The Highs and Lows of Girl in Red

The super-relatable pop singer from Norway is ready for her close-up after touring with Taylor

- BRENNA EHRLICH

Marie Ulven is not a chill person. Over the course of lunch at a slick New York spot packed with women in expensive-looking black athleisure, she swings between aping Taylor Swift’s arm flex on “The Man” from the Eras Tour — a move that Ulven, who opened for a few of those dates last summer, knows all about — and clutching her chest, breathless. “I’m just trying to deal with my anxiety when it comes,” she says. “Right now, my heart really hurts.”

Ulven’s not having a heart attack, thank God. Sometimes, the Norwegian artist known as Girl in Red can just get a little overwhelmed. And with good reason. Today, no one at this swish eatery recognizes the young woman in the blue Ralph Lauren sweater and L.A. Dodgers cap, but with a Swift stadium tour under her belt and a new record, I’m Doing It Again Baby!, in the offing, that could very well be about to change. As her creative director and longtime friend Isak Jenssen tells me: “She switches between being the most confident person I know to being very insecure. At one point, she didn’t think she had the biggest potential, like Taylor or Billie. But now, I think, she realizes she does.”

Ulven, 25, has pretty much always taken music seriously — she’s a true workhorse, like those superstars. The Oslo resident started writing songs when she was eight, playing guitar at 14, and has been producing her own music for a decade. After uploading her first song, the sad-and-sweet “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend,” to YouTube in 2018, things started moving very fast for the then-teen. She dropped two EPs in 2018 and 2019, followed by her debut album,