Earlier this month, Swedish icon of subversive pop Cobrah — best known for delectably transgressive bangers like “GOOD PUSS” and “BRAND NEW BITCH” — put on what just might be the live music spectacle of the year May 5th at Union Transfer… which almost didn’t happen… The date came as the third-to-last night of the Torn Tour, including performances at Treefort and both weekends of Coachella in addition to nearly two dozen headlining dates. The jaunt was in support of Torn, Cobrah’s long-awaited debut full-length, which finally dropped this March via Atlantic Records and NME called “an ambitious lean into the theatrical passions of her teen years, stepping away from the booming sound systems and rave-ready BPMs dominating her club performances and instead slipping into the role of storyteller.” The day after the show, I got a chance to chat with Cobrah (via zoom), who explains that, despite being her first album, Torn actually represents a reinvention of sorts.
*Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Izzy Cihak: Thank you not only for taking the time to chat, but for making last night’s show happen! I know you had some major issues, but it was amazing!
Cobrah: You’re welcome! Yeah, it was insane! I woke up in the morning, and you wake up where you’re gonna play, and I was like, “Okay, it’s in a gas station…” but there’s a reason for everything… The tour manager called everybody out and was like, “The bus is broken down.” I looked at the map, and we were twenty minutes outside Boston… We were just like, “Pack your stuff! Be ready to leave at any time!” I remember sitting in the parking lot, doing my glam, with my fake lashes and my lip liner and everything. They were like, “It’s a five-six-hour drive…” [laughs]. I think I got to the venue at 7:30 and did the meet and greet at 7:45. We ran in there, like, “Let’s go!” For them to be able to set up so that we could be on at 9:30, according to schedule, was magic to see! That’s the result of a very good team, but also being at the end of the tour and everybody being so knowledgeable of what they’re going to do.
Izzy: Last night was my first time seeing you, but you did play Union Transfer two years ago, so I’m curious what you’ve thought of Philadelphia and the venue?
Cobrah: I love that venue. I was so happy to come back. They have what you need, a makeup room and also the PA, the way they position the speakers; it’s a very good place to play. I think the show we did last was much, much more rowdy, in a good way. Even though we played the same venue, it was a whole different type of show, so it was fun. They have this sign in the back room, “Is it hot? Does it look good? Are you proud to serve it?” Have you seen it?
Izzy: Yeah! Because that building used to be The Spaghetti Warehouse, so it was referring to spaghetti, but they just kept it and it totally works…
Cobrah: It’s like the way my friends speak! It’s such a good sign! I remember that sign from last time and I’m so happy it’s still there, because it really works as a musician. Like, “Am I proud to serve it!?” Yes, I am! And then you go on stage [laughs]!
Izzy: As you mentioned, you’re nearing the end of your North American dates behind Torn, which you’ve been touring since late March. What have been some of the highlights and standout moments?
Cobrah: I probably have the loudest fans in the world. It’s insane! We hit some crazy decibel levels. My sound technician told me that one time they were at 120 decibels for a like 1,000-cap show, and that’s the sound of plane engine [laughs]. My whole team has been like, “They’re so happy!” I think that’s the best thing I’m taking away from this tour. I’m very, very happy and grateful that everyone is so excited. Sometimes artists are afraid that when they play they’re being judged. When I play, I feel like everyone’s there to support and to be a part of it. That’s the best thing I’ve taken away from this tour.
But there’s other stuff, as well. There’s the Philly cheesesteak that my very nice merch girl ordered for everyone in the crew that’d I’d never had before… so delicious! I visited a town in Kansas called Lindborg, which is a Swedish town. There’s like 3,800 people that live there, and the college team is called Bethany Swedes, and everybody speaks Swedish. It was really surreal. If you’re Italian, you have Little Italy everywhere, but as a Swede, you never have Little Sweden, so that was really strange and fun!
Izzy: These have mostly been headlining dates, but you did kick off the tour at Treefort, which always has such an incredible lineup, and you played Coachella both weekends, which is obviously massive, and you’ve got a few more festivals in the summer in Europe. How do you like playing the massive outdoor festivals, compared to your headlining shows, which are mostly in nightclubs?
