The publicity blurb that accompanied the release of Pauline Skott’s first song last year was as arresting as the music it heralded. The song, Porcelain, was a bizarre, unsettling mix of menace and self-laceration, to a soundscape that melded a crystalline melody, trip-hop beats, violins, a church organ and what sounded like a children’s choir. “Lady,” Lorde tweeted, “Porcelain is the shit.” In an instant, Skott went viral. But what of the singer herself?
She was, the endlessly repeated potted biography informed us, Norwegian. She grew up in a folk-music commune deep in a remote forest and wasn’t exposed to pop music until she was in her late teens. The blogosphere swooned. Feral, ghostly music made by a tree-dwelling, reclusive Nordic elf. What wasn’t to
