Becoming Rebecca & Fiona

The Swedish duo – Rebecca Scheja and Fiona Fitzpatrick – have been crafting EDM bangers for almost 15 years, cementing themselves as the go-to names for a good time. But, getting to their fourth album MEGA DANCE has been a journey.

Recounting the events to me today, the pair are currently entrenched in their unsurprisingly in-sync respective lives. While MEGA DANCE was being created, Fitzpatrick became pregnant and has since had her first child. During the latter stages of the recording process, Scheja also became pregnant. Fittingly these two fun-loving party-goers are entering their new chapters in the same way they began their journey – together: "We've survived a lot of boyfriends," exclaims Fitzpatrick joyfully.

Both were born to musician parents – Staffan Scheja and Greg Fitzpatrick respectively – with Scheja and Fitzpatrick meeting as teenagers back in 2007 at a house party. Bonding over a shared love of EDM, they eventually began entrenching themselves in the blossoming scene of their native country. While they respected the music, doing all they could to immerse themselves in the world, it wasn't until the club Scheja was working at as a promoter offered a chance to turn the theory into reality. Noticing there was a distinct lack of female representation in the scene, they seized the opportunity: "They gave us the afternoons in that club just to stay on the decks and try to work them out," Scheja recalls to me.

Piecing their skills together, they honed their craft at small shows where they'd DJ their favourite music, eventually finding all the pieces falling into place: "Even though we absolutely sucked at mixing or even controlling the sound," they laugh. "It started off as a fun thing to do with all this knowledge we had about the scene, and we realised pretty fast that [EDM] was missing something, and we were those people," Scheja defiantly recalls.

Making a mark on their native music scene over the course of three albums, the pair – now in their mid-30s – have won Swedish Grammis and also had their own TV documentary show, as well as support slots with the likes of Robyn and Avicii. Their breakthrough came in 2010 on the back of debut single "Luminary Ones". 2011 album I Love You, Man! and its 2014 follow-up Beauty Is Pain established their motives to be bombastic icons, with the former record as their EDM statement piece, while the latter was an exploration into the pop world that dulled the edges of their grander dance ambitions.

Throughout, the pair have consistently struck a portrait of glammed-up icons with an aura of power: they seem to be telekinetically and consistently on the same page. It's how they've managed to weather a journey that's chewed them up and spat them out where lesser artists would've crumbled.

The pair put this down to agreeing from the off how they'd conduct themselves. "We decided from the very beginning we were not gonna be competitive and we were not gonna fight because, I mean, obviously we're like sisters," Scheja explains. "We travel, we live together, we do everything together. But it's very important to decide on that, because you can find millions of small things to fight about all the time and all, and you get very frustrated in a creative process or travelling with someone, but we're doing this together."

Being able to figure out when issues are arising is where they find their strength. It also helps that the pair have achieved the kind of success that means they can leave their world behind and embrace normalcy – which they are doing today. Scheja is away in Greece currently, a last respite for the impending birth, while Fitzpatrick has snuck away after finally getting her baby to sleep as a close friend keeps guard. "You can recover from all of this weird experience that you get from touring or meeting people in the industry," explains Scheja. "So I think that helped a lot as well, and just trying to keep staying grounded to where we came from and what we're doing and how thankful we should be to be able to earn a living from making music. So I guess it's like keeping yourself very humble and thankful during the process of getting older in this industry as well."

Humbleness is an inherent trait in the pair but it's not the one they tote proudly. Referring to themselves as “capable, independent women”, that place is saved for their cocksure attitude. It's what the world fell for when they first appeared, and it's seen them in good stead since. "We had huge confidence, as many 20-somethings have," Fitzpatrick remembers. "We were very cocky in the start, and then we got humbled," she says referring to their earlier label woes. "And now I think we're cocky again because we feel very secure in what we were doing, and we're very thankful to be able to do it."

Their journey has given them a hard-earned wisdom, which comes with a touch of irony given their fourth album is such a full-throttle experience. MEGA DANCE is a throwback to the club classics of the '90s and '00s, carving out a space of their own with rapturously euphoric melodies with bombastic beats and soaring, heartfelt elegies. Released on their own label Big Romantic Music, it also includes an interpolation of Rozalla’s 90s club classic “Everybody’s Free”.