Cobrah: Coachella was amazing. They told me we hit the record of people in the tent for both weekends, which was crazy. There’s challenges like the heat, partly because of the performance, but I have a lot of metal in my show, and when metal gets hot it expands, and it started to melt the glue in the set… But then you have these massive crowds that are, from the stage, kind of infinite. You have people partying, and it’s a whole other vibe. The good thing about your headline shows is that you know that everybody’s there for you. There’s a commitment there that is stronger. But, for a festival, you gain a lot of new people. They both have their charm, but I’m a perfectionist, so I do like a controlled environment a little bit more [laughs].
Izzy: I know that you’ve studied theatre and done work in fashion and film, so I’m curious what kinds of things you would consider your current live performance to have drawn inspiration from?
Cobrah: My set is very theatrical, and I wanted it to be like that because of the way I approached the album. I creative directed it and I wanted it to feel very cinematic. I feel like that’s somewhat rare because everything’s so short-form these days, the most bang for your buck, small videos or visualizers. But I am really into making the art that I do, and I invest so much energy and time and money, so I wanted to bring that theatrical or cinematic sense onto the stage, having something that feels like more of a theatre set than a club set.
It was important to expand or move forward from the show that I did before, that was much clubbier, with the BDSM cross. Now I have this softer approach. Act 1 is the clubbier, more dominant act. Then we have Act 2 — with “Torn” and “Charming” and “Snow White” — that’s the more emotional act, when we play really hard and one of my dancers steps on my chest [laughs]. Then we go to “10/10,” and then we do the party songs, “Wet Like” and “BRAND NEW BITCH.” With the musical theatre background and my passion for telling more of a story with this album, I tried to do a version of that for the stage as well.
Izzy: I’ve gotta say, not only do you and your dancers really bring it, but your fans really turn up with their looks… Have you had any favorite fan looks from throughout these dates?
Cobrah: I did have a fan not too long ago that dressed up as me, with the whole beige catsuit, and it was perfection… Exactly the same nails, which is really hard to do because they’re a rare sort of nails, and the exact same type of necklace… the wig and the makeup! I was like, “How did you do that?” Even the heels were a beige leather stiletto! I was like, “You stuck it to perfection!” That’s really fun when you see someone getting all the cues.
But people dress up, so anything that they do just makes me happy because it reminds me of what I used to do when I used to go to concerts. I put on the highest Pleasers that I had, and I used to be so uncomfortable, but the happiest girl in the world because I was there partaking in a culture and a movement and a person that I was so devoted to. That was the best thing, to really commit to a show. And you meet friends that look the same. I think looks are a big part of the community that I’m in. It’s all about that creative expression, no matter what it is. A lot of people come dressed up because it’s how you partake in the music and I think that’s amazing.
Izzy: You’re touring behind Torn, which dropped a few months ago and is your debut full-length, despite the fact that you’ve already released quite a bit of music and done some pretty huge things. You’ve talked a lot about getting much more personal with the content on the LP, which you mentioned you creative directed yourself, but how did you approach the process of writing and recording, compared to your previous EPs, or was it essentially just an evolution of how you work?
Cobrah: No, I think I approached it differently because, as you said, I put out music for quite some time, but I’d never put out an album. There’s a couple of reasons for it, but to keep it short, I never really got the opportunity. Other things happened and I had to kind of follow along… But then I finally got the opportunity to do this album that I’d been longing for since I was in my early twenties. And when you get to do what you’ve been longing for for a long time, it kind of shakes you a little bit, because now you have to be the thing that you’ve wanted for so long, and how do you approach that?
I felt like this was the perfect opportunity to show that I can do a little bit more than just, like I said on stage, “sucking clit [laughs].” I have a background as a musician, so I approached it to explore and wrote about thirty demos with my lovely producers. We really tried to start over again and be like, “What is Cobrah as an album and how far can we take it with it still being the core of who I am?” I felt like I got to experiment again, like when I started making music. It was meant to be kind of a reinvention.
Izzy: Have you had any favorite reactions to the new album, or this sort of reinvention, whether things that have been written about it or things that fans have told you?
Cobrah: I’m just so happy when they tell me they love the album. Nothing makes me happier, especially when they recognize the evolution and follow along in my train of thought. It tickles me, because that’s the way you intended it to be received. That’s really, really fun. But I think the most interesting thing is that there’s no one that likes the same song. With earlier EPs, everyone’s been like, “Yeah, ‘GOOD PUSS’ is a banger,” or “‘BRAND NEW BITCH’ is a banger,” like the most popular songs. With this album, it’s very spread out, which one everyone thinks is the banger. It was for me, as well, when I put it together. It was really hard to decide on the singles. So, that’s a compliment. It means that it lands differently with everyone, which is lovely.
