Gimme Mo

With a string of wildly successful hits and a new album on he way, the danish singer is proving that there’s room in the top 40 for a little punk and politics.

- Alexandra Pollard

“I can see you, can you see me?” MØ and I are supposed to be video chatting—she’s on vacation in Majorca, I’m at home in London—but all I can see is an off -black square. I hear shuffling and scraping. “My Wi-Fi might be a little shitty. I’m just trying to move a little bit around.” More shuffling. “Oh, fuck!” she yells suddenly. “That’s what it is! I have tape over the camera. Shit, sorry. I always thought it was stupid, but then I started to get paranoid.”

MØ’s precaution is understandable, given the level of fame that has been thrust upon her over the past two years. Born Karen Marie Ørsted in Ubberud, Denmark, unwanted intrusion wasn’t something she had to worry about during her early days in underground punk duo MOR, nor was it a huge concern when she first stepped into the pop world back in 2013. Then “Lean On” happened, “and everything fucking changed for me,” she says.