On “Pompeii,” Molly Nilsson delivers Extreme’s epic, heartbreaking moment. Written and recorded during lockdown, Pompeii symbolises the yearning lovers feel to live forever in a perfect moment in time in the face of impending doom. The desire to be frozen in an embrace, but to also escape it. “I’d say I love you but then I catch my breath, because whatever I love I always love it to death…” the lyrics of Pompeii are heavy with a transcendent sadness, an aching poetry that cuts to the truth like the best Leonard Cohen lines. Sung by Molly Nilsson, however, they’re laced with an uplifting love lit by the dying embers of a romance.
Pompeii was shot at the Olympia stadium in Berlin, November 2021.