The very latest Feature Interview with Lene, which gives a great summary of her career up to recent times, was published by HENNE Magazine in September 2007. This is a recommended first read if you are kind of new to Lene Marlin and her way of life. This major article is never before published on the internet.

The Burst Of A Star                                                                   

(Feature Interview by HENNE Magazine, Issue of September - October 2007)

She became a superstar over night - and disappeared equally quickly. Here, Lene Marlin speaks about the life as a star, about the trip down, and the turning point. Now, she has learned to not give a damned.

- You know that movie, "Sliding Doors"?

Lene Marlin's (27) green brown glance is looking at me, enquiringly. The blonde fringe is falling down on sooty sunglasses.

- It's that kind of feeling that I get. I was so close to doing it.

In the movie, an unexciting event like catching the subway home turns out to get larger consequences. In Lene Marlin's life, there is a crossroad that day when she put away the plans of going to USA for her third year of high school.

- There is a lot of accidental circumstances, and just that with the US dream I have been thinking of a lot. Then, I think life could have been totally different.

Accidental circumstances? Who knows. We will indulge in a smaller retrospect: At the age of 15, Lene Marlin Pedersen gets a guitar from her parents for Christmas. In her girl's room, she is writing several songs, and is recording them on a cassette player. A spring day in 1997, she performs one of the songs for school mates at Tromsdalen High School. NRK Troms has been advertising with free hours in their studio, and a girl friend calls in and secures a deal when Lene's own courage is failing her. A journalist gets to hear the demo, and is meeting Lene on the bus, and asks whether she could play it for his friend, director Per Eirik Johansen at Virgin Records. And then it was done. The record deal was signed in Tromsø, week between Christmas and New Year's Eve of 1997. This fall, there will be ten years since Lene Marlin captured the music industry, as a little bewildered, shy, and reticent teenage girl. Ten years that have made her into a experienced recording artist with three albums, 2.5 million records sold, a series of prestigeous awards, and songwriting for Rihanna on her CV. She is good for a double-digit amount of millions. With a straight back and filled with excess energy, she is meeting HENNE for the first portrait interview since 2003.

It's well-known that she rarely speaks with the press. However, she knows obviously how to be talking. Both slowly, lingering, and well-considered. And, in a flow of words that make you feel like you've been hit by a verbal mitrailleuse loaded with Tromsø dialect. When she becomes eager - and this she easily becomes - the voice level goes up, and the arms go in all directions, and she happily imitates both herself and others to animate what she is talking about.

Lene Marlin is definitively an entertaining storyteller. And, we soon understands the buddy Harald Rønneberg, that says the two of them found eachother, because they're both so tattling.

- She is a bit Italian in her temperament, friend and musician Bernt Rune Stray believes, who has been playing with Lene since the beginning of her career.

Lene smiles:

- So he said that, did he.

Laughter. She's laughing a lot. Loudly, lightly, and trilling. Silently, ironically, and scornful. Heartily. Bone dry.

Then she adds: - However, I can still be quiet and shy in special situations.

The last year, she has held a higher profile than in a long time. She has held several concerts, recorded the duet "Avalon" with the Swiss pop band Lovebugs, made a special version of her own song, "What If" for the computer game Sims 2 Animal Life, and together with Stargate she wrote the title track for Rihanna's album "Good Girl Gone Bad", which shortly will have sold a million copies.

Lene Marlin's debut album, "Playing My Game" was released in April of 1999. At that time, the single "Unforgivable Sinner" had climbed to the top of of the charts all across Europe and in the greater parts of Asia. She headed into a year with 250 traveling days, many of them while she was still a high school attendant. The last half year of school, she went to school in Tromsø on the weekdays, and recorded an album in Oslo during the weekends.

- There could be times when there was hard focusing, but I was firmly determined to finish school. When I managed that, I became very happy. However, I can still have nightmares, where I'm beeing awoken by a voice that says: "There is something wrong. You need to come back and finish off the third year".

Simultanously with the tests and the exams during spring of 1999, Lene Marlin was launched internationally, as one of the record company's top artists. She went straight from her graduate celebration to hard promotion work in Europe and Asia. Things got really busy from morning to night, with traveling, interviews, and performances. The record sales frequently reached new heights, and everyone wanted a piece of the little, charming Tromsø girl.

There were screaming, tearful fans. And an over-enthusiastical Norwegian pop industry, which finally had gotten the new story of success they had been waiting for since a-ha.

