Tove Lo

Water claims four of her ten planets and earth only one, with three in fire and two in air. Water registers everything in the room and earth is what would hold a fixed shape against it, so there is very little here that resists being affected. Tove Lo is a Swedish singer and songwriter, which in that country is a trade with a disproportionate export record and a reputation for writing other people's hits as well as her own.

Four planets group across twenty degrees of Scorpio: the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Pluto. Scorpio does nothing by halves and does not soften anything on the way out. Identity, speech, taste and concentrated force all stationed in the one sign that refuses to be tactful is the structural account of a songwriter whose material is direct to the point of being uncomfortable, and who has never pretended otherwise.

Venus sits at an awkward angle to Jupiter at eight hundredths of a degree, as tight as anything in the chart: what she values permanently out of step with the planet of excess. The Sun makes easy contact with Neptune at just over a fifth, identity on good terms with image. Mercury was retrograde at her birth, and Mercury is also square the Moon at four fifths, which keeps speech and feeling slightly misaligned. In a songwriter whose lyrics are blunter than the form usually allows, taste out of step with excess is the editorial judgement that keeps it from tipping over.

Jupiter finished where it began in Aries, on 18 April 2023, at thirty five, in reverse at both ends of the lap. Aries is the sign of whatever is begun, so the planet of reach returning there asks what was started rather than what was completed. Three circuits precede it, and a catalogue of songs written for other people as well as herself is the kind of output that question suits. Her Moon sits at the start of Aquarius at noon and may have been in Capricorn, so the private half is open between standing apart and keeping account.