Clara Mae

A onetime member of Ace of Base and songwriter for EDM acts like David Guetta and Tiësto, Swedish pop singer Clara Mae stepped forward with her first solo material in the mid-2010s. Featuring sleek electronic textures alongside youthful, yearning vocals, Clara Mae’s full-length debut, Drunk on Emotions, arrived in 2020.
Born in Gävle in 1991, Clara Mae Hagman developed an interest in music early in life, and by her teenage years she was competing in national singing competitions. In 2009, Hagman and another vocalist, Julia Williamson, were asked by Swedish mainstream pop legends Ace of Base to join the band, replacing founding members Jenny and Linn Berggren. Though Hagman completed one record with the band, 2010′s The Golden Ratio, her time in the group would be short-lived. A few years after joining, there was an abrupt halt to any communication from the founding members of the band, and Hagman and Williamson were left behind without a word as the re-formed Ace of Base silently disappeared.
Hagman quickly got to work on solo material, taking the stage name Clara Mae in 2014 and slowly releasing a string of singles. Her debut track, “Changing Faces,” materialized that year, followed the next year by “Avalon.” Meanwhile, she earned co-writing credits with the likes of David Guetta and Tiësto, and she hit the Top 30 of the Billboard dance/electronic chart with her featured spot on KREAM’s “Taped Up Hearts” in 2016. She returned with the piano-tinged electronic track “Strip” in 2017, a year before issuing her debut EP, Sorry for Writing All the Songs About You.
The singer made her second appearance in the Top 30 of Billboard’s Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart with early 2020′s “More Than OK,” a collaboration with R3hab and Frank Walker. Clara Mae’s first album, Drunk on Emotions, followed on Big Beat Records in August 2020. A pared-down version of the record, Drunk on Emotions (Stripped), saw release before the end of the year. ~ Fred Thomas & Marcy Donelson