With one certified viral hit under her belt and a record deal at Sony Music, singer-songwriter and TikTok phenom Lia Lindstén is poised for superstardom. You heard it here first
It was a day like any other, really. Lia Lindstén, a 16-year-old Swede living with her parents in Helsingborg, was recording a TikTok in her room. She had already accrued a respectable following on the platform – peers who tuned in for her makeup tutorials, dance videos and, yes, singing clips. It had started with covers (for instance, ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love With You’ by Elvis Presley), but on this particular day, she sang a song she had written herself: ‘Mitt hjärta av guld’ (My Heart of Gold), whilst casually applying some eyeshadow.
Nothing about the video was orchestrated. “I think that’s what people liked,” Lindstén, now 17, muses in hindsight. “I was just sitting in my room recording a video, not thinking so much about it.” Since it went up last spring, the original TikTok has accrued 2.6 million views (“People went crazy making their own videos to the sound,” says Lindstén). By the time the song, an intimate track about young heartbreak and wasted time, was released that summer, it instantly entered Spotify Sweden’s Top 50 and stayed there for weeks, peaking at 11. Today, the track boasts about 6.5 million streams.
Lia performing in Uppsala last summer. Photo: FangsVisuals
At Sony Music in Stockholm. Photo: FangsVisuals