Almost 10 years ago we came across a young musical talent who went under the name of Nova Miller. After many twists and turns, she turned up on our radar again last year, rebranded as Fanny Avonne and scoring one of the the big hit songs of the year.
The Swedish singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has musical talent in her genes, which was clearly evident when we sat down with her for an interview when she was just 15. We followed Nova Miller‘s career pretty closely back then, including going behind the scenes on a music video shoot.
She moved to Los Angeles to pursue her musical dreams at 17, and ended up having rather hard times being there by herself without her family, especially during the pandemic when her busy performance schedule also ground to a halt. In a recent episode of Carina Bergfeldt‘s talk show, she opened up about her deeply personal and challenging experiences from that time. She described feelings of being controlled and creatively restrained. She finally got her father to help her get out of her contract and returned home to Sweden.
At this point she was feeling doubts about whether she could ever be making music again. The turning point came when her father encouraged Fanny to stay true to herself and keep making music, saying that would eventually cause a ripple effect – or Ringar på vatten as they say in Swedish (which is the title of one of Fanny’s new songs in which she refers to this episode).
Fanny rediscovered her passion and ended up writing songs with her best friend Olga Myko (an up’n’coming artist in her own right, who you should also check out). A song they wrote found Molly Sandén, and became one of the hit songs of the summer in 2024, Slutet av sommaren. This led to Tjuvjakt‘s Kid Eriksson reaching out, leading to them writing the song Tusen spänn, which in turn became the song of the summer in 2025. Fanny Avonne featured as a singer on the song with the group, and this became her launch pad to newfound recognition, including Song of the Year nominations in both P3 Guld and the Swedish Music Publishers’ Award.
And as one thing led to another in a true ripple effect manner, Fanny has just been able to release an EP of her own music, including very personal stories in Swedish, wonderful melodies, and soundscapes from jazz to traditional Swedish ballads/visor.
We saw her perform the full EP at Musikplats Stockholm at the Radio House, and the pictures in this article are from that show. And it has to be said, it is such a pleasure to see Fanny making her own kind of music on her own terms now, and getting the success she deserves. But this is clearly still just the beginning.
All photos © Nina Uddin
