She's the one who pops up in your feed with a few long sentences, a cheeky look and her own catchy songs. Synne Sørgjerd talks refreshingly honestly about her career and life so far, and her plans for the future.
/ 18/11/2024 / Audun Fegran Kopperud (text / photo)The story is taken from TONO's campaign page. musicamplifier.no.
– You have to be so interesting if you just talk. It's easier to get attention when you sing on stage, says Synne Sørgjerd.
Next year she hopes to release her first album after a couple of intense years with many song releases and concerts. You may recognize her from TikTok or for the hit "Slottsparken" which was listed on P1 for a long time.
On her own website, Synne is described as follows: "If Kaja Gunnufsen had a bigger mouth, Raga Rockers was a sweet girl who needed attention, and Cezinando wasn't a rapper, you'd get Synne Sørgerd."
Her lyrics are genuine and recognizable to many. She usually sings to someone, whether it's exes, girlfriends or others. And she doesn't hold anything back.
– Most of my songs are made for the people I sing about. All of you who are not part of it are just spectators. By the way, there is a rumor that all the songs are about one person, but that is just a myth, Synne says and laughs.
She was tasked with finding a place where she could relax and find inspiration for her songwriting. That's why we find her strumming a guitar, sprawled out on her bed in the dormitory at Majorstuen. Synne doesn't believe in the concept of "writing block."
– You just have to sit down every day and get your head around the idea that “this is what we’re going to do for the next two weeks.” But right now I have so much I want to say that I just have to sit down and write it down, she says.
Synne prefers to write alone and believes that the best songs are the ones she hasn't had help making. When you sign with a record label, as Synne did with Playground in early 2023, so-called "sessions" are part of the package. Then you sit in the studio with a producer and another songwriter and often make one song a day.
– It can work that way, but when I write alone I get to say exactly what I want to say.
Although Synne doesn't feel like she had a breakthrough moment, there's no doubt that 2023 was a defining year for her career. Getting signed is one thing, but the year also brought concerts at Øyafestivalen, Vill Vill Vest, Trondheim Calling and Bylarm.
She has taken that memorable year into her writing, which will culminate in a debut album filled with monster hits, as Synne herself says. Thematically, the album stays a bit in the same vein as several of her songs to date.
– It's probably about the desperate need to be seen by someone. Part of me thinks it's important for me to be an artist, because it fills the need to be seen, understood and loved.
For many, this need is met by a girlfriend, but Synne's thesis is that she and other single artists share the same fate.
– What happens to your songs when you get a girlfriend?
– It all depends on the boyfriend. Suddenly he's absolutely terrible and then I have a lot to write about. But if I actually find a guy to come home to and make tacos with, a little bit of the artist in me disappears. I probably lose a little edge.
In other words, it will take a bit of a dream man before Synne breaks with her single life and the songwriting bubble she is in now.
Synne offers herself, both in her lyrics and her social media posts. There is a lot of talk about lying, and she doesn't shy away from showing a little skin. On the one hand, she chooses this strategy as a kind of feminist project.
– Many female artists are concerned with being nice in order to be liked. Men are allowed to be mean just because they are mean as people and are forgiven and liked anyway. As a woman, you have much less room for maneuver, and I think it only gets worse by just being nice.
On the other hand, the strategy is a result of life itself. Until 2021, Synne believes she was a "straight singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar and a flower in her hair," but then she was dumped by her boyfriend of almost five years.
– It was a really painful breakup and I was sad for a long time. I isolated myself in a house in Kvinnherad in Western Norway, where my mother is from. My psychologist probably thought I was going to take my own life, but the plan was to write an album, says Synne.
It didn't become an album, but many of the songs that came soon after were written in Western Norway. She returned to Oslo as a new person and artist, writing more hard-hitting lyrics and being more active on social media.
"Fatherless behavior" is a term she has been hurled at because of what she posts. What many people don't know is that Synne actually lost her father when she was nine years old.
– I probably wouldn't have been so stingy if he were alive. You become a little freer, for better or worse, she says.
The death of her father has shaped Synne and the way she writes. She is not sure if she would have become a public figure at all if both parents were alive.
It was never obvious that music would be Synne's path. Her mother works as a health secretary and her father worked with computers at IBM. She never went to music school or the music department. She spent most of her childhood in Kolbotn.
– For many people, it means a lot where you are from, but I don't feel that way about Kolbotn. It's maybe a bit like that with suburbs of big cities. They may lack a clear place identity, and this search for identity is something that characterizes my songs, she says.
Synne has always been creative. There are several pictures that Synne has painted hanging in the collective, and initially her dream was to become a writer. Then she found out that it was easier to write many songs than a whole book. She also longed for the attention that the girls who sang at the school graduations received.
This was the tender beginning of Synne's musical career.
Synne continued her musical journey on the singer-songwriter course at Seljord Folk High School, and it was here that she first met TONO.
– We had a course on TONO and learned how to register the songs we made. Since then I've been good at registering. I think there are many songwriters who aren't as good, and who have no idea how much money they're missing out on, she says.
TONO is not only a significant part of Synne's income. She also thinks it's nice not to have to collect money herself every time her songs are played.
– It would have been completely hopeless to live as a songwriter and artist without TONO. I don't think the woman in the street knows how important TONO is, Synne points out.
She has to leave immediately. Trying to get better at taking time off, she says. But now it's all about building her career, and there's not much time between studio sessions, meetings, photoshoots, concerts, events and sharing on social media.
– I feel like my career is a real "slow burn", but I never give up. The album will be released next year, so just look forward to it, Synne promises.
She doesn't know what the future holds. The hope is to live comfortably from music. The alternative is that she has a boyfriend and is quitting. Maybe it will be something in between.
