After disbanding in 2016, Swedish italo-disco/ synthpop duo Sally Shapiro returns with a fourth album. Danny Turner discusses synths, pseudonyms and the making ofSad Cities

© Freda Klingberg

Influenced by Swedish pop and Italo disco artists such as Valerie Dore, Lili & Susie and Katy Gray, work colleagues Sally Shapiro and Johan Agebjörn joined forces to release their heralded debut album Disco Romance in 2006. Further albums, My Guilty Pleasure (2009) and Somewhere Else (2013), sustained interest in their elegant, melancholy synthpop sound despite Shapiro’s low-key public persona and choice to eschew playing live.

By 2016, Shapiro and Agebjörn’s musical tastes had begun to drift and the project was seemingly over. However, the last five years has seen them working in seclusion with various co-writers including Electric Youth, Highway Superstar and Tommy ’86. Despite Shapiro’s preference for keeping the music industry at arm’s length, the duo’s sumptuous melodies and expertly crafted songwriting ensures that Sad Cities is an early contender for synthpop album of 2022.

Sally, people often tell us that you’re very shy, so what made you want to take part in the extrovert pop industry?

Sally Shapiro: “When I recorded the first song that I made with Johan I didn’t realise that he’d send it out to a lot of different online forums. Had he asked me if I wanted to be a pop star I would have probably said no, I don’t want to do that [laughs]. We just made the record for fun, but it got a nice reception and people liked it, and since I don’t feel the need to perform live and we’ve never done any TV shows, it feels OK for me to just make recordings.”

Sally Shapiro is not your real name. Does it feel more comfortable using a pseudonym as a mode of expression?

“WE WORKED FOR QUITE A LONG TIME ON NEW MUSIC WITHOUT ANNOUNCING ANYTHING, WHICH WAS GOOD BECAUSE WE DIDN’T FEEL UNDER ANY PRESSURE”

SS: “I didn’t feel comfortable using my real name and found that it’s much better using a pseudonym, which makes me feel more confident at doing what I do. When I sing as Sally Shapiro it’s a mixture of writing lyrics about things that are very personal to me and the identity that I created. Sometimes it’s easier to say things out loud when you’re not using your real name, and maybe that’s why there are so many anonymous artists around today.”

Johan Agebjörn: “If you want your music to have artistic value, it has to be grounded in some part of yourself, so we always feel that the themes that we explore as Sally Shapiro are saying something about that self-expression.”

Coming from Sweden, would it be too obvious to say that you were inspired by Abba?

SS: “When I was young I was mostly listening to artists like Lili & Susie –a 1980s pop band that sounded a little bit disco; like Bananarama, but Swedish. The return of Abba came as a surprise to us, but I think they’ve pulled it all together very nicely. Because I am not performing live, I like what they have done with their avatars – appearing as a hologram sounds quite appealing to me.”