“No Rest for the Wicked” by Lykke Li

"No Rest for the Wicked" was the first taste of I Never Learn, Lykke Li's third album, arriving as its lead single in March 2014. The Swedish singer wrote it with Björn Yttling while still in Sweden, before she decamped to Los Angeles, where she spent two and a half years on the rest of the record after a long relationship ended; it was only the second song she wrote for it. She told The Guardian she was packing up her life at the time, freshly single and in a bad way, full of hurt and guilt and longing.

That rawness is literal: the vocal on the finished track is her demo take. Yttling plays acoustic guitar, Moog Taurus and zither, and he and Li produced it with Lasse Mårtén, who mixed it. A remix with ASAP Rocky followed in April.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.