Swedish singer GERD on vulnerability, the art of leaving home & single 'Truth To Be Told'

GERD has undergone a tectonic transformation from small-town girl to international rising indie pop star, defying the norms of the pop scene in Sweden. Her latest single Truth To Be Told fuses her timeless classical music roots with pulsating electronic production, a style that’s expansive and flecked with originality. GERD speaks to Headliner about why Swedish artists are done playing it safe, and reveals the story behind her new single.

“It means a woman who takes care of her own,” GERD tells Headliner, explaining the meaning behind her stage name. Once her grandmother’s name and now her own middle name, it has come to define her identity as an artist.

She’s calling from Sweden, where the sun is softly filtering through the window behind her. Her presence matches her music perfectly: gentle, illuminating, and quietly powerful. “I felt it was a good name for what the music is about, that sense of community,” she adds.

Growing up, she dug her heels into whatever her local community had to offer, albeit not quite the pop sound GERD would later make her own. “I went to church choir, but I'm not religious in any way. It was the only choir we had,” she laughs. “When you are [from a small town], you find a connection with things that are available to you – it sort of pushes you to find your own view.” It wasn’t long before GERD’s curiosity urged her to apply for music schools, determined to find out what lay beyond her hometown.

GERD wrote her first song to get into the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP) in London. In a new country, she found herself submerged in a world of endless possibility: “At ICMP, we tried different genres every week: country music, rock music, metal, we did everything,” she recalls. “I did natural sciences in school, and I did opera musicals on the side. Country music and metal were very far off, but we had a lot of fun.” 

Although somewhat chaotic, it was exactly the kind of education GERD was looking for. “I think it was a good way to explore which small things I could take from all of these genres, and how I can make it my own, which is very much opposite of what we were taught in Sweden,” she adds. “It was a bit more square: this is pop music, this is the structure, this is what you should do. But I feel like ICMP was very open-minded, which was amazing.”

GERD’s next project, More Water Than Anything, will fuse all the contrasting elements that make up her musical background. “For the upcoming album, I'm doing something with a choir from my hometown,” she says, with a hint of pride in her voice. 

“I think the youngest person there is 50-something, and the oldest is 96. They come from over 200 years of traditional Swedish choir singing. So they are doing their first kind of English thing, which is exciting for them. It's a way of stepping back to my roots and what I come from, and honouring the tradition of my hometown. It’s amazing, these dark male voices. It's a very deep foundation of a song and sounds like a bass choir.”

After a year at music school, a year working in Harrods and a stint back in Stockholm, GERD found herself drawn back to the city she’d come to love as her own. On London’s magnetism, GERD believes: “It's the people and the culture – people are so open and friendly. The music scene is amazing; there are so many live performances to go to, and there's so much to explore.” 

Life in London was, of course, strikingly different to her life in Sweden. “It's basically everything that I didn't grow up with,” she adds. “[In London], it's just colours and people and everything. I fell in love with the city and the freedom that I felt to be able to create, and I still miss it very much.”

Sweden isn’t necessarily stuck in its ways when it comes to music, though. In fact, GERD tells Headliner that the country’s music scene is having one of the most interesting moments in years. “When I started out, I remember people would say, ‘This song is amazing – can you translate it into Swedish, and we will sign you?’ Or, ‘Is this pop? Is it indie pop? We don't know what to do with this. What if you try to be a bit more like this, or if we put you with the right writers and make you sound like that?'” she sighs. “London gave me a space for my music, and [knowing] there are other people doing this. They just didn’t exist in Sweden, but they’re starting to.”

This shift is something GERD feels is important. “Nowadays, the music industry is looking for more personality. Sweden has amazing music exports like ABBA and Avicii, and now Zara Larsson is having her moment. We have so much great music, but I think we played it safe for a while. I'm hoping we're going to get back to pushing the boundaries of what music can be.”

GERD’s identity as an artist, within Sweden’s music scene and beyond, is complex. “People who listen to mainstream pop think I am outside the box, and people who are outside the box feel like I am mainstream pop,” she laughs. 

“I've decided to just be in my own space. But I do feel like I'm starting to gain a community of people, and I think that’s the most important thing. I realised when people were singing along and playing the songs, people are relating to this, and it's not just me, and that was very empowering. Pop [music] or not, I do not care; it's a space, and we can all be there together,” she says assertively. 

