Robyn saw an article on MTV’s website the other week that got her wondering about her new disc’s prospects for success. “This guy was really giving props to the album,” the Swedish singer says, “but he was also saying it’s not going to work because Americans are not ready for it. I don’t know if that’s the case in Canada, too. It’ll be interesting to see.”
Interesting is an understatement. Few recent albums have had the dramatic birth or eventful life that Robyn’s self-titled fourth disc has already enjoyed. In the three years since it was first released in her native land — where the diminutive blond was born Robin Miriam Carlsson 28 years ago and began a music career a mere 13 years later — the album mounted a slow but steady conquest of Europe. Meanwhile, over in America, songs that circulated online won over not just the tastemakers at the usual mags and sites but Perez Hilton, too. Calling her “the most inspiring force in pop music right now,” the gossip king plugs her music on a near-daily basis.
While the disc may have lost some of that samizdat appeal now that it’s arrived in official form, it still sounds very special. At once on the vanguard with its unusually stark musical aesthetic and traditional with its strongly melodic pop songcraft, the songs on Robyn also retain a fierce emotional pull, the product of the tumultuous circumstances of their creation.
“I think that’s what’s keeping the album alive,” she says in a phone interview from the UK, where the album became a major success last year. “The songs are still relevant to me and luckily to other people as well. The music’s been spreading really quickly over the internet and I’m just happy to go wherever the album is going. And I’m pleased with being able to do things my own way this time.”
Some of the recent converts to Robyn’s cause may not know there was a last time. As a teenager, she had major hits in the US in 1997 with “Show Me Love” and “Do You Know (What It Takes),” two irresistibly spunky productions by Max Martin and the late Denniz Pop, the Swedish team who helped launch the careers of the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC and Britney Spears.
Though Robyn joined those stars on Jive in 2002, the label’s scheme to recast her in their mould did not sit well with her. Her relationship with BMG in Sweden soon soured as well. As she began work on what would become Robyn, she realized she couldn’t do it for a major record company “because I knew I would be stopped.” Says Robyn now, “I would have to compromise at a certain point — I just didn’t want to do that.”
She’d already written “Who’s That Girl,” the song that would set her on a new course. Indeed, when she played it for the people at Jive, they didn’t like it at all. “They didn’t think it was pop music,” says Robyn. “They thought it was too weird. I kind of kept that song in my back pocket.”
By chance, she found in her mailbox an album by a Swedish act whose music was worlds apart from the R&B-influenced pop that Robyn had traded in up until that point. But Deep Cuts, the second album by eerie electro duo The Knife, made a deep impression. “I just fell in love with this music,” she says. “I thought it was brave and I felt like I could connect with their way of looking at what pop music can be.
“I was brought up in a theatre family and my parents were always very experimental. I related to this way of working, to telling stories and communicating with people but not doing it in a way that underestimates your audience. I liked the idea of being able to take something as commercial or mainstream as pop music into a different area where you can challenge people again. You can make it something that goes deeper than just a song you hear on the radio or whatever.”
She asked the duo to collaborate on “Who’s That Girl.” The pairing of The Knife’s stark synths and brutish beats with Robyn’s big voice and pop smarts resulted in something vital. The strident lyrics also express her desire to escape from the shiny happy image that had been cultivated for her. And though she was already thinking about starting an independent label, she says that seeing what The Knife were able to do on their own “was still a kick in the butt.” Robyn’s label Konichiwa Records was founded shortly thereafter.
On further collaborations with Klas Ahlund of Swedish techno-punkers Teddybears, Stockholm house producer Andreas Kleerup and Alexander Kronlund — who, as the co-writer of “Lucky,” was another of Britney’s Swedish connections — she continued to push in fresh directions. Yet whether the songs were as melancholy as “With Every Heartbeat” or as playfully odd as “Konichiwa Bitches,” they shared an emphasis on pop’s first principles. “One of those things that people do connect to very instantly is a good melody,” says Robyn. “I don’t know if that’s the simplest but the most direct way to communicate with people through music. It doesn’t take the long route into people’s awareness — it goes straight in there. Then you can use the lyrics in a different way.”
Yet as supporters over here have been worrying, North American listeners may have less appreciation for such an experimental approach to pop music than Robyn’s European fans. “That has to do a lot with radio,” she notes. “The big media channels very much do the thinking for people.” Another factor is that Europeans have never been so hung up on matters of authenticity or purity as those who hail from the birthplace of so many of modern music’s key components.
“There’s so much amazing music in America and a lot of the big movements started there,” says Robyn. “In Europe, we don’t have that same history other than in our own traditional music, but I think that also created a situation in which people are really open to other genres of music. When I was growing up and hip-hop was starting to make its way over to Europe, it got mixed with club music. Those songs still made it into the Top 40 — everything from Neneh Cherry to Technotronic was played on the radio. That wouldn’t be considered obvious pop music even today.”
She thinks the same conditions might apply to the bustling Swedish music scene of today. “Whether it’s The Hives or The Knife or The Sounds, they’re all pop bands but they’ve taken something that isn’t Swedish at all and made it their own. We consume so much American culture, so much stuff that isn’t made in Sweden, but then we put our own twist on it and turn it into something else.”
While it remains to be seen what will come of her album’s very-long-awaited arrival, Robyn’s satisfied with what she’s already accomplished. “I’m really happy people are getting into it,” she says. “And they’re doing it without me having to change anything.”