REVIEW: Lykke Li releases her sixth and final studio album 'The Afterparty'

Words: Jett Tattersall
Image: Chloé Le Drezen
Published: 11 May 2026

It's 4am somewhere.

And there’s Lykke Li - the last dancer standing, still singing. The Afterparty, cited as her final album, is a 24-minute moment spread across 9 tracks, an encore in what feels like a lifetime of a show because she’s DJ’d so much of ours.

Li's discography traces a deeply personal evolution. 2008’s debut Youth Novels put a bottle-top dance beat to that “little bit” of something deeper. In 2011, Wounded Rhymes arrived, bringing 'I Follow Rivers' and an investigation into the powerlessness of devotion. Visceral thrills coursed through our systems in 2014’s ‘Gunshot’ … “I shot an arrow in your heart where you waited in the rain”. Li then extended an arm into R&B, scattering it across a synth-pop glow and delivering it all in her signature posture-perfect gloom on So Sad So Sexy’s beloved ‘Hard Rain’, before stepping away from the dancefloor to record 2022’s EYEYE in her bedroom. Now, with The Afterparty, Lykke Li still lingers in that same space between desire, heartbreak and aftermath - only this time, the lights are finally coming up.

Li, our high priestess of melancholy, presents this last chapter as a musical confrontation of your “lower self.” If EYEYE was a lo-fi Super 8 of bedroom floor liquification - an SOS on loop asking to be found and loved “in the movie” - then The Afterparty is the moment the celluloid snapped. Recorded in Stockholm with a 17-piece string section and a choir, Li gleefully calls the album “Ram Dass for fuckboys.” It’s a spiritual reckoning that trades romantic fantasy for the "grotesque and embarrassing" truths of the ego.

The Afterparty opens with ‘Not Gon Cry’ - but for all its delicious beats and melodious turns, anyone familiar with Li’s music knows we’re going to do exactly that. A mission statement bound for indulgent failure. The beat picks up in ‘Happy Now’ before taking a reflective turn in ‘Lucky Again,’ a deliciously sequined moment that challenges the connection between heart and head. It leads spectacularly into the truly special ‘Famous Last Words’ - a woozy music-box, cursed red shoe pirouette of a song where Li returns again and again to the phrase “trust me, it won’t hurt”, knowing full well it will.

‘Knife In The Heart’, true to its name, is where the spiritual reckoning turns physical. A violent lullaby buckling beneath the weight of strings and thunderous percussion, Li has described it as an anthem for the void in all of us, echoing through a stadium choir of hungry hearts.

As those fleeting yet somehow eternal 24 minutes come to a close, Li gives us one final spin around the room with ‘Euphoria’. The patron saint of heavy hearts waves goodbye: “On a night like this / Put your best dress on.” She knows what she means to us — how deeply her music has embedded itself into our heartbreak, ecstasy, long drives and lonely dancefloors alike. And though this may be her final album, Lykke Li won’t stop circling the floor just yet. “For you, I will dance all night,” she promises. “Baby, I will.”

The Afterparty is out now via Neon Gold / Futures Music Group. You can buy and stream here.
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