Mixing icy synth layers with minimal rhythms and her own translucent, feeling-rich voice, the Norwegian artist AURORA occupies a shadowy pop sphere shared by figures such as Oh Land, Lykke Li, and Lorde. Upon arriving in 2016, her first full-length All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend immediately claimed the top spot on the Norwegian album chart. Both Step 1: Infections of a Different Kind and Step 2: A Different Kind of Human later entered that country’s Top Ten. She later supplied writing and vocals for the Chemical Brothers’ No Geography, then delivered high, airy harmonies for Idina Menzel on the Frozen II soundtrack and during the song’s live performance at the 2020 Oscars, ahead of unveiling her mythology-themed fourth album The Gods We Can Touch in 2022. Personal and political concerns converged on her 2024 release What Happened to the Heart?, the sleekest and most dance-floor-leaning set she has issued to date.
Born Aurora Aksnes in Stavanger, she began composing songs and words while still young and, at age 17, issued her first single “Awakening” near the end of 2013. After refining her stage presence and capitalizing on the track’s traction, she followed with “Under Stars” in late 2014. Signing with Glassnote in the United States and Decca in the United Kingdom, she released the EP Running with the Wolves in the opening months of 2015. Additional attention arrived when she interpreted the Oasis song “Half the World Away” for the 2015 John Lewis Christmas campaign, after which she delivered All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend the next year. Fronted by the European success “Runaway,” the album spread through Western Europe, topped the Norwegian ranking, reached the U.K. Top 30, and entered the Billboard 200. Its 2018 successor Step 1: Infections of a Different Kind incorporated more grounded subjects such as politics and sexuality while returning her to Norway’s Top Ten at number seven.
Pausing solo activity, AURORA joined the Chemical Brothers in the studio for their ninth album No Geography, issued in April 2019. Step 2: A Different Kind of Human, her third long-player, surfaced on Glassnote and Decca that June. Another lift in visibility came in December when she appeared on “Into the Unknown” from the Frozen II soundtrack, later joining Idina Menzel to perform it at the Academy Awards in 2020. That same year she issued “The Secret Garden,” the title track for the British film adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel, and contributed “Stjernestøv” (“Stardust”) to an NRK series bearing the same name; the latter became her second Norwegian Top 20 single after 2015’s “Runaway.”
Early in 2021 she offered a sequence of EPs as appreciation for “Runaway” surpassing 100 million streams on a major platform: For the Humans Who Take Long Walks in the Forest, Music for the Free Spirits, Stories, For the Metal People, and Music for the Fellow Witches Out There. Later she began unveiling material from her fourth album and guested on Sub Urban’s “Paramour.” Drawing on Ancient Greek myths, The Gods We Can Touch reached stores via Glassnote and Decca in January 2022. Co-produced by AURORA and her longtime associate Magnus Skylstad—who also co-wrote much of the material—it again led the Norwegian chart and climbed to number six on Billboard’s Heatseekers list. She next released the standalone single “A Potion for Love,” scored the video-game project Sky: Concert in the Light, and opened 2023 with a feature on Tom Odell’s “Butterflies.”
Prompted chiefly by Indigenous calls for radical action against climate change, she wrote and tracked her fifth studio album What Happened to the Heart? across Norway, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The project enlisted producers Ane Brun, Dave Hamelin (known for work with Beyoncé and Zara Larsson), Matias Tellez (credits include girl in red and Sondre Lerche), and Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers. Blending diaphanous pop with brighter, club-focused electronics for her most polished statement yet, the hour-plus set arrived in June 2024.
