Marie Sahba

Since Norwegian-Iranian Marie Sahba released her debut single Take Me Back in 2019, she has grown to become one of Norway's most exciting artists. In February 2024, she released the highly anticipated debut album A Billion Years Too Soon. Dagsavisen named the album "One of the best Norwegian albums of 2024". Born in Trondheim, Norway, to an Azerbaijani-Iranian father and a Norwegian mother, Marie grew up with a deep familiarity with Eastern music and culture thanks to her father, who moved from Iran to Istanbul at the age of 18 to study at university. She grew up listening to Turkish, Iranian, Azerbaijani, and Western music which is evident in her musical landscape. During high school, she studied classical piano and then continued her studies in vocals. "We suspect this could become a sensation" wrote Dagsavisen about A Billion Years Too Soon, highlighting the album as one of the most promising for 2024 ahead of its release. Through the album's nine tracks, listeners are invited into Marie's unique musical universe where she seamlessly weaves her cultural heritage with modern, electronic music. When the album was released in February 2024, Dagsavisen's culture editor and reviewer Mode Steinkjer confirmed the promises: "With A Billion Years Too Soon Marie Sahba has created one of the best pop albums of the spring, a complex and at times thrilling, captivatingly dark interweaving of memories and emotions. [...] An absolutely delightful album that will find its audience both in solitude and at concerts and club floors." The singles from the album also impressed a united group of reviewers in the time leading up to the album's release, with songs like Give Me A Sign, Namaste, and One Last Time all receiving praise from both Dagsavisen and Aftenposten, two of Norway’s biggest newspapers. One Last Time was also featured in WWF campaign and the music video for A Billion Years Too Soon was nominated at Bergen International Film Festival as “one of the best Norwegian music videos”. The album was written and produced in collaboration with Martin Vinje, known for his work with Sigrid and Neon Ion. Together, they have created a unique musical universe of melancholy, traditional instruments, beautiful melodies, and atmospheric synths firmly rooted in a danceable club landscape. The personal lyrics in both English and Azerbaijani, spoken in Northern Iran, tell the story of Marie's roots, the loss of her father three years prior, and the ups and downs of life. In 2019, Marie Sahba found her way onto H&M's international playlists, the Netflix series Witch Hunt and the Swedish series Udda Veckor with her debut single Take Me Back. In 2022, she released her second EP AZERI BABY and the singles Fall Apart and Never Got To Know You made waves in Türkiye. Leading up to the debut album, she created momentum in Türkiye with her release tour in 2023 and in 2024 she completed two tours across Türkiye (Istanbul, Ankara, Adana, Batman, and Diyarbakir) and Norway. She has also been named as a ‘rising star’ in Azerbaijani media and received great reviews for her album, and performed at COP29’s Norway edition in Oslo in October 2024.