‘I Had A Dream’: the song Aurora wrote when she was nine
When envisioning the subject of a song written by a nine-year-old girl, topics like friendship or a favourite TV show might come to mind. What you likely wouldn’t anticipate is a haunting, philosophical ballad tackling themes of domestic abuse and societal apathy. Yet, this is exactly the nature of the first song composed by the ethereal alt-pop artist Aurora.
The Norwegian singer first caught mainstream attention in the UK when she covered the Oasis classic ‘Half The World Away’ for the 2015 John Lewis Christmas advert, but she had long been an artist before that breakthrough moment.
A year later, during an interview on Q with Tom Power, Aurora revealed that her first live performance was at her tenth-grade graduation with the song ‘I Had A Dream’, written years earlier. “It was me and a guitar – I don’t know why because I can’t really play guitar,” she laughs. “And it was a song called ‘I Had A Dream’, and which is about me dreaming about horrible things that we realise is actually happening, because it’s not really a dream.”
Aurora explained that the song was shared online—it’s not clear whether she gave permission for this—and that was how her first manager spotted her. Inadvertently, she became somewhat of a child star.
A recording of ‘I Had A Dream’ was posted on the anonymous SoundCloud profile AURORAsource. A short video of the performance is also circulating online, presumably filmed by a family member or friend, although it is only around a minute long. If you squint at the pixelated footage, you can just about make out a young Aurora sitting on stage in a green dress with her acoustic guitar.
She sings with a voice that’s much more mature than you’d expect for a 16-year-old, and her talent is clear. The themes, too, are mature. The lyrics explore human conflict and selfishness through the lens of dreams the narrator keeps having: “No, we wouldn’t lift a finger for the lost ones / We wouldn’t give money to the poor / Our happiness has come in the shape of gold / And we forget what’s truly worth living for”.
It is almost as though her whole act arrived fully formed in her youth. Now 28, Aurora is an alt-pop powerhouse with six studio albums under her belt. She’s given her lilting voice to tracks with Tom Odell, Bring Me The Horizon and Sub Urban, just to name a few. But with her growing esteem and years, she still gracefully carries a childlike wonder, pitted with harsh realism.
The darker themes present in ‘I Had A Dream’ echo through her latest album, What Happened To The Heart?, where she continues to question the apathy that lets humans carry out violence against each other. Speaking to NME about the record earlier this year, Aurora stated that “apathy is the biggest enemy to progress”, especially in the context of so much global conflict.
When artists are pressured to comment on complex political or social issues, cynics often say they’re just jumping on the bandwagon, that they’re not informed enough to take a stance. But listening to ‘I Had A Dream’, you immediately understand that Aurora’s perspective on conflict is something she’s held onto since her childhood and goes far deeper than celebrity optics.
