Rhys

Known professionally as Rhys, the Swedish-American performer Rhys Clarstedt Frank favors a soulful, brooding approach to songwriting and singing. Singles such as 2017’s “Last Dance” and “Too Good to Be True” first registered on Swedish charts, after which she issued her debut full-length, the pop-oriented Stages, in 2018. Extensive radio exposure throughout Sweden combined with worldwide streams numbering in the millions preceded a period of personal reassessment; when she reemerged in 2022, the EP Thanks a lot now I can’t smile reflected a stronger indie-rock orientation. A still more intimate, singer/songwriter sensibility guided 2024’s Portland, whose title references her birthplace of Portland, Oregon.

An American father and Swedish mother welcomed Frank into the world in Portland. At ten she relocated with her family to Sweden, acquiring the language through participation in her school choir. A later visit to her sister’s godmother—an Austin, Texas musician who maintained a modest studio—sparked her interest in performing; there she laid down her first recordings. Upon returning to Sweden she began lessons with a vocal coach who arranged an introduction to hit songwriter Jörgen Elofsson (Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears). Impressed by the demo she recorded for him, Elofsson collaborated with her on the ballad “Swallow Your Pride,” issued in 2016 by Warner Music Sweden as her first official single. Later that year’s follow-up “Last Dance” reached number 51 on the Swedish chart, while the brighter “Too Good to Be True” climbed to number 43 in 2017. Both tracks, along with additional material from the September 2018 album Stages, turned Rhys into a nationwide radio staple and accumulated hundreds of millions of streams globally.

Still in her early twenties when Stages succeeded, Rhys found the pressures of the industry, coupled with questions of identity, prompted a temporary withdrawal. Drawing on childhood influences, she adopted a more electric-guitar-driven indie-rock direction for the 2022 EP Thanks a lot now I can’t smile. A further evolution surfaced with 2024’s Portland, an acoustic-guitar-centered collection of greater intimacy.