“What do you think, why did people find my performance provocative?” Singer Robin Miriam Carlsson (Stockholm, 1979) answers the question fearlessly. The conversation turns to her recent TV appearance at The Late Show – a popular American talk show by presenter Stephen Colbert.
Since her debut, Swedish Robyn has been used to positive reactions. While still very young, she had instant success in 1995 with the songs ‘Do You Know (What it Takes)’ and ‘Show Me Love’, both top ten hits in the US. Fifteen years later ‘Dancing on my Own (from the album Body Talk Pt. 12010) even a pop classic in clubs, at weddings, in baseball stadiums and karaoke bars. And then suddenly there was negative commotion, following that one performance The Late Show on January 7. The New York Post devoted a long article to itwhich recalls how Robyn and the title song of her first album in eight years were fiercely mocked. A 46-year-old singer dressed in red leather pants and a gold Versace vest sings about casual sex while she is pregnant – is that allowed, is that possible? “Vicarious shame,” said one response. And: “The world has only become a worse place because of this new song.”
Robyn can now laugh about it from her Swedish living room. “I thought: Huh, what’s going on here!? The majority of the reactions were fantastic, but there were indeed also fans who found my performance embarrassing and provocative.”
Earwigs
Robyn’s entire ninth album, titled Sexistentialwas released on Friday, March 27. This was the reason for pop star Harry Styles to ask her to provide the support act for his ten sold-out stadium shows in the Johan Cruyff Arena in May and June of this year.
It was also the title song that she sang, against many expectations The Late Show. It was expected that ‘Talk To Me’ would be the new song that has already been widely picked up by the radio. Before that, she worked again with Max Martin, the songwriter and hit producer who was also involved in Robyn’s debut in the 1990s. But ‘Sexistential’ turned out to be a completely different song. Different from ‘Talk To Me’ and also different from the rest of the songs on the new album. Not a poppy earworm full hooks that immediately stick, but a cold-sounding club track to which Robyn deliberately raps woodenly.
The theme they use in ‘Sexistential’ also requires a less light-hearted approach. It is about her IVF process, the stress of pregnancy tests, the drastic hormone therapies that turned her body ‘into a spaceship’, and the one-night stands she had when she was ten weeks pregnant. And yet ‘Sexistential’ in Robyn’s hands also a funny and confident song.
That song was about the feeling of control, she says. Or rather: for the appearance of control. “You think you have it, but you don’t have it. Not even in the entire IVF process. That insight ultimately put all other songs on the album in a different light. Control is an illusion, I noticed.”
The fuss over Robyn’s performance The Late Show was whipped by The New York Post – one of the conservative newspapers in the US. Is a consciously single mother perhaps simply seen as a threat by some? Robyn thinks about it for a moment. “Single parenthood is complicated for everyone. My song is not at all an advertisement for IVF, which is a privilege if you can consciously choose it. But indeed, it can also be seen as a statement against the prevailing norm of the classical family.”
Dopamine and dates
Sexistential was the album’s joking working title from the start. And one that, when it was completed, turned out to be exactly what it was supposed to be. It is not a record about parenthood, Robyn emphasizes again. No, it is about the period just before that: as a musical testimony to a phase of life in which sexuality and sensuality collide hard with data, efficiency and science. There goes the song ‘Dopamine’ also about it, she says. “As a happiness hormone, it is concrete and measurable. But the feeling you get from it, the euphoria, is elusive. For me, between those two realities is the freedom, the harmony with which you would always want to live.”
The songs op Sexistential should not sound too complicated, Robyn explains. The clashing themes had to be cast in minimalist productions. This makes the album sound both airy and physical. There are thumping synthesizers, the occasional digital fragment that threatens to get stuck in stuttering electronic chaos, but each time a fresh pop melody or chorus emerges as Robyn has been writing them for almost thirty years.
“If you expect songs to just be thrown into your lap, nothing happens
“I don’t like it when there are many layers on top of each other. That ultimately makes writing much more difficult. Every element has to work. You sometimes have to keep polishing a song for years, because you know there is something in it.”
Endless planing
Also Sexistential contains songs she chewed on for many years. The melancholic ‘Sucker for Love’, for example, was written in a different form for a session with dance duo Röyksopp. Robyn worked on it for more than ten years. That also applied to ‘Dopamine’. ‘Blow My Mind’ was even released in 2002, but is now in its final form.
“If you expect songs to just be thrown into your lap, nothing happens. The creation is often very complex. The process forces me towards the unexpected and even confronts me with cringing places within myself. But only if you open yourself up to that, you get music that offers new perspectives. Just like irony in a joke suddenly makes you look at something differently.”
