Girl In Red is back with the vulnerable new single ‘Blue’ – her first new music in over a year.
Released today (Friday October 9) via Columbia Records, the new single marks the first to be released from Marie Ulven since she dropped the raw standalone track ‘Hemingway’ last summer.
She started dropping hints that new music was on the way earlier this week – gradually changing the red sweater in the artwork for her 2018 song ‘We Fell In Love In October’ blue ahead of its yearly streaming peak. The singer also changed the colour of the shirt worn by Mozart in her Instagram profile picture from red to blue, and swapped her username to @GirlInBlue.
Capturing the same emotive songwriting style that she has had since the beginning, the new track takes on feelings of uncertainty, and explores the feeling of loss after a relationship comes to an end.
It also comes with a music video directly by Ulven’s longtime creative partner Isak Jenssen, which is filmed in her Oslo hometown and explores how her heartbreak has made her into the person she is today. Check it out below.
When she dropped ‘Hemingway’ last summer, Girl In Red explained that it was a song that explored her previous battle with “addiction, ED and depression that almost killed me”.
In an emotional Instagram post, she revealed to fans that she “ended up in a really bad place” because of the struggles, and that the song “tells a part of that story”.
Speaking to NME about the response to the song, Ulven told us at Glastonbury 2025: “I’m very moved by the response because it’s a very vulnerable song about addiction and heartbreak and relationship problems, and how they all kind of intertwine.”
“I was really scared to put it out there because I didn’t want people to look at me and be like, ‘Oh, she’s just a recovering addict’ or something. I was so worried about how other people would perceive me,” she added. “I guess I felt a lot of shame at first, and that’s probably why I had those thoughts about wanting to be perceived in a certain way. But then I was like, ‘I’ve been really sick, and addiction is an illness and it’s not something you should be ashamed about… It’s something we need to talk about a lot more’.”
The singer is also set to make her acting debut in the upcoming film Low Expectations, which will be released in the UK & Ireland in early 2027.
Screen Daily, which reported the news of the film’s release, described the synopsis as following “Maja, who falls apart at the height of her music career. Depressed and broke, she moves back home with her mother and works part-time at a local high school, where she slowly finds her way back to life.”
Girl In Red also spoke to NME at Glasto about how she was finding the venture into acting, sharing: “There are some similarities between music and acting. When I’m playing songs live, sometimes I’m not really in the mood for that song at all, but I’m just tapping into it and it sort of becomes a performance. Similarly, when I’ve been acting, it’s also taking on a character. I’m tapping into someone who I’m not, and into feelings that I’ve probably felt before, but I’m not feeling them there. I’m working out how I can make it seem like I am.
