Erika de Casier is uncomfortable. She is sitting cross-legged on the floor of what looks like a building site, cables hanging above her head, an unopened box to her right, and what appears to be an upturned sofa to her left. “Excuse the mess,” she says, adjusting her laptop on the bare wooden floorboards of her newish home in Copenhagen as we video call at the end of 2023. “I moved in a year ago but I haven’t really been home, so now I’m renovating it all. I’ve been living in a suitcase,” she sighs.
De Casier spent most of last year either touring her Dua Lipa-approved suite of 1990s and 00s-inspired R&B opuses, writing songs for others, or working on her forthcoming third album, Still, which features input from Blood Orange and Shygirl. It’s the completion of the album that means she is not just physically in limbo, but mentally, too. “I’ve been a mess lately, actually,” she says. “Before I release anything I get cold feet about releasing it. When you start making music you have this feeling of: ‘Oh, this is great, and it’s fresh,’ and then after a while you get critical about everything. So I’m in that stage.”
The worrywart on screen feels at odds with the braggadocio swagger De Casier exudes as an artist. On the cover of Still, the 33-year-old is a leather-clad superstar in a hall of mirrors being chased by paparazzi; in her songs she channels the sultry confidence of Aaliyah and the other R&B, hip-hop and UK garage superstars she used to study on MTV as a teenager; while her album titles are Greatest Hits-esque flexes such as 2019’s debut, Essentials, which inspired Lipa to get in touch to remix her Physical single, and 2021’s critically lauded follow-up, Sensational. Even Still’s title was inspired by the never knowingly humble J-Lo and Dr Dre. “It’s funny as I haven’t been around that much to say: ‘Oh, I’m still here,’” she says, “but it’s my way of keeping things light. I was going through different titles like Platinum, but I thought that was maybe too much.”
It was around Sensational that De Casier also invented an alter ego, Bianka, who debuted in the video for the single Polite. Bianka was a way of moving closer to that projected bolshiness. “It was just me with a wig on, but it helped me deal with the pressure – plus you don’t have to be yourself all the time,” De Casier explains. While she’s not what you would call exuberant now – her answers often trail off into the ether, while compliments are awkwardly welcomed with a quiet “Thank you” – she’s making steps in the right direction. “I don’t know if Bianka will be back,” she says. “I don’t need her at the moment.” She sits upright, flattening out her light-blue fleece, as if making an announcement. “I don’t have to be somebody else any more. I’m a person who has a lot of different sides to me.”
One of those sides is as pop’s most sought-after songwriter. Last year she co-wrote four of the six tracks on the second EP from hugely popular K-pop girlband NewJeans. Released in July, Get Up sold more than 1.65m copies worldwidein a week and beat the Barbie soundtrack to No 1 in the US. The call to collaborate came completely out of the blue. “To be honest, I didn’t know who it was,” laughs De Casier. “I read the email and was like: ‘NewJeans? Who is that?’ So then I looked them up and thought it sounded pretty fresh. They asked me if I’d listened to K-pop and I had to be honest and say: ‘No, I haven’t,’ and they were like: ‘Perfect!’ They have their antennae out and they’re trying different things.” Rather than simply utilising De Casier’s way with a catchy hook, songs such as Super Shy (more than 390m Spotify plays and counting) sound exactly like De Casier records: all tactile, softly sung R&B, liquid drum’n’bass plus a gift for tender introspection housed in a club setting. “People were writing to me: ‘Is this you singing?’ and I’m like: ‘Nope,’” she says. “I find it flattering that they liked the sound and they kept it the way it was.”
Born in Portugal to a Belgian mother and Cape Verdean father, De Casier credits her humility to Denmark, the country she moved to when she was eight with her mother and younger brother. “It’s a part of me,” she says, referring to janteloven, the Scandinavian trait of not wanting to stand out. “It feels unnatural to talk about myself.” When she first moved to the small town of Ribe, she was unable to speak Danish. She and her brother were also ostracised for being the only mixed-race children in their school. De Casier found solace in MTV, both in the music’s universal language and because she could see people with the same skin tone.
As she got older she started to dabble in music production on her computer and would borrow CDs by the likes of Destiny’s Child and Erykah Badu from the local library. Her hushed, introspective vocal style was honed more out of necessity than anything else; she would often sing at night and didn’t want to disturb her flatmates. Music was never meant to be a career, however. “I was thinking about going to art school and I was thinking about medicine. Then I wanted to be a psychologist. That’s a plan B for me.” She still has trouble calling herself a musician today, three albums in. “I have a lot of impostor syndrome. I don’t know if you ever do something and think: ‘Yep, I’m a musician.’”
But it’s in the music she creates, often as sole songwriter and producer, that De Casier can dismiss any misgivings and tap into her id. On the Sensational highlight Polite she scolds a date for being rude, while Still’s loose album-long concept of charting a relationship from hot-and-heavy beginnings to messy endings is anchored by the slinky Ooh, which finds De Casier breathily describing fantasies and dishing out come-ons. My Day Off, meanwhile, is both a nod to her hectic schedule and a newfound sense of being able to say no. “I didn’t feel like answering any emails or messages,” she says of the song, which also mentions the very un-R&B topic of catching up on laundry. “I was just being a brat on that song – it’s like: ‘I just need a day off.’”
Days off are going to be few and far between in 2024. Still will be followed by more touring and more songwriting for others, while songs for album four are already taking shape. But, for now, all of that is at the back of De Casier’s constantly whirring mind. “I’m not hearing back from the builders, I don’t have a kitchen, I’m living in a building site,” she sighs, looking around at the dusty detritus. “We’re in my living room where I’ve knocked down a wall,” she says, before clarifying: “I didn’t do that myself.” It turns out there are some things she can’t do.
Still is released on 21 February.
