This is Robin S with her 1993 US top five hit “Show Me Love”.
It's one of the greatest house-pop songs ever.
Just to make things clear this is not Robyn with a “y”.
The Swedish pop sensation who also had a 1990s top ten hit with a song called “Show Me Love”.
The latter Robyn is one of the most important
pop stars of the last three decades. Any female pop artist to have survived and thrived into
their thirties is an impressive feat, most being chewed out after their first album.
But Robyn got chewed out, and then went on to do better than ever. She went from pop
puppet to critically acclaimed indie `darling. As The Guardian clickbait-titled their 2018 article:
“Robyn transformed pop music”, and they aren't wrong. Everyone from Britney
Spears to Taylor Swift, Charli XCX and Ariana Grande have taken bits
and pieces from Robyn's sound, persona and work-ethic. All this plus, Robyn's “Dancing
on My Own” is one of the most perfect pop singles of the twenty-tens. But who is Robyn?
How did she get here? And how did a 30-something Euro-pop artist outdo the greatest faces and
producers in modern pop?
Robyn was discovered and vetted for pop stardom at the age of 14.
After two years of “development”, which is industry-speak for shaping her image,
persona and star potential, Robyn released her debut, the teen Rn'B of Robyn is Here.
It was a success when released in her native Sweden in 1995, gaining a double platinum
certification. The album was then released in the US in 1997, where she gained two Billboard top ten singles.
But before her international success, US record label Jive Records had tried to sign her,
but she rejected the offer. Somewhat slighted, Jive Records felt that if they couldn't have Robyn,
they'd create their own. According to John Seabrook's book The Song Machine,
the head of Jive hoped their fifteen-year-old newly signed Britney Spears “could be an
American Robyn – a Europop teen queen, with an added dash of girl-next-door.”
And to achieve this, they stole the man who had written Robyn's hits.
As much as Robyn was the spunky presence and voice on these tracks, the perceived genius
behind the scenes was up-and-coming pop producer and songwriter, Max Martin.
Robyn had been his vehicle into international success, after having shown himself to have an ear for a
hook in Sweden. In the years immediately after “Show Me Love”, which he wrote with Denniz Pop, he penned
To quote pop historian Todd in the Shadows:
[“What I remember about teen pop in 1999, the Max Martin-sound was
that it was incredibly forceful and in your face.
It was like a tank rolling through your city, unstoppable.”]
Twenty years later, Martin has the third most writing credits on US Number 1 singles
behind only Paul McCartney and John Lennon. These hits include:
But this isn't Martin's story. In her pop guise, Robyn released two more albums. In 1999 the
introspective My Truth went platinum in her home country, but was not released outside
of Sweden due to two songs being about the abortion the singer had in Autumn 1998.
Then in 2002 having given in and signed to Jive, she collaborated with Martin once more for
her Don't Stop the Music album. The process for that was difficult, she and Martin rarely
seeing eye-to-eye, Robyn believing that she was being forced into a Christina Aguilera-shaped hole.
A hole that she had helped make exist five years previous. It was also went platinum
but was not released internationally. At this point, due to label issues, exhaustion and
lack of control with her pop destiny, Robyn considered stopping altogether.
"So now, it's time to get sad."
In 2003, Robyn left Jive Records.
The same year she'd discovered the electronica brother-sister duo The Knife, and became obsessed with them,
and the fact that their two albums had been self-released by their own label.
Coming from her pop major-label background, this idea was revolutionary. She could do this.
She founded Konichiwa Records in 2004 and began work on her first independent release,
the self-titled Robyn. For this album she had full creative control and the teen Rn'B
of her early releases was replaced with slinky synth-pop. Her main collaborators for this
album would be Klas Ahlund of Swedish indie band The Teddybears,
as well as Karin and Olof Dreijer from The Knife. One of the first tracks brought to her from Ahlund would shape
the album and Robyn's image from this moment on. The heartbroken fembot first made herself
known on “Be Mine!”. On its original demo, “Be Mine!” was an
indie rock tune with guitars not unlike Al-lund's work with The Teddybears.