Izzy: I think that, at the moment, my favorite album track is “Snow White,” which comes toward the end of the album but the middle of the show. How did that track came about?
Cobrah: That was one of the first tracks that I wrote for this album. There was “Excusez Moi,” “Snow White,” “Hit Girl,” and “Torn.” They were all written even before I released SUCCUBUS [2023]. Those were the starting seed of exploring. I went to Paris to start writing the album and the first song I wrote was a demo called “Sickening.” I thought, “It’s fun and it’s very me, but it’s not an evolutionary step, it’s just me doing me and it’s not interesting.” The second day we wrote “Snow White” and “Excusez Moi” and the other songs where it was the first kind of step towards exploring more genres. So that’s a really important song in the evolution of Cobrah.
Izzy: You’ve put out a handful of really cool music videos for album tracks with Julius Hayes. How would you characterize your process of working together? And what were the concepts or ideas behind this batch of visuals?
Cobrah: Julius Hayes is a very, very good friend of mine. He’s kind of become my right hand in this process. I reached out to a bunch of different directors, and everyone was really keen to make it happen but everyone also wanted to do things that were way too expensive. I think that’s my Achilles heel. I have very grand ambitions for everything that I do [laughs]. They don’t always match reality. But then I approached Julius, who was a friend of a friend at the time, and I think he has the same Achilles heel as me. He didn’t see the issue with all of my grand plans of doing things. He put the biggest effort into making it come true with the budget that we had. The material that we got is just insane.
He was also part of designing the set for the tour, he was part of designing the merch for the tour. I saw him every day for about two months, just working on everything together; it was a joy. There’re things you wouldn’t think a director would do, like the blueprint for the glass box for “Torn,” because the original thing was too expensive to make, so he found a way to cut like $10,000. And there’s a glass table I dance on in the “Hush” video; he drew that as well, because it had to match the dimensions of the couch.
It was really, really fun to work with him. As a creative director and the writer of the music and the artist, you’re so invested in it and don’t wanna compromise on anything. And he really allowed me to not compromise on anything. He really indulged me in having my say, and that is so rare, I think, when you work with a director or anyone creatively. Usually, they have their own vision and you kind of have to spar a little bit. But this collaboration was really beautiful and lovely in every way. And now he’s a very good friend.
Izzy: Considering that this is your debut album, I have to ask if you have any favorite debut albums? I feel like often times the debut albums go on to be the fan favorites.
Cobrah: There’s something about a debut album, I think, that kind of catches the core of an artist… like watching someone in their teenage years, when you see what they are when they’re unfiltered, which is really, really cool. I love Björk’s debut album, Debut. I used to have it on CD and I remember some of the songs are in Léon: The Professional, which is one of my favorite movies. I used to listen to it a lot. And I really love Lykke Li’s debut album as well, it’s still on repeat for me. It’s a classic.
Izzy: You’ve had music in a number of ad campaigns and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness… which I have to admit, I haven’t seen any of his films since Alps, but Alps and Dogtooth are definitely two of the best/funniest films of this century… But anyway, is there anywhere you dream of your music one day winding up?
Cobrah: I feel like when you see the movie, after, you’re always like, “Oh my God, my song would have worked great!” Now I’m really dreaming of acting in a movie or being the face of something. It’s really intriguing to me, after having done all these cinematic music videos, I feel like maybe that could be something for the future… I feel like it’s somewhat similar, because you do a lot of acting as a performer in general.
Izzy: You currently have dates scheduled through late summer, but I understand you kind of want to indulge in Torn for a while, with more touring and maybe more music videos, so I’m curious what the future holds for you, beyond these currently announced dates?
Cobrah: I’m always in the studio, so I’m always working on that, but I’m also working for the festival season, because, like you said, I want to indulge in Torn. I’m working on making an upgrade to the set, or a different version of what I have now, for festival season. Like, why would I only do one stage design when I could do two or three? I can’t tell you anything concrete yet, but I am very much working to keep the evolution of Torn going.
Izzy: You do have shows planned throughout the summer, but there are also some gaps, so I’m curious how you’re hoping and planning to spend the summer when you’re not performing?
Cobrah: I want a scuba license this year! This is what I will do when Cobrah has her off days. I love swimming and I love diving especially. I just got my driver’s license last year, which is very late for Americans, but for Swedes, the public transport system is so widely available, you don’t really have to have a license. So, if last summer was driving license, this summer is scuba license for me!
