this brain pattern, but, no, I’m always catastrophizing the future. A side effect of being a Pisces. Sometimes I think I’m psychic, but then I realize I’m just able to imagine my worst fears coming true.
What are you looking forward to this year?
There is always such uncertainty when you release new music and work. I hope the energy I put into it will be reciprocated in some mysterious, wonderful way. Sometimes when I pray, I ask the universe to send me a surprise, but then I’m like, “A happy surprise, please!” You know how the universe is always trying to send you lessons? So this time I’m specifically asking for blessings. Blessings, not lessons! And connection, I long to connect and expand my artistic practices.
What’s something people get wrong about you?
That I am depressed with long, dark hair. That has been true sometimes, but I think people are surprised when they meet me in person—how much I laugh and what a ratchet sense of humor I have. I love life, even though it hurts.
When you were little, what were you known for?
My love for E.T., Michael Jackson, and dolphins, and for looking like a misplaced alien.
What do you want to see more of in your industry? Less of?
I want to see more of the truth, the struggles, the insecurities, the desperation. I want to see people’s real faces. And maybe a more grown perspective. Youth has its glory but I am more interested in what comes after. That’s what The Afterparty is about: the withering, the loss, the disappointment, and then, hopefully, the revenge.
What question do you ask yourself most often while you’re making work?
Is it true to me? Is it honest? Is it a lived experience? Must I write this? Lyrics need to be compulsively expressed. If you are not burning to write, if you wouldn’t die if you didn’t, if you are not battling a question, then don’t write.
And then for the music: Am I transported? Can I fly? Is it yummy?
When’s the last time you laughed hysterically?
My love is the best at making me laugh. I’ll be in tears, peeing. He does these impressions of me with a super heavy Swedish accent but it really comes off more Russian gangster. It’s really quite iconically insane. I love to laugh. I wish there were a pill that could make you belly laugh on demand. On further thought, I think there is. But it’s illegal.
What is your biggest vice?
I have so many vices, it’s quite unbearable, actually. I’m jealous, petty, impulsive, indecisive, delusional, too honest in interviews. I am mostly vices, I would say. Dreams and vices.
Your greatest virtue?
I’m a great eBay fiend and a great non-scientific researcher. There’s nothing I can’t find.
What’s been the hardest part of your career so far?
It’s hard every day. It’s really a rollercoaster of emotions, swinging from hubris to defeat within the course of an hour. It’s so fickle being this sensitive. Sometimes I feel my veil is too thin. The beauty of having these creative portals can also just make your life really difficult to bear. I wish I could turn off my spiritual goggles a little more often. Artists have these great wounds where the light shines in, but there is also so much darkness and doubt. But it’s hard for everyone. Being human is hard. I don’t know why I think it would get easier?
To read more from the 2026 CULT100 honorees, see the full list here.
in your life?
