For the Danish musician Mags, 2025 is gearing up to be the year of liberation, sex and sadness.
“This is my first album where I’m actually going to marry a woman that I’m engaged to and it feels radically honest to have a whole album about sapphic love,” Mags says, sitting behind a large blue painting in a Copenhagen café one chilly morning in August, as she readies her sophomore album “Herified,” out Friday.
The Danish musician Mags.
The album has been in the works for three years, undergoing numerous edits and cuts that have reflected Mags’ journey to accepting her queerness. The final product is a pop, indie-rock sound with eight catchy tracks. She wrote 80 songs for the album and in the final cull, she cut out two tracks from the album that had an undertone of resentment. This album, she clarifies, is about joy.
“I’m happy and gay, there’s nothing super tragic here,” Mags says.
She released the album’s title track “Herified” in October 2024 with an upbeat tempo that borrows elements from her musical hero Robyn. “I’m herified, I like the way you move and talk s–t, I can’t figure you out,” she sings on the track.
“The song and album name is about taking something passive and making it active, such as the noun ‘her,’” Mags says. “This album represents being active and coming out, coming together and [building a] community.”
Her other tracks include the tongue-in-cheek “Shakespeare Could Never,” which plays on the ridiculousness of love stories, where couples buy cats together and get married within two days of knowing each other; “I’m Not Crying Wolf” details Mags’ coming to terms with her sexuality, and “Blue,” which is about her asking her fiancé what her favorite color is and partly a nod to the 2013 queer coming-of-age film “Blue Is the Warmest Color.”
Mags is…