Be Lucky by Penny Police

Penny Police on new album: Believe in your inner voice
In both title and tone the new album from Penny Police is bursting with hope.

With ’Be Lucky’, the woman behind the critically acclaimed art-pop project, Marie Fjeldsted, opens up a room where warm and liberating messages echo: Find your own voice and release the fear of failure. It all stems from her becoming a mother. 


”Penny Police is way ahead in the way she thinks music”
Kieron Tylor from Mojo Magazine nailed the phenomenon Penny Police in his review from SPOT Festival. Since then, Marie Fjeldsted (Penny Police), has appeared on a number of releases and in several live contexts. As a self- proclaimed "introvert anti-star", it never happens with big gestures, but always insisting on exploring songwriting, composition and sound - creating pop with perspective. This also applies to the new album ‘Be Lucky’, her second full-length, where Marie explores the importance of finding your own way in life, and your own voice. In her own unique and quiet style she examines the Zeitgeist.

“Don’t judge the colours before the sun has come up. Don’t take it on you before you know how to take it off”. (Be Lucky)

“Everything has to be 100% correct to be good enough. You never see the cracks. And I have gone trough a lot of soul searching and caring about feeling right, but there is no right way to feel or be. At some point I realized this an have begun to practice the fear of failure in order to release the fear and instead insisting on taking myself seriously,” explains Marie Fjeldsted.

The themes on the new album stems from when Marie became a mother four years ago. It also made her think about the quivering question: How do I become a role model for my child?


”You carry so many beliefs with you from your childhood and teenage years, and I began to question my own. My intuition told me very early on that I had to do things my own way. But I still need to practice finding my own voice and to make peace with it,” she says and continues: ”In ’Be Lucky’ lies a positive invitation to follow your gut feeling. Because if you are open and true to yourself I believe luck has an easier way to find you. This is something I always address to the child within us all. Children require an admirable desire to be seen, heard and loved. In that way my daughter is a constant inspiration and role model to me.”


The themes slip into a playful, dramatic musical space characterized by warm arrangements, immediate melodies and oblique structures full of surprises. On the album there is room for auto harp, a horn section, piano and a children’s choir - all created over a number of years in close collaboration with producer Aske Bode.

Among the songs on the album you find the single ‘Mirror, Mirror’, where the adult sees its inner child in the mirror and says: "it may be that you did not feel accepted or included, but now I fully accommodate you.” You find ‘Make It Move’, which revolves around leaving things as they are instead of labeling them in order to fit into boxes. And you find ‘Take on a Little Love’ dealing with how precious life is and choosing to smile although it can be tempting to hide under the blankets.

Marie Fjeldsted’s airy and dreamy vocals shines like a red thread throughout the album. It also has an immediate naturalness, emphasized by the fact that she and Aske Bode have used the cue vocals on some of the tracks. At the same time this is also the first time we hear Penny Police singing in Danish on record. It happens on the album closing track ‘Kig op’ which is written as a lullaby for her daughter, Viola, who painted the egg that adorns the album cover.


Penny Police is the alias of Copenhagen based singer and songwriter Marie Fjeldsted, who has impressed with her alternative songwriting and her airy voice.
She has been compared to Agnes Obel and Emiliana Torrini but truly has found her own niche as Kieron Tyler from MOJO Magazine pointed out when he made her a highlight at SPOT Festival: "Penny Police is way ahead in the way she thinks music".