It was an adventure. In the midst of all the transport of joy, the young pop comet felt a feeling of panic spreading.

- I was super happy when I sold to Gold in Norway. Then the sales passed 500.000, and I became a bit like, help, yes, great, but stop now. And when the record sales turned a million, I almost, damned,...I was thinking, no, no, no, this is too great. And then things just went as they did.

A November day in 1999, Lene Marlin is sitting on the plane from South Korea to Taiwan. Two years of turbo working and enormous changes have set their traces. Besides, she is fever hot by food poisoning. She just wanted to get back to the hotel and be sleeping.

Nobody has told her about the roaring monster wall of pressmen waiting just outside of the plane in Taiwan. The shock she's getting when seven - eight film cameras are lighting up her face is indescribable. Instinctively, she is staring firmly towards the ground, and is squeezing a teddy she got from the promotion team in South Korea. The whole way she is walking like this - all the while the monster wall is following in her footsteps, through the passport check and baggage claim. None of the pressmen are noticing the tears that are being rubbed into the soft synthetic fibre-furs. Behind sooty windows in the backseat of the awaiting car, she is breaking down like a straw in near gale. She is crying, uncontrolled, and is thinking she's starting to go mad.

- However, inside the hotel, I almost started to laugh in the midst of all the tears, because there all the employees were set for receiving me.

A cried-out popstar with cotton inside her head had to greet left and right, receive flowers, and shake hands with the hotel manager, before she finally could collapse in a hotel bed, and be crying even more. Then, it was two hours before the next promotion job.

- Do you think everyone that was working for you were handling things correctly following this episode?

Lene Marlin is drawing her breath, and releases a short, joyless laughter.

- You know, there were a lot of things that could have been done differently, to put it that way. I think that...it was new to everybody. I'm very glad I wasn't any younger. I was 17 when I got the record deal, 19 when the album came. That was young enough in large quantities.

Two months later, in February 2000, she was again fighting the tears in front of the camera lenses. This time from the stage in Oslo Spektrum. She is on the brink of tears when she, with a thick, emotional voice is saying thank you for her fourth Spellemann award of the evening. On the floor sits her boyfriend Stian Barsnes Simonsen. The two young celebrities have been kissing in public for the first time this night. The press and the fans are going wild. What a night of jubilation. Nobody knows that there aren't only tears of joy that are pressing forward for Lene Marlin. Nor that this will be her last evening in the limelight for a very long time.

Lene has seen the Spellemann award show only once.

- I haven't been willing to view it again. Because, I can see myself, in my eyes that...I'm not feeling well. I hardly remember anything from that evening.

- Two months later, you disappeared without a prewarning?

- That was not the plan. Actually, I was going to travel to England just afterwards.

- You stopped it yourself?

- I got help from someone very close to me, saying that "Sorry, but this is not going to work out anymore". Now you will have to drag me out of the house if you need me to be somewhere. Then it all stopped.

- But, if you haven't said so yourself, could this have been rolling further even a bit longer?

- It's difficult to tell. However, the record was about to break through greatly in England, so it's obvious that many wanted me to go there. And, then I got nominated for BritAwards that year as well. Then I think many people got pissed off because I didn't go. But, I didn't give a damend about that nomination. There were totally other things that were more important for me at that time. I couldn't travel there just because everyone else wanted me to.

She is speaking silently, but clearly and well-considered.

- Did she owe somebody to be present at the BritAwards?

- No. Or, yes, I was struggling with so much bad conscience, I damned did that for many years. However, I just had to take care of myself, even if it meant being away from everything related to that industry. And, this I don't regret. That break was long, but essential and incredibly important.

For over three and a half years, she kept away from the limelight entirely. And while Lene was doing mental sorting and was resting, fans and the press speculated about the cause of the absence and the silence.

If it just had been another day, any day, she would have, of course, said: "Reis te hælvete" ("Go to hell"). To whom we will return to a bit later on.

However, this November morning in 2001, Lene Marlin had awoken to a heap of unanswered calls from family and friends. They wanted to warn her: The main story of Norway's largest newspaper was that Lene Marlin still hadn't picked up the Tromsø Council's honorary award from 1999.

Indeed, the prize statuette wasn't completed until December the year after, and at that time Lene Marlin was in the middle of one of her most busy working periods. However, now there was another full year - and the popstar hadn't been working for several months, had she?

"Rude and without respect", Jørn Hoel said.

