Lykke Li, “I Never Learn” (Live at KEXP)
When Li talks about the difficult period in her life that inspired I Never Learn, she launches into a discussion of the astrological phase known as the Return of Saturn with the graveness of an environmental scientist explaining climate change. “It’s in every person’s life, around 27 to 29 years old,” she says, “the stars and the planets align themselves to exactly the way they were when you were born. You’re faced with yourself. There’s no running away.”
But there was a little bit of running away, at least in a literal sense. After wrapping up a long tour for Wounded Rhymes and experiencing the worst breakup of her life — “I had just gotten out of this relationship that really killed me” — she found an apartment in Los Angeles with nothing but a piano in it. “I had no tour, no boyfriend, no home,” she says. “All of a sudden, I had nothing at all.”