The Cult Swedish Pop Star Agnes Returns—and Announces Her Club-Inspired New Album ‘Beautiful Madness’

If you were a teenager in Europe during the late 2000s, you’ll vividly remember Agnes’s voice from the soaring harmonies and dramatic strings of “Release Me,” which hit the top 10 all over the continent. Yet following the success of that single, while Agnes remained a notable pop star in Scandinavia—it helped that she’d first broken out via a Swedish singing-competition show in 2005—she released one more album in 2012 before going quiet for nearly a decade.

Then, in 2021, she made a triumphant return with the one-two punch of killer pop bangers “Fingers Crossed” and “24 Hours,” the first two singles off her superb fifth album, Magic Still Exists. Packed with wall-to-wall hooks and immaculate disco-inspired production, it remains one of the strongest (and most underrated) pop albums in recent memory—even if, partly due to the pandemic inhibiting her ability to promote it, the record didn’t quite get the attention it deserved. (Though that isn’t to say it wasn’t a hit in her home country: Magic Still Exists earned Agnes four Swedish Grammy nominations in 2022, and she took home the prize for composer of the year.)

Now, Agnes is back again—and finally ready to announce her sixth album, Beautiful Madness, another collection of masterful pop gems that lands on January 23.

“It’s been four years since I released my last album, but it feels like time has been flying,” the musician says over Zoom from a studio in Stockholm, where she’s been recording live versions of some of the album’s tracks. “It’s exciting, but nerve-wracking at the same time.” After the limitations imposed on her throughout her last album cycle, Agnes is keen to make performing a central part of her roll-out this time—and indeed, it’s an album that will come to full, glorious life on stage, in no small part thanks to its club-ready sound. If Magic Still Exists was, by and large, a sort of disco pop fantasia, Beautiful Madness has its roots firmly in a rich variety of dance genres, from house to techno.