The Violet Reign of Snoh Aalegra

On her new album, the soul songstress and scribe is still the princess of emo. But just a bit more fun.

In Sweden, the winter season monopolizes about 75% of the calendar year. Daylight is visible for an average of four hours a day. Basically, it’s the perfect country for a gifted singer and songwriter to turn rhythm & blues into emotional purples.

Snoh Aalegra uses the darkness of her native kingdom as a muse. So much so that before the release of her 2019 sophomore album, Ugh, those feels again, her October 2017 debut, Feels, became lionized as an antithesis to Megan Thee Stallion’s aspirational “Hot Girl Summer”: Sad Girl Fall. “Sweden is very gloomy, so it has a melancholy to it,” says Aalegra via phone. “People in Sweden are used to the melancholy, so I think it just sticks with me when I’m writing.”

Snoh’s sadness has been quite the commodity. Over the last half decade, the daughter of Persian parents built a devoted following with her debut and starship of a second album. The latter claimed the number-one spot on iTunes thanks to its singles “Whoa” and “I Want You Around” topping the R&B charts. Their stunningly rich videos — the latter casted actor Michael B. Jordan — only made a marriage with the songbird’s supreme style and beauty, attracting coverage from superior music and fashion publications alike (Pitchfork; Elle). Snoh’s…