Turn Up at Every Age With Nordic Pop Star Rebekka Karijord's New Video

Rebekka Karijord is a super-prolific musician, composer, actor, and director who is well-known in Scandinavia for her intensely unique vocal pop and avant-garde scores for film and dance. This February, the Norway-born, Sweden-based artist will release We Become Ourselves for the first time in the States, a gorgeous album of harmonies, piano, and paeans to, I think, womanly strength. “Use My Body While It’s Still Young” is the first single and one of my favorites about that, a roiling track that chops dumb fear off at its knees.

The video, debuting for the first time here, is evidence of Karijord’s own strength, and also her artistic elasticity. Directed by Karijord and featuring her only nominally (pounding furiously on that ole piano), she cast 76-year-old Swedish dance pioneer Siv Ander, who was one of the first members of the Cullberg Ballet company, to star. This autumn, Karijord and Ander will collaborate again for dance/music piece at Oslo’s Royal Opera, based on the song and video here.

“When I wrote the song,” Karijord says via email, “I knew I wanted to have some sort of a visual contradiction to it, because of the quite direct lyrics and title. I imagined a sensual, older body expressing vitality and power. I find that older peoples’ sexuality and bodies, and especially female bodies, are one of the last taboos in our very youth fixated society… I know it’s a title [that’s] easy to interpret as only sexual, but to me it has more layers than that. I wanted to write some sort of a Memento Mori; Remember your death, because that will make you live fuller and more courageously.” It’s the courage that gets you, no? We Become Ourselves drops February 5 on Control Freak Records.