Aurora Aksnes is a singer-songwriter who crafts dark pop music of rare depth. Aged 19, she is an autodidact and has been writing songs for almost half her life. “I’ve had lots of practice, but I never dreamed about standing on a stage or being famous,” she says. “That wasn’t what I wanted. All I knew is that I needed to write music for myself.”
While she was growing up in Bergen, Norway, Aurora’s parents never pushed her to pursue music either as a career or even as a hobby. “I guess that’s why I liked it so much,” she says. “I was the only one pushing myself. I was doing it purely for myself, and I think that’s a good thing when you’re a child.”
Her earliest musical memory is of finding a tiny electric piano in her parents’ attic and being fascinated by the enchanting music she could produce from such an unassuming instrument, and by her own ability to learn classical songs by ear. She was just six years old. “That experience made me really curious about the piano as an instrument,” she says, “and it was fun to be able to play songs again myself after hearing them. I didn’t have a piano teacher. I just taught myself by ear. I still can’t read notes. I would just play by ear songs that I thought were beautiful.”
