As a lyricist, as a producer, and as a person, Venus Anon is highly poetic. Inspired by the tension between the romantic and the grotesque, her lyrics are beautifully raw and her sound is strangely healing.
Sitting down with the Swedish-born underground artist currently making waves all across the world, we found out about Venus’ current era, where she finds her inspiration, what it’s like being so honest with her audience, and when she feels her most inspired.
Your most recent drop was ‘gentle’, a single that’s been described as “emotionally heavy”. Why is being so raw/vulnerable in your lyrics important to you?
“It’s about the stakes. Making something meaningful has to feel like a risk, and what’s more exposing than lowering your guard? I feel like an adrenaline junkie in that sense, like how honest can I go? In literature they say ‘write like everyone you know is dead.’ Sometimes I write things I haven’t even dared admit to myself. I know when something is true, and therefore good, when I feel a drop in my stomach, just like falling from a height.”
You wrote ‘gentle’ while staying in a cabin for three-months. Why did you make this decision? Do you find being alone is when you produce your best work?
“Honestly, I feel like I’ve been cosplaying an extrovert for the majority of my life. I moved so much in my childhood, and was pretty independent; being friendly, outgoing and socially capable was essential for surviving the shiftiness of life. I know now that I charge by being alone. Do I produce my best work alone? Not exactly. I can produce the most in volume, though, and most freely. However, the music I make reaches its full potential when I open it up to collaboration. That’s when the original ideas get tested and challenged. I just need quiet to excavate them first.”
How did growing up in Sweden - the country behind some of pop’s biggest icons - affect the way you approach music?
“Sweden is such a strange place. It’s filled with so many contradictions and polarities - you have the midnight sun in summer but it gets dark at 3pm in the winter. Super progressive and deeply bigoted at the same time. It’s moody, that’s for sure, and there’s such a big chunk of the year that can basically only be spent indoors. There would be no Robyn or Nené Cherry if seasonal depression didn’t exist as well, trust.”
There’s something kind of gothic (in a literary sense) about your music - you previously said you’re interested in transforming pain and gore into beauty. Would you agree that the gothic genre has inspired your work?
“Oh my God, yes. Definitely. Thank you for noticing - I’m a consumer of gothic literature but have never thought it as conscious influence until now. I've always been drawn to the same themes: obsession, desire, catharsis, the uncanny, and the idea that beauty and horror aren't opposites, maybe they’re even the same. I would say I’m gothic-adjacent, have gothic impulses, more Ana Lily Amirpour, less Mary Shelley.”
What specifically draws you to portraying the beauty in what’s normally seen as painful or gross?
“I think it’s my singularly healthiest coping mechanism. It’s so tempting to temper life’s gore with more gore, numbing agents, drugs, sex, relationships, consumption. It’s leaning into loss, death, despair and going “ok, now what can I make of this that will make the suffering worthwhile?” that drives me. Music and art helps me look at difficult things without turning away, because I am in charge of the shape it takes.”
You’ve spoken about how craft is at the core of what you do. As a producer, what does valuing craft mean in practice?
“It means taking my time and staying curious. Sometimes, one has to think about a chord progression for four hours before touching an instrument. I take that time just as seriously as I take the hours I’m actually sitting at the desk, playing or recording. It’s my thinking time. Thinking time = non negotiable. Even if a song takes significantly less time to make hands-on, the time I've spent thinking about it—conceptually, musically, and philosophically is its heart. Like fucking. Foreplay, if you may.”
With the rise of AI, craftsmanship seems to be becoming all the more common as a priority for artists. How do you personally feel about AI entering the music space?
“On a structural level, disgusted, sad, and angry that the tech oligarchs can’t keep their slimy little fingers to themselves even when it comes down to something as sacred as music. It grieves me that yet another slice of capitalism is bleeding into us. However, personally? I know what I possess, what human artists possess. It’s a fucked up gimmick that I choose to think won’t stick. My lane is unaffected. That is, the lane of real people who sweat, yearn and love.”
For “underground” artists, there’s an interesting discussion to be had about whether you can keep the same identity even after you’ve blown up. Do you have any reservations about blowing up and losing your “underground” status?
“Because my ”undergroundness” and being ”alt” is largely intertwined with my political reality, my status as a woman/queer/child of immigrants, and simply not making pop music, I don’t think it can ever be separated from my artistry. I don’t really think about my status in any other sense than political - and that I do because I’m forced to!”
Who inspires you as a singer and who inspires you as a producer?
“Singer- Brandy. And producer, Imogen Heap.”
Your debut album is slated for 2027, and already seeing a lot of anticipation. Can you share anything about this next era at this stage?
“Hmmmm….maybe just that the EP is a Prelude to the album, and that they are pretty different in nature, but inherently connected <3”
