The pandemic brought about a new sense of normalcy and forced all of us to find new ways to communicate with one another from inside our homes. We all became familiar with new terms and phrases like “super-spreader” and “remote learning.” Another popular phrase brought about by gen z during this time period was “do you listen to Girl In Red?” While the phrase itself may seem like a straightforward question to connect through a popular artist at the time, for queer women around the world, this simple question developed into a coded way of communicating identities.

Twenty-four year old Marie Ulven is a Norwegian musician who came to fame with hit songs such as “girls” and “we fell in love in october.” She is better known under her stage name, “Girl In Red,” and for her songwriting, which focuses on her experiences and identity as a queer woman. Girl In Red was gaining popularity as an artist at the same time as the now popular social media app, TikTok, during the height of the pandemic. During this time, people created community through social media comment sections. By commenting “do you listen to Girl In Red,” women in the queer community were hardly interested in each other’s music taste, but rather were interested in whether or not the woman they were asking identified as queer. 

The coining of this new phrase garnered an undoubted amount of attention for Girl In Red as she began gaining followers on streaming services and social media platforms very quickly. Nearly three years later, in November of 2022, Girl In Red was named as one of the nine artists selected to perform as openers for Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour,” garnering even more attention for the Norwegian indie artist. As of October 2023, Girl In Red has a total of 15.5M monthly listeners on Spotify and her top track, “we fell in love in october,” totals a whopping 782,430,186 plays on Spotify. Girl In Red is not only a highly grossing artist in the music industry, but acts as an inspiration and role model for young queer women as they come into their own identities and experience their first queer relationships.