The chairman of Tromsø was commenting in an offended manner. The debate was storming on the internet newspapers and on radio. Was it rude not to pick up the prize? And why did Lene Marlin remain silent, didn't she now have a golden opportunity to be explaining the details surrounding this painful abscess the award had turned into?

At home in her apartment on Frogner in Oslo, Lene was sitting together with two of her closest friends. They denied her turning the radio on. She was shivering, and in between she felt just like screaming out the reason: That she was sick and burnt-out, with a doctor's order against traveling and perform in public. That she had fear of cameras, and became physically ill when somebody cracked off a flashlight in her vicinity.

- Just the thought of standing in front of a camera gave me a heartbeat and panic. In one period, not even my family got to take photographs of me. The ones closest to me were supporting me, certainly, but I know that there were many others who were wondering what the f... was wrong with me.

- Why wouldn't you tell how sick you actually were?

- If I was to comment on this, I had to comment on everything. And, I wasn't ready to come out with everything. I also didn't want to go public in media just because media demanded it. Then I rather had to live with people believing that I was a spoiled little brat, and hope that I at one time in the future would get the opportunity to tell the reason.

Today, the prize is long since a done deal between Lene and the council of Tromsø.

- But, have you spoken to Jørn Hoel about this?

- No, I haven't talked to him, she says briefly.

- You don't always understand that everything you say, might be twisted and turned around. However, on a general basis, you shouldn't comment on things when you don't really know.

And then there was this person, then, that she most of all should have wanted to go away to a place far away. An earlier school girl friend that wanted to exploit the blast surrounding Lene Marlin this day.

- I knew that she had a tape with a song that I recorded long before I got a record deal. I did never think about that as other than just fun, because this girl I trusted. However, then she calls me and says that she has been offered money and would like to sell it. There was nothing shady on the tape, but I think everybody has some years where you experience things, especially in junior high school, things that weren't that cool, and that you just want to lock up in a chest and throw away the key. This is how it was. And she was about to just sell it.

I was lying there in a daze, sick as I was, and was thinking: "What the heck do I do know?" Had it just been any other day, I would have said: "Just don't give a shit". However, this day everything was just madness. I didn't care for more noise.

Later the same day, an acquaintance went with a plane to Tromsø, with an envelope filled with money from Lene Marlin to the earlier girl friend. He returned with the tape. And with this, Lene's reliance with other people fell to a temporary bottom level. For a long time.

- I got scared of pictures in private connections. It cut so deep. It's so twisted, selling another person.

- Have you experienced many leakages from people surrounding you?

- No, my friends are golden. However, you need to divide between friends and acquaintances. I belive I've become a pretty good judge of character, and I'm more open to meeting people now than before. Thank God - I didn't think I would get another friend after having turned 20!

Many have been asking whether she would have done this first year of making a record over again.

- And that I would have, of course. This is my life now. I have also received so much, many friends and great experiences. There were so many fantastic things happening, as well, people that I met, the feeling of extreme joy that I felt in my stomach. All the nice feedback.

There is still a lot of things she can't endure related to the celebrity status. However, Lene has learned to not give a damned all that much.

- I have gotten jawed at by strangers on the street, because they have been reading something about me in the media. Earlier, I could get all shivering, and be crying for hours over things like that. Now I'm thinking that I have to let it go.

The musician and friend Bernt Rune Stray thinks that many don't understand how extreme the first two years of her career were: - Everyone was taken a little by surprise, it was something totally new in Norway that somebody came straight from the girl's room, and to a life as an international star artist. The result was ruthless exploitation from several groups on a young, vulnerable, and totally unprepared human being. However, she has luckily had an insane development on the part of defining her own limits.

The girl friend Silje Viste Grønli, that Lene got to know in 2001 when Grønli was working at EMI, says:

- She has come strengthened out of it. She has proven that she is not a puff of wind, she has gotten an unique relationship with the press, and still is an open, generous, friendly, and including person. She is a person of excess energy to be working with, and she is a very good friend.

A chicken burger has been consumed. Lene Marlin is slurping ice coffee, and tells several more incredible stories from the first turbulent years in her career. About the love for music that never went away, about the frustration over something that was so important to her could become a burden. About how good it felt when people came to her on the street, and was begging weakly for another album to be released. And about the tears that was rolling when radio host Guri Solberg live on radio P4 said that she was missing Lene Marlin.  

And then we have arrived at the comeback of September 2003.

After many rounds with herself, she is feeling strong, and determined to step into the limelight again - on her own terms: Enjoying herself. To have fun. And be living a life beside the music.

Lene Marlin proclaimed that, no, she had never "disappared", just been keeping away the more crowdy places in Oslo at times. And, yes, she had seriously been considering giving up the music industry. And then she informed a somewhat bewildered press that she had been going to a psychologist, and was comparing this to pulling grinding teeth.

- For me, this was nothing I could conceal at all. I think everyone could benefit from airing their thoughts to somebody who aren't their friends of family from time to time, Lene says. In the time afterwards, elderly people came up to her on cafés and thanked her for her openness.

- This was pretty strong.

On the question of what was more worse when she became sick, she answered photographers that was lurking in the bushes beside her apartment.

- However, the journalists were extremely respectful this time around. They were asking hard questions, but respected it when I didn't want to answer. I had a very good feeling when the first day of promotion was over. At the same time, I had the feeling that there would be one photograph or another in the bushes that evening.

And quite rightly so: Outside the city estate where Lene Marlin is living, a photograph from the gossip press had taken his position. As Lene was walking towards the front door, he jumped out of the car, and paced towards her back - without knowing that the "prey" was armed with a one-time camera. Abruptly, Lene Marlin turned around and fired off a flashlight in the middle of his face. She kept pushing the flashlight while she was walking towards him and chanted: - How does it feel? How does it feel?

It was an absurd change of roles. The shocked photograph took off by foot.

- Friends of mine who were there, almost died of laughter. In the time following this, I always walked about with a one-time camera on me.

- How much is your life marked by the music industry at this time?

- I take the words in meetings, and have opinions on my own career. I need to have an urge if I am to do something. If this makes me "difficult", well then I might be just that.

However, if I had been a male solo artist, the same people would have said: "He knows where he wants to go, he is determined and has a firm grip on his own career".

There are on the whole a lot of men in this industry, and there is not everyone who thinks it's cool being reproved by a little girl. I think other female artists would say that they are experiencing the same thing.

Not even the record company knew what she was doing before she took the chair at Fredrik Skavlan an evening in June (April - editor's note) of 2005.

- I have made a new record, Lene Marlin announced with a big grin on her face, dressed in a dark blue silk topping with thin straps, sensual curls, and a dramatic make-up. With the surprising launch of the third album "Lost In A Moment", recorded in all secrecy at the Stargate duo in Trondheim, the very young girl with the fishing hat was gone forever.

Lene Marlin is done waiting for tomorrow. A close friend's abrupt death put things in perspective.

- You naturally go through many thoughts and processes then. I really got it, like: "My God, what am I doing, what is it that I'm afraid of?" Thus, she went into studio and made the surprising third album.

- Your lyrics are dealing a lot with heavy work in pair relations. Do you believe in the great love?

- You have to, don't you? If you look at how much one changes as a human being during a lifetime, it's very impressing if anybody could manage to change together the whole way. This is not a matter of course. I have a realistic relationship with regards to the great love. However, I don't just write about my own love life. And several of the lyrics people thinks are about love in a pair relationship, actually are just about friendly relationships.

- Is your status as a celebrity a strain for the love life?

- Obviously, when some people go out on town with me for the first time, they might get a bit surprised, and might feel the attention unpleasant. But, this is how it is, it's part of the package.

Every question about the marital status receives a reply with a risible, but firmly "No comment".

- Why is it so important for you to protect your love life?

- I don't like that people feel the need to know much about it. It doesn't belong to the general public.

New York City earlier this summer: In a small park, Lene Marlin is sitting, writing. For hours, she is spinning stories and reflections about the people she is viewing in the park.

- I'm extremely emotional, and I'm all the time trying to understand how things I don't experience myself feel for the people who do.

- Are you writing other things than song material?

- Yes, at times I can't stop writing, even if it gets to be way longer than a song lyric. So then it becomes a short story. Now, you're probably thinking "Has she written a book"?, she says, teasingly.

- Have you?

- I have a lot of things lying about that could be one or the other.

A new album is not planned for the time being. Not even in all secrecy, she avows. Now Lene Marlin will focus more on the songwriting for others. The contribution on Rihanna's record gave her a good taste.

- It's important for me to get something out of life in other areas. Music is important, but far from everything.

- What makes you happy?

- Small things. Getting good friends for a visit on a Sunday, lying in each our sofa, watching TV and be eating potato chips without saying a word. There are some moments when I'm thinking: "Oh, this is perfect, yes! I don't need to be any other places than right here, together with exactly these people."

Then I'm happy.