Robyn on her trolling, playful new album ‘Sexistential’ : NPR

Who knew that what pop music actually wanted was a music about hornily perusing courting apps whereas doing IVF?

That’s what Robyn delivers on the humorous title observe of her ninth studio album Sexistential, out March 27, a music that chronicles her journey conceiving her son as a solo dad or mum (joking with her physician that her dream donor may be hunky actor Adam Driver) and scrolling the Internet in sweatpants, calling out for “some IRL” and “your ASL” in between impulse shopping for stuff on Etsy she would not want. “My body’s a spaceship with the ovaries on hyperdrive,” she raps, someway of our mundane, smartphone world and but additionally hovering above us, an alien recalculating her relationship to Earth.

For most of her profession Robyn has sought to deconstruct the goals of a up to date pop singer, wriggling her means out of a business teen idol profession starting within the Nineteen Nineties with hits like “Show Me Love.” In the mid 2000s, with the assistance of left-field Swedish teams like The Knife and Röyksopp, she remade herself into what would grow to be the blueprint for therefore many stars within the decade following: a steely, self-proclaimed “fembot with feelings too” who might flip uncooked, human vulnerability into larger-than-life synthpop hits like “Be Mine” and “Call Your Girlfriend.”

But for the final decade, Robyn’s been chipping away at her fame for being so many millennials’ resident dancefloor therapist. She ventured deeper into membership music with her 2015 aspect challenