International pressing of the worldwide #1 album from this
Swedish songstress features the same tracklisting as the UK
edition and contains one bonus track over the Swedish edition
('With Every Heartbeat'). Robin Miriam Carlsson AKA Robyn is a
Swedish pop singer-songwriter and is widely known in her home
country. Robyn was known in the late '90s for her dance-pop hits
"Show Me Love" and "Do You Know (What it Takes)". She has since
started to gain mainstream success in the United Kingdom again,
due to the massive critical and commercial success of her single
"With Every Heartbeat". Universal. 2008.
About the Artist
----------------
She is Robyn. The most killingest pop star on the planet. A
pint-sized atom bomb dosed to the hilt on electric and dispensing
wisdom in three-minute modernist pop bulletins on the
post-adolescent condition. `Robyn' is also a collection of
ultra-concise pop moments - that rarest of things, a classic pop
album. It's a sad-eyed, super-strong battery of nuclear-powered
pop that, along with her arresting voice, are her lethal weapons.
Robin Miriam Carlsson was born in Stockholm in 1979. She spent
the first seven years of her life touring with her director
her and actress mother in their Constructivist-inspired
theatre company. At the age of 14 she was discovered by Swedish
pop singer Meja when singing a sad, self-written song about her
parents' divorce in a school workshop and was immediately signed
to BMG. A debut album of R&B-influenced pop in 1995 saw her
paired with future Britney-hitwrangler Max Martin, and the global
success of the sweet, soulful single `Show Me Love' in 1997
cemented Robyn as an bonified pop star. Shellshocked by the lack
of artistic control offered by her label, however, Robyn migrated
to a sister company for her third album, but felt disillusioned
by their attempt to ship her to America to be shoehorned into the
pre-fabricated boy-toy template that was depressingly omnipotent
in 2002.
"I think the third record I made was a big compromise," she says.
"I felt like it wasn't fun anymore. Once you make the record and
you give it to the record company, it's not your record anymore!
And I hated that situation. "I was going backwards. I wasn't
doing what I wanted to."
In 2003, Robyn returned home, defeated, to Stockholm. Upon
returning, she stumbled across a new CD by a mysterious local
brother-sister duo. The CD, titled `Deep Cuts', was a passionate,
hallucinatory reading of pop music carved from geometric blocks
of pure texture. Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer called
themselves The , and with `Deep Cuts' they had sketched a
blueprint for a kind of abstract future pop. "I was amazed by
it," ps Robyn. "I thought it was the best thing I'd heard in
years. I just felt like wow this is really what I've always been
looking for - and not only was it good, it was Swedish."
Energised by the potential atom-splitting that could occur if she
harnessed her own piercingly honest pop to The 's
uncompromising, peculiarly Swedish energy source, Robyn
approached Karin and Olof to work on a potential single. The
result was `Who's That Girl' - unquestionably one of the freshest
pop moments of the past five years. Injecting herself into the
very heart of The 's towering, architectural synthpop - a
shifting, interlocking grid of color and beats, hard enough to
break your fists on - Robyn emptied all of her frustration,
insecurity and desperation. The lyrics, specifically, railed
against her contractual purgatory, but `Who's That Girl's loaded
despair resonates powerfully with anyone - any girl left beaten
by the capriciousness of gender or image politics. In the song,
Robyn soars. Her anger is rocket fuel for the titanium-strong
music which encases her, projects her, makes her indestructible.
Although Robyn had always written songs, this stark piece of
brutalist pop should be considered The First Robyn Song.
Unbelievably, her label hated it. "They just thought it was
weird," sighs Robyn. "They just didn't understand it. I guess
they didn't consider it to be pop music, which I think is crazy.
It's TOTALLY pop music! Modern, inventive music - that's what pop
music should try to be."
Exasperated to the point of resignation, Robyn looked to how her
new comrades Karin and Olof self-financed and released their
work. In a completely unprecedented move for a mainstream pop
artist, Robyn bought herself off her label. "So then I was free
but I was not really happy to go back and sign with a major label
again. It was totally illogical. Why would I do that? I felt like
either I quit making music or I start my own record company." Six
months later, Robyn was CEO and founder of Konichiwa Records. In
her back pocket she had `Who's That Girl', the opening song for a
new album that would be her story. She also had a new sidekick.
Klas Åhlund is the main man behind Teddybears, Stockholm's
amazing bricolage pop group who have variously been fronted by
Annie and Neneh Cherry, Iggy Pop and Mad Cobra. "I'd never
thought we were gonna work together, cos what Teddybears do is...
boy music." Robyn giggles. "I didn't think he could embrace a
girl perspective." Nevertheless, the first thing Klas brought to
the Konichiwa table was the basic frame for a song depicting
intense unrequited love, that Robyn would color in with every
kind of craving. In `Be Mine!,' every word that Robyn sings -
`It's a good thing tears never show in the pouring rain/As if a
good thing ever can make up for all the pain' - sounds like it's
being crumpled up and clutched to her chest. In the bridge, the
`song' just falls clean away, leaving a spoken word Polaroid that
chews at your heart: "I saw you at the station. You had your arm
around whatsername. She had on that f I gave you, and you got
down to tie her laces. You looked happy - and that's great. I
just miss you, that's all."
"I wanted to feel like I was 15 or 16 again, and big emotions
were REALLY BIG. Y'know, if you were in love you were IN LOVE and
if you were heartbroken you were HEARTBROKEN! "Cos that's what
people want music to be for them," explains Robyn. "I know I do
when I listen to music."
The sparse production to `Be Mine!' makes its simplicity all the
more brutal. Just strings that slice in, all ps and sighs, and
a flutter of drum machine that emulates a racing pulse. "I still
wanted to write pop music," affirms Robyn. "I wanted it to be
simple, I wanted it to be sparse, and I wanted it to be hard."
Robyn may now be the kickingest label CEO around, but she was out
on a limb here. A lifetime's earnings had been ploughed into a
dream. The conflict of liberation and anxiety about the project,
as well as galvanizing Robyn, seemed to polarize her character.
One half of `Robyn' is all hip-thrusting-fuck-you-cool, but in
the gentle suite of ballads that wind everything down there is a
smaller, sadder Robyn. "I'm a Gemini maybe that's what it is!"
she excls. "Because I am this very outgoing person people
think that I'm always sure what I'm gonna do, which I'm not! I
always question myself! The perfect example is `Konichiwa
Bitches'. That song was made because I was so ed! I was like
ARGH what am I DOING? I had to like bang my chest and go RAR! I'm
the shit! I'm the best girl in the world!" `Konichiwa Bitches' is
Robyn's signature tune. Over pixellated hip-pop beats, Robyn
unloads like a manga Missy Elliott. Its biggest inspiration was
Bugs Bunny, and the way he'd totally front on Yosemite Sam with
big-ass ACME boxing gloves. Robyn describes it as "a concentrate
of attitude. It's like a baby ninja! Like really dangerous but
really small and cute! It's like a child with a huge machine
." It kicks your face. It's Robyn.
What `Robyn' really represents is the story of one ass-kicking
little blonde woman who blasted through the industry b.s. and
made a startling, profound, honest pop music all of her own. It
is music with one message - Be your own star.