The pair's music is evoking a nostalgic whiff of darkened clubs from rose-tinted memories. Cuts like “J’adore NonStop” effortlessly clamber towards the sunrise aiming for a euphoric enlightenment. Even their personal lives couldn't dampen this spirit: "We had made a decision that this album was going to be so much energy. Our other albums always tend to be much more down tempo, more darker, because we make them at home and it's cold in Sweden. So we really wanted it to be power music, club slamming. I have to admit that sometimes being super pregnant, making music 140 BPM was a bit challenging!" Fitzpatrick laughs.

The reasoning behind this course of action in itself is rooted in classic Rebecca & Fiona defiance - or, more specifically, defying themselves. "At some point, we felt that music stagnated because almost everything that makes it through the blur of the 400,000 tracks that are released every day, or whatever it is, that it's a lot of covers," Fitzpatrick reckons. "Every time. Now Katy Perry does a new single, it's a cover, or it has the sample, and we're always struggling towards the water. So we felt it would be good for us to ride with the river for once and not try to be antagonist, because we're always making it so hard for ourselves.”

Likening it to “floating down a river”, it’s not a feeling that comes natural to the pair. “We had to really push each other, because we really want to be against what we will feel is simple or commercial or too easy," Fitzpatrick shrugs, as Scheja nods in affirmation. It's an album that refuses to quit – much like its creators.

Once upon a time, the pair were signed to Sony. It's a period that they reflect upon now as feeling very wrong. "No one knows anything about anything in the music industry, and it's just a big gamble," Fitzpatrick states. "It's very easy to get flattered when the big suits put on their show. And I guess it's the same for everyone. When you start getting invited to the big fancy parties, it's very easy to get flattered and lose yourself."

Recalling how the powers-that-be wanted to portray the pair as a "lesbian couple from Sweden making rock or something," they felt the essence of Rebecca & Fiona being "smashed into a wall". "It was exciting for a few minutes," remembers Scheja, "the idea of what they could do with our brand, but it took turn in the wrong direction, and we never had a goal to be in that position from from the beginning. It's always been touring, having fun, making the music that we like." While these trials may have been headaches, it's ultimately led to the pair being able to trust in themselves even further.

"We tried to figure out, what's the core of Rebecca and Fiona, like, why are we doing it? What makes it fun?" The pair haven't had a pause since they began, filling their calendars with tours, singles, EPs, and even a residency in Las Vegas at the Cosmopolitan's Marquee, explains Fitzpatrick: "We never split up or had another reunion or something. We've been touring constantly without a pause since 2009 so we had a little time to reflect. And I think we both landed in that the humour and ridiculousness in music is our core.

"It's even more important for us to play with it and not be so serious. Even if we always thought we were unserious and unpretentious, I think music becomes pretentious somehow, anyway because it's you talking about your feelings, your experiences. It is pretentious, but in the end now of the album, our latest track that we made, it's called 'Bubble Bass' and that's like exactly where we wanted to be with the humour and the party energy."

As for what the future looks like for Rebecca & Fiona now MEGA DANCE is in the world, and their party-hardy album is meeting them at a crucial point in their lives? Well, there's only one thing for it: "We're longing to play clubs in Europe. We really miss playing nightclubs in Europe!" Fitzpatrick exclaims. Seemingly a lifetime of mindless shows and creativity-reducing residencies still fresh in her mind, Scheja adds, "For music-interested people, that's the baseline of what we're doing here. We have so much more music in the making that we didn't put on the album. Even when their babies are grown up and taking care of themselves, the pair are gleeful in the idea that “We're just going to continue releasing stuff."

Rebecca & Fiona are unstoppable. Theirs is a journey that has always attempted to make the best of any situation. MEGA DANCE is the celebration the pair have needed, and it's the most rousingly pumped up they've ever sounded. "We've been struggling hard, obviously, as women in this industry and tried a lot of different setups, with management, labels, blah, blah, blah, touring all around the world,” says Scheja. They’re back to where they started. “We can do this ourselves. We don't need anyone, and we should always make the music for ourselves. It's been a fun ride." And one that looks to not be slowing down anytime soon.