Robyn was drawn to the track's title, which she felt was evocative of one of her key influences, Prince,
and his track “When You Were Mine”.
But the guitar didn't fit who she wanted to be.
Robyn showed Ahlund the song “Cloudbusting” by her other formative influence, Kate Bush
and asked whether instead of guitar it could be replaced with strings.
The song tells the story of a break up, Robyn's protagonist
dealing with the loss of a relationship whereas her former lover has moved on. The content
is classic pop fare, but where it rises above is in the details.
The spoken word bridge features the following line:
The mundane heartbreak of it all.
Pitchfork described it thusly: “'Be Mine' is a disarming heartbreaker perfectly
poised between twee and tuff, like if Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley [of Saint Etienne] and
the Neptunes got trapped in Jeff Goldblum's Fly pods.”
The album, Robyn, despite being self-released, would be a huge hit, becoming her first Swedish
number one album when it was released in 2005. Despite its staggered release meaning that
it would not be released internationally until 2007,
Pitchfork placed the album at number 39 on their best albums of 2005 list.
Previously indie snobs Pitchfork had very rarely covered pop music,
their only notable pop review before Robyn was Kylie Minogue's 2002 Fever album,
again a pop star that, in American eyes at least, had come back to prominence after a decade away.
Pitchfork's review of Robyn was the start of a trend in the elite music press.
Pop and hip-hop music was beginning to be seen to be as worthy of professional critique as the
rock music that was dominant at the time. An important document in the acceptance of
pop critique was Kelefa Sanneh's article in the New York Times: “Stop pretending that
serious rock songs will last forever, as if anything could, and that shiny pop songs are
inherently disposable, as if that were necessarily a bad thing. Van Morrison's “Into the Music”
was released the same year as the Sugarhill Gang's “Rapper's Delight; which do you hear
more often?” This trend was called Poptimism, and its first strains in the British music
press NME, The Guardian etc. coincided with the weirder, more adventurous pop being created
by UK-based producers Xenomania
and Richard X.
And Robyn was right at the centre of it.
In 2010 Robyn released her Body Talk project. Seeing the recent change in the way that people
were consuming music, Robyn had decided that instead of releasing a single album, she would
release three mini-albums, making it so that her new music was drip-fed to her fans over a year.
Part one was released in June 2010 and includes perhaps her most iconic song, “Dancing On My Own”.
[““Dancing On My Own” was one of those things where the melody,
and the rhythm and the some of the words came at the same time.”]
“Dancing On My Own” was co-written with Swedish producer Patrik Berger.
While having written for the British version of Robyn, Billie in the earlier 2000s,
“Dancing On My Own” was his breakthrough, going on to write with Charli XCX, Lana Del Rey and Santigold.
What first hits you with the song is its pounding drilling pulse-like beat.
Robyn has stated that the original demo version of “Dancing On My Own” sounded not unlike Scottish indie rock band Glasvegas.
There's obvious influence from disco classics like Donna Summer's “I Feel Love” in that unstoppable percussive throb,
also from the relentless synth-line from Prince's “I Would Die 4 U”,
but with a much darker vibe recalling the more moody Depeche Mode songs.
The thematic underpinning of drama on the
dancefloor recalls everything from “How Soon Is Now?” to ABBA's “Dancing Queen”.
Robyn stated in an interview with Popmatters that the song comes from “her love of inherently
sad, gay disco anthems such as Ultravox’s 'Dancing With Tears in My Eyes',
Sylvester
and Donna Summer.”
All of these are clear influences but it sounds completely its own. When that beat starts, it can't be confused for anything else.
Thematically the song recalls “Be Mine!” in that it is a song sang about lost love
that obsesses with the movement and continuation of the ex's life without her.
