A duet, not a leak or stray single
“Freak of Nature” is an officially released Broods recording featuring Swedish singer-songwriter Tove Lo. It arrived on June 24, 2016, as the sixth track on the New Zealand sibling duo’s second album, Conscious. Apple’s album listing identifies a 13-song Capitol Records release and gives the track a four-minute running time; its dedicated entry likewise names Tove Lo as the featured artist. Those records matter because search results and old pop-forum posts sometimes detach the song from the album, making it resemble a leaked collaboration or stand-alone single. It was neither. Apple Music documents its place on Conscious, while the individual track page confirms the feature.
Broods were Georgia and Caleb Nott: Georgia supplied the lead voice, while Caleb was the principal instrumentalist and production-minded half of the partnership. Tove Lo’s appearance was significant because Conscious marked the first time outsiders sang on Broods’ own recordings, according to contemporary coverage in The West Australian. The album also involved Lorde as a co-writer on “Heartlines,” but “Freak of Nature” was its unmistakable vocal collaboration—a dramatic exchange rather than a celebrity name pasted onto a remix.
From a private demo to Tove Lo’s verse
Broods gave an unusually clear account of the song’s development in an iHeartRadio track-by-track interview. Georgia said she and Caleb wrote it at home in New Zealand during a few days away from touring. They made a demo by themselves and then left it sitting unfinished, preserving the raw emotional character that had made them value it in the first place.
The connection with Tove Lo came later. Caleb recalled playing her several works in progress after they appeared at Montreal’s Osheaga festival. “Freak of Nature” was her favorite, so he asked her to sing on it. That recollection supplies the missing chronology: the Notts created the core song before Tove Lo became involved, and her performance grew out of an artist-to-artist encounter rather than a label-manufactured pairing.
Documented songwriting credits name Georgia Nott, Caleb Nott and Tove Lo, whose legal name is Tove Nilsson. Producer Alex Hope was brought in to develop the recording. The available album personnel also identify Hope on keyboards, programming and engineering, with Georgia on vocals and piano, Caleb on keyboards and backing vocals, and Tove Lo on vocals and engineering. The arrangement drew upon actual strings: Rachel Wells played cello, Iselta Alison viola, and Jessica Hindin and arranger Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper violin. Joel Little—Broods’ crucial early collaborator—contributed programming and keyboards, while Manny Marroquin handled the mix. The producer attribution is independently reflected in the New Zealand chart archive’s track entry.
That division of labor helps explain the song’s scale. It begins with the exposed gravity of a piano ballad, but it does not remain small. Electronic pressure, massed voices and strings accumulate until the arrangement feels almost physically overburdened. This description is musical interpretation, not a claim about the participants’ intent; what is sourced is that Broods wanted to retain the demo’s raw emotion and enlisted Hope to produce it.
Two voices inside the same fear
The title could suggest eccentricity as costume, but the song’s emotional center is more serious. Its narrators fear that their volatility, sensitivity or darkness will make intimacy impossible. Georgia described the subject as unusually heavy for pop and said performing or hearing the song could produce a powerful emotional release. That framing prevents a shallow reading of “freak” as fashionable rebellion. The word functions as self-accusation: the singer imagines herself as too complicated to love and asks whether another person can remain present.
Tove Lo is especially well chosen for that role. Her own mid-2010s work repeatedly joined blunt confession to immaculate pop construction, so her entrance does not simply provide contrast. Georgia’s clear, climbing delivery and Tove Lo’s rougher grain sound like two manifestations of the same internal argument. As interpretation, the duet can be heard less as a conversation between lovers than as solidarity between people who recognize the same damaging self-image.
The arrangement supports that reading. Quiet piano leaves each admission vulnerable; the later surge does not solve the anxiety so much as make it communal. When the voices overlap, the production turns private shame into something closer to an anthem. A 2016 New Zealand review called the track a tender ballad that recalled Broods’ earlier sound, while a later NME assessment described it as “hulking balladry”. Those apparently different descriptions capture its central tension: delicacy at the point of composition, enormity at the point of release.
Its place in the Conscious expansion
Conscious deliberately enlarged Broods’ palette beyond the sleek minimalism associated with their 2014 debut, Evergreen. Georgia and Caleb experimented with live instrumentation while continuing their relationship with Joel Little. In a pre-release profile, W Magazine noted both Little’s continuing influence and Tove Lo’s appearance. The result moved between industrial percussion, polished electropop and spacious ballads.
“Freak of Nature” is pivotal because it makes that expansion audible without abandoning the Notts’ emotional directness. The strings and heavyweight mix are new dimensions, but the song began in the siblings’ own room, with the kind of spare demo that might have belonged to their earlier period. Alex Hope’s production expands rather than disguises that foundation.
The album became Broods’ second New Zealand number one. Recorded Music New Zealand’s 2016 annual report lists Conscious among the year’s chart-topping albums, while the group’s AudioCulture profile records a No. 52 showing on the Billboard 200 and a US Alternative Albums top-ten position. AudioCulture also identifies “Freak of Nature” as a Tove Lo co-write and feature.
The track itself was not a conventional blockbuster single. It did not enter New Zealand’s main Top 40, although chart archives place it at No. 5 on the country’s Heatseeker listing. Triple J nevertheless included it in the broadcaster’s official 2016 Hottest 100 voting list, evidence that it circulated publicly as a recognized album recording rather than an obscure file.
Why the collaboration endures
“Freak of Nature” remains a revealing snapshot of both artists in 2016. Broods were testing how far their intimate electronic language could stretch, while Tove Lo had become one of pop’s most credible specialists in unsanitized feeling. Their shared authorship gave the guest performance narrative weight: she was not merely interpreting somebody else’s finished confession.
Its most durable achievement is structural. The song does not pretend that insecurity disappears after a sufficiently large chorus. Instead, its escalation makes room for it. That is interpretation, but it follows the documented path of the recording—from a raw sibling-made demo, through a chance backstage connection, to Alex Hope’s full-bodied production. “Freak of Nature” is therefore best understood not as a lost rarity or a Tove Lo single borrowed by Broods, but as an official Conscious deep cut whose guest voice completes the idea at its center: the frightening discovery that another person may understand the part of you that feels least understandable.