Aurora

Who is Aurora?

Aurora Aksnes was born in the Stavanger University Hospital in Stavanger, Norway, on June 15, 1996. She spent her first three years in Høle, a small town where her parents, May Britt Froastad and Jan Øystein Aksnes, had lived for 15 years. In her house in Høle,

Aurora developed her taste for nature, singing and traditional clothing, such as long skirts and hats. Later the family moved further north in western Norway,to a house in the woodlands of the Os mountains, a remote municipality in Hordaland, near Bergen.

Aurora has described this place as “There are almost no cars and the roads are small and bumpy and there are lots of trees everywhere, it's very quiet and the internet is bad.”. She has also compared it to the fictional land of Narnia. When she attended school, her sisters—Miranda (currently her makeup artist) and Viktoria Aksnes (currently her costume designer)—worried that she could be harassed by other students, due to her personality and "weird" way of dressing. “I used to be terrified of people who wanted to hug me,” she said. “I did not like to be hugged as a child. And I used to be terrified of one of my teachers at school, but then I met him a few months ago, and it was really nice. It’s weird how things change."

Aurora is the only musician in her family. She started learning to play piano when she was six. "I really love classic music, and when I found this piano in the attic, I just started pressing the keys and trying to figure out my favorite classical songs. I started to make melodies that I recognized. There was something special about being able to play just by yourself – something about the emotion in it made me want to continue playing." At age nine, when she had a better handle of the English language, she began writing songs.

Her first original composition was titled "I Had A Dream", which referred to how hard the world can be. Songs such as "Running with the Wolves," "I Went Too Far" and "Runaway" were written in this early stage of her life, with "Runaway" being written when she was 11. She has mentioned she was influenced by artists like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Enya, and The Chemical Brothers.

Order she wrote her songs in and ages:

- Lucky (this): 9

- Runaway: 11

- In Boxes: 11

- Awakening: 14

- Little Boy in the Grass: 15

- Puppet: 16

- Under Stars: 17

- Murder Song: 17-18

- Running with the Wolves: 18

In Bergen, Norway, the pop artist shares the childhood secrets that helped to build her captivating musical world.

“Music is not something you should keep for yourself. It can’t be put in a cage, because it’s wild and alive.” So says AURORA, the 20-year-old Norwegian singer-songwriter behind fantastical, stampeding folk-pop songs like “Conqueror” and “Runaway.” AURORA’s music often looks at the everyday with a kind of wide-eyed wonder, and in this new documentary short Nothing Is Eternal — directed by Isaac Ravishankara, and produced by The FADER with YouTube Music — it’s plain to see that that this worldview is no performance. It’s simply how AURORA lives her life.

Following the artist from the bustling streets of New York to her rain-soaked hometown of Bergen, the film includes interviews with AURORA's closest friends, as well as uniquely stripped-back performances of tracks including “Warrior” and “Murder Song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1).” Whether she’s reminiscing on her childhood with her sisters, dancing through the city streets in her headphones, or discussing the secret life of apples, there’s a spellbinding quality to everything the artist does.

“When I first met you, I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a girl who’s magic,’” one of AURORA’s childhood friends remembers in a particularly endearing scene. The deeper this film goes into her lush and rose-tinted world, the harder it is to shake that feeling off.