GERD cites her parents as a driving force to carve out her own name rather than bend to the expectations of an industry that didn’t know quite what to do with her. “I am so happy that I had my parents pushing me into trying to do my own thing rather than listening to everyone else,” she says. 

“I remember coming home wanting to sound like Celine Dion, and they’d say: ‘Well, how would you sing that song? Don't try to sing like her. Try to do your own thing.’”

GERD draws inspiration from a host of artists, viewing them not as competition but as formative role models. Aurora, Florence + The Machine, and Låpsley have all shaped her work in one way or another, marked by their distinctive world-building. 

Flickers of various genres and artistic influences burrow into GERD’s songwriting process, quietly positioning her in a canon of pop artists who treat their work like a form of myth-making. In fact, Swedish myth and folklore bind GERD’s songwriting process. 

“It felt like we were disconnected when we wrote some earlier songs, so I invited a bunch of producers and songwriters out to my island in Värmland. It's in the forest, and you have to go by boat. You're disconnected from everything, so you have to hang out. When you are in an environment that is very quiet and isolated, you begin to bond and go into deep stuff. 

"But also, you get to sit with yourself and the music and really reflect more. And it starts to be very much about storytelling and the art, rather than just making a good song. We spoke a lot about folklore and traditions. When the forest is dark, and you're sitting having wine by the lake, and you hear sounds, you feel it, and you really understand how people, especially traditionally, thought about all those things,” GERD reflects.

Hurts, a single GERD released earlier in the year, is a hauntingly melodramatic tale of confusion and fear, a song GERD cites as heavily influenced by this remote trip to Värmland. “Hurts is the feeling before everything falls down,” GERD says. “We were discussing how walking in the darkness [in the forest], it almost felt like we were being chased by some kind of monster. And is it internal, or is it external? Is it a thing in the wind?”

And what draws GERD to this ancient world of myth? She puts it simply: “It’s the rawness. We are striving for absolute perfection all the time. And in a city as big as Stockholm, you can feel it all the time, the pressure of everything, that you're supposed to succeed and the stress of the city. On the island, it just disappeared. 

"We were discussing a lot about trying to make music that felt authentic and raw, which was a bit more unpolished. I don't think the plan was to make them otherworldly, but looking back, it feels like another world, because it sort of is when you live like that.”

The story behind her most recent single Truth To Be Told is equally rich in lore and vulnerability. “We were discussing the feeling of sitting at a table with other people and feeling like you're not talking or saying anything because you don't know the right thing to say,” GERD says. 

“On a good day, you could have the energy to take that room and to be that spark, but when you're not yourself, or you're having a rough day, you feel like you're losing a piece of your sparkle.

“That was the concept of the song. It's supposed to feel like you're walking to this dark beat that moves you through the song, and in the end, it lifts you up and allows you to not always have that perfection of being the sparkle in the room. It's both a sad song in the sense that it's never fun to lose to sparkle. But it's also an empowering moment as well, to accept that you cannot always have it with you and that it's okay.”

Everything links back to community for GERD. Whether it lies in her namesake or her songs, the artist strives to connect with her listeners, to connect people. “That's the beautiful part,” she says, “when people say, ‘I heard your song, and it made me feel less alone,’ or, ‘It made me pick up the phone and call a friend because I've been isolating myself.’ I wanted to be relatable, and obviously, that means being vulnerable. 

"It's okay to be vulnerable, and we shouldn't be scared of emotions. The only time I am cursing myself is when we're doing it live, day after day, and I have to relive those emotions, because when you write something true to you, then you're reliving the moment. But it's usually a good thing.”

"I wrote a song called Stay, and it's about wanting someone to stick around in your life, to not lose that romantic relationship,” she continues. “We did that song live, and someone came up and said, 'I buried my mother to this song,' and that was a completely different take,” she continues. “That was one of those moments where the music has a life of its own. I love the live aspect [of performance], and especially love to talk to people after the live shows, because it’s empowering to be vulnerable and write about all these things. 

Above all else, it’s vulnerability that defines GERD. It’s the thread that runs throughout every lyric, every performance, every creative decision she makes. It’s non-negotiable. 

“I think personal music is the best kind of music. How would I ever be able to translate anything if I'm not feeling it?” she says. “I think my biggest strength is that I come from so many different musical backgrounds, and I push to collaborate with people outside my comfort zone, to push myself to develop. But every time you push for something, you're also realising the core of who you are and what it is you’re good at.”

The further GERD reaches, beyond her hometown, beyond London and all its colour, the more clearly she finds her way back to herself.