Aurora is a Norwegian singer, songwriter, and record producer. Born in Stavanger, Aurora released her debut EP, Running with the Wolves, in 2015. Later that year, she provided the backing track for the John Lewis Christmas advert, singing a cover of the Oasis song "Half the World Away". Aurora released her debut studio album, All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend, in 2016. In 2018, she released her second extended play, Infections of a Different Kind (Step 1), followed by her second studio album, A Different Kind of Human (Step 2).
She featured on Frozen 2’s biggest hit, Into The Unknown and was invited to perform alongside Idina Menzel at the 2020 ceremony. “The Oscars were very exciting and very fun - and also very strange. My brain always reacts badly to fanciness!” she says.
Between writing, thinking and sitting at the piano working things out, she has also been working with the UN’s CHOOOSE programme to lessen her environmental impact. “I care so much about the environment, and so deeply. I'm very fond of nature and all the little innocent beings that live there,” she explains, “I didn’t feel like I was doing enough.” As a touring musician, her impact weighs heavily on her. She relies on touring for the bulk of her income, and while it’s better for AURORA to take herself to her fans than vice versa, it doesn’t change the fact that flying causes a serious environmental deficit. By signing up to CHOOOSE, she cleans as much of the harmful gases as she uses (she chose to convert landfill gases in Thailand as her offset).
Her first three studio albums focused on issues like global capitalism, the environmental crisis and what it means to be a human amid it all. In stark, angular pop she debated with herself, urged us to stand for ourselves and each other, and gave us mantras to chant-like “You cannot eat money”. But her upcoming album – still shrouded in mystery to all but AURORA herself – is set to turn that piercing gaze inward. For the first time, AURORA is ready to share her inner self with us.
That journey began with her latest single Exist for Love, a delicately devastating contemplation on love in which she ponders whether life would even be life if it was devoid of it – romantic, platonic, familial. Though love as a concept runs throughout her work, Exist for Love marked the first time she had sat down and written a “love song”. “I had so many things I wanted to write about before I wanted to write a love song,” she explains.
It was the first glimpse into what she described as "a new era" in her career, with the upcoming release of a new album. In early 2021, she released two compilation EPs in celebration of her song "Runaway" receiving over 100 million streams on Spotify.
We are so happy that Aurora will perform at our festival in 2021, and we can't wait for a magical performance on the beach.