“Be Mine!”'s Robyn sees them at the station, hidden in the crowd. But With “Dancing On My Own”,
she's dancing her heart out, trying desperately to be seen. As the chorus says:
Robyn has stated that the emotions of a lot of her songs are supposed to be through a
teenage lens, back where every emotion was at its most extreme. When you were heartbroken,
it was the worst thing ever. Potentially this is her trying to recapture some experiences
and emotions that were denied her in her pop-star youth. “I try to be real. It's such a subjective
thing, but I try to convey an emotion. All the big pop acts that I've been into over
the years-- whether it's ABBA or Prince-- managed to combine amazing melodies and honest
human emotion. But coming out of the super-super-commerical pop industry in the 90s, maybe people forgot
about the fact that pop music can do both of those things.“
About the song's perceived hopelessness, Robyn told MTV: “I mean, for me, of course it's
a sad love song, but it's a strong song as well, or at least that's what I want people
to feel when they listen to it."
Despite its sad eyes, the chorus of “Dancing On My Own”, especially on post-bridge machine gun drum fill,
is as empowering as anything in the pop canon.
A ballad you can dance to, a dance song you
can get teary-eyed to. Robyn's choreography in the music video is notably taken from
Rosie Perez's routine at the beginning of Do The Right Thing. Strong and empowering,
fighting back the tears. As AV Club's Geneviere Koski stated in her review: “There's a beating
pulse underneath the dance-bot artifice that captures the celebratory catharsis that
can be found on the dance floor.” It's this duality, this contrast that makes the emotional
meat of this song, and all of Robyn's work, come alive.
“Dancing On My Own” was her first number 1 single in her home country.
It also got to number 8 in the UK charts as well as reaching
number three in the US Billboard Dance Chart. More importantly, it and the rest of the Body
Talk series have inspired a new generation of synthetic pop. Everything from Tegan and Sara's “Closer”
and to the tearstained dancefloors of Lorde's Melodrama
and Carly Rae Jepsen's Emotion.
It predated the disco-renaissance that Daft Punk “kickstarted” in the summer
of 2013 by three whole years. Pop boundary-pusher Charli XCX has stated: “Robyn has definitely
been part of paving the way for pop stars who fall a little to the left of the Top 40 norm.”
Even Max Martin's present proteges are asking for the Robyn sound. About a recent
meeting with the co-writer she started her career with, Robyn stated:
“He told me: ‘So whenever I have a female artist come into my studio, they usually put your album on
the table, and they’re like: “I wanna make this!”” I don’t know who he meant.
But he said that’s happened quite a lot, and that he’s like: ‘Well, fuck you, go
and work with her then!’ Which I thought was very sweet.”
It's not surprising both Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift have songs that sound like diet version of Robyn.
Despite the many artists that have taken notes
from her, Robyn is a singular pop star. A pop star with independence and control of
her own destiny. And she's still creating music at the best of her ability.
Last year's Honey album being an notable evolution of her sound, a love affair with ambient house
that equals anything else she's released. On the chorus to the track “Ever Again” she sings:
As much as its a definite hope, her best work has dwelled within that state of being. Over the last
decade she's gone through a lot, losing people close to her, going through psychoanalysis
and taking 8 years to follow up Body Talk. But she's still here.
While the Spearses, N*Syncs and Aguileras have mostly disappeared, Robyn at 40 is still around.
The endless contradiction. Like her music, Robyn excels in contrasts.
A child pop star that's more vital than ever. Her sound is retro, drawing from Prince, Kate
Bush and Donna Summer, but redefined for the modern age, sounding like the future. Her
song are empowering in spirit but truly sad to their core. She is the girl of 16, heartbroken
and unsure, but through the lens of 40 years of heartache.
She said in an interview with Pitchfork: “It's definitely a contradiction because I make pop music, but, at the same
time, I'm maybe not so anxious to be a successful pop artist. Of course I want people to like
my music, but I know what the price of success can be, too.”
But Robyn's right over there. Stilettos and broken bottles. Still spinning around in circles. Everyone can see her.
Robyn, dancing on her own. But with millions of fans singing back every word.
"I'm in the corner, watching you kiss her. Ooh."
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