It’s no overstatement to say that a lot of today’s pop music would not sound the way it does without Robyn. Her self-titled 2005 album and its follow-up “Body Talk” paved the way for and contextualized a genre once called “intellipop” — a cringe and condescending term that has aged very badly, but also points up the low regard in which pop music was held two decades ago, and the degree to which it has come to be accepted as an innovative art form rather than high-calorie junk food. There’s no question that songs by artists from Taylor Swift to Charli xcx to Ariana Grande, not to mention entire genres like hyper-pop, would not sound the same without her.
While the music on those two albums wasn’t galaxies away from the world-beating hits being made by fellow Swedes like Denniz Pop and Max Martin (who co-produced Robyn’s first hits, “Show Me Love” and “Do You Know What It Takes” in the early, more conventional pop-star era of her career), Robyn’s songs had a low-key vibe and inspiration from electronic and dance music, giving them a sophisticated sheen that appealed to an audience older and snootier than the target demo of most pop. The fact that she’d left the hit factories and major labels, taken control of the recording of her albums and launched her own label only made the alternative set love her more.
So with her status as a pop icon — if not goddess — long since assured, what’s left for Robyn to prove or say as she enters the fourth decade of her career? Well, unexpectedly, at the age of 46 and two years after becoming a single mother, her image and lyrics are much more sexually oriented than ever before — she’s naked or topless on the album cover and promotional photos; and the album’s title track, which is described in the press materials as “possibly the world’s first rap about having one-night stands while 10 weeks pregnant after IVF” (we can’t improve on that) and includes the priceless lyrics “I’m about to have a kid on my own/ My doctor said, ‘Robyn, who would be your dream donor?’/ ‘Well Adam Driver always did kinda give me a boner,” and later “My body’s a spaceship with the ovaries in hyperdrive/ Got a whole universe that exists between my thighs.”
Yet musically as well, that song, with its rapped lyrics and hard beats, is unlike anything else on the album, which overall is similar in vibe to its predecessor, 2018’s “Honey.” That’s not to say she’s repeating herself: Dig deeper into the sound, and the progressions become clearer. Again paired with longtime collaborator Klas Åhlund (joined by Max Martin and Oscar Holter for two songs and Addison Rae collaborator Elvira Anderfjärd for one), the beats are paradoxically harder and more restrained, and the arrangements are meticulously constructed, with arpeggiated electronics and her gorgeously multitracked vocals soaring over them.
But there’s a sense of restraint and suspense on the album that, on some songs, has little release, like glorious drum roll leading into the final choruses of Robyn’s biggest hit, “Dancing on My Own.” The lead single “Dopamine” is a prime example, riding the electronic kick drum for its first three minutes before bursting open with a snare roll — but the song lasts only another 30 seconds before it fades out, conveying desire and anticipation but little fulfillment. That sense of restraint is present on much of “Sexistential” — maybe she’s tired of the confetti-bomb finales of so many of her greatest songs, but for an album so thoroughly about sex and sensuality, some songs don’t really climax.
Yet that’s a minor complaint — apart from the title track, “Sexistential” is an album that reveals itself gradually, with elements like the freeform melody of “It Don’t Mean a Thing” and the way it dances over the pulsating electronics suddenly becoming clear on the second or fifth or tenth listen. And considering how long Robyn takes to make records — this is her first album in nearly eight years — music that keeps giving is a welcome thing.
variety.com
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