[3] In 2011, she participated in the Swedish television show Så mycket bättre, which sees a number of artists create new interpretations of the others' songs.

She signed an international deal with Island Records in January 2014, leading to the release of the Boom EP and a number of songwriting and production credits for artists including Shawn Mendes, Adam Lambert, Demi Lovato, and Ellie Goulding.

[10] Laleh was born in the Northern Iranian harbour town of Bandar-e Anzali, but fled the country in 1983 with her parents to live in Azerbaijan, and later moving on to Minsk and a refugee camp in Tidaholm.

[2] Laleh (لاله) is the Persian word for tulip, a popular girl's name[11] as well a common symbol in Iranian culture.

An opponent of the Islamic regime in Tehran, he was an artist, journalist and prominent Iranian ethnologist and rural sociologist from Bandar-e Anzali.

[2] Laleh's mother, Atefe, was a refugee from Georgia via Azerbaijan before she went to Iran to study comparative literature at the University of Tehran.

Until 2011 she was known for her reluctance to give interviews,[2] but more recently she has been more accessible to the media, including appearing on talk shows and other TV programs, a move that has benefited her career.

[17] It became the highest selling album of the year with a recorded seventy-one weeks in the top sixty and reached number one on the Swedish chart.

Unlike its predecessor which won numerous awards, Prinsessor, was met with mixed reviews from Swedish critics, who saw the album as far too sprawling and sensed a loss of her "uniqueness".

It contained a more folk pop sound than previous rock or soul-tinged tracks which has been attributed to the surroundings of moving from a big city to the northern Swedish town of Skellefteå in 2006.

[28] Due to strong downloads from the album, the first track from the LP, "Big City Love", also charted at number thirty-two.

During these years, Laleh toured in several Scandinavian countries, Britain and Germany but has previously hinted that she is hesitant to launch overseas, saying she wants to be more prepared and develop fully as an artist.

She participated along with Timbuktu, Eva Dahlgren, Lena Philipsson, E-Type, Tomas Ledin and Mikael Wiehe and soon emerged as the favourite with her cover versions regularly topping the Swedish iTunes download charts and the official Sverigetopplistan downloads chart following the release of the weekly compilations of the week's covers from the show.

[38] The song became closely associated with the period of national mourning amidst the 2011 Norway attacks, with newspaper articles, university lectures and a number of fan videos to this effect emerging.

A tour to promote the album included fifteen dates across Sweden between March and April 2012,[42] and one event in Oslo, Norway.

[45] In interviews before the album, she stated her intention to challenge herself to create a more cohesive record that didn't spread as much as previous productions.

[47] In the autumn of 2014, the documentary Jag är inte beredd att dö än (I am not ready to die yet) premiered in cinemas.

[48] The film, directed by Fredrik Egerstrand and Kalle Gustafsson Jerneholm, is a 75-minute long portrait of Laleh's music, background, relationship with their mother and thoughts about life and creation.

The album's lead single, "Bara få va mig själv" ("Just be myself"), became Laleh's most successful release in Sweden, gaining 4× Platinum certification.

Laleh has explained that the intention of the new company is to create a producer/songwriter hub supporting other Swedish artists, in particular women who are under-represented in pop music production.

[69] The concert, which featured orchestration from the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, was broadcast on SVT1 on 2 January 2023 and made available on SVT Play on 28 December 2022.

[72] In the summer of 2023, Laleh will go on tour for the first time in four years, with a further concert at the Ullevi, alongside a similarly historic show at Tele2 Arena in Stockholm, once again becoming the first Swedish female solo act to headline at the venue.