Sigrid has spoken to NME about leaning into her love of rock, as well as sharing her favourite new albums. Check out the full video interview above.
The Norwegian pop phenomenon was speaking to NME backstage ahead of her performance at Mad Cool 2026, where she’d been partying for much of the week with her sister who lives nearby in Madrid.
“I saw Zara Larsson yesterday – epic!” she told of her time at the Madrid bash’s 10th anniversary. “It was the best show I’ve seen in a long, long time. She was so, so talented. Her whole production was great. We saw Lorde, she was sick, really, really good. That’s all we had time for, then I’m gonna see my family.”
As well as Sigrid’s Spanish language skills, conversation then turned to the Norway vs England World Cup knock-out match, and her pride in her country and team, before we explored what it’s been like to bring her 2025 album ‘There’s Always More That I Could Say‘ to life on stage every night as she continues to blow up on festival stages.
“It’s really good to be back with new music and we’re bringing so much energy. We took the album to Japan, Korea, China, we’ve been on a Europe tour of Germany, the Netherlands, France, the UK, it was such a fun round,” she told us of her summer.
Sigrid live at Mad Cool 2026. Credit: Javier Bragado
She also shared that she’d been listening a lot lately to Turnstile‘s ‘Never Enough‘, and the “amazing songwriting and production” of Olivia Rodrigo‘s ‘You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love‘, as well as having Holly Humberstone’s ‘Cruel World‘ “on repeat” alongside TOMORA’s ‘Come Closer‘.
Her choices speak to her vocal love of rock, having been open about her admiration of bands like Muse and even recording a collab with Bring Me The Horizon. As a result, Sigrid said she found it “an honour” to be playing at Mad Cool on the same day as the likes of Halsey, Pixies, Interpol, Cliffords, Kings Of Leon and Twenty One Pilots, and more.
“Where I’ve found myself sonically for the last 10 years, I’ve been somewhere in between,” she said of her sound between rock and left-of-centre pop. “I make pop songs, I’m so proud to be calling myself an artist that makes a lot of pop music, but I’ve always been influenced by so many different genres and I try to cram in as many different inspirations in the studio as possible.”
She continued: “On this last record, we drew a lot of inspirations from Scandi indie pop, French music… It is pop music, but with way more guitars than I’ve used before. It can a song, it can be a snare drum that I heard in a song once, but the point is that it is an honour to play on the rock day and feel like I can have a foot in different camps per se.”
We’ve definitely seen people moshing to ‘Don’t Kill My Vibe’…
“It happens! I’ve seen people mosh pit to ‘Dynamite’, my ballad!” Sigrid replied. “That was at student festival in Norway so they were mosh pitting to literally any song. It was the best crowd in the world, probably. That was pretty epic. I’ve seen metal people tearing up at ballads!”
Sigrid’s festival tour continues through North America before appearances at Sziget in Budapest and Portsmouth’s Victorious Festival next month ahead of two shows in her native Norway to cap off the run. Visit here for tickets and more information.
You can revisit all of NME’s coverage from Mad Cool 2026 here.
NME is the official media partner of Mad Cool.
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