Ever since she was young, Marie Ulven has been afraid of dying. And not just to a normal degree. “I've been too scared to swallow food because I thought I would choke,” she says now, listing her fears over a recent video call. “I've been really scared of tsunamis and helicopters and World War III. I've been scared of eating my own hair, of pulling my hair out.
Ulven recalls all of this while heartily chowing down on a delivered meal of a burger and fries and a “10-out-of-10” chocolate milkshake, a heavenly meal after a day of hiking and press interviews.
Despite what one may assume, Ulven did not have a very musical upbringing. “We didn’t have one instrument,” she says, thinking back to her childhood home in the small Norwegian town of Horton. Her earliest musical appetite largely consisted of what was on the radio: American exports like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and Hannah Montana. “I was really just a passive listener,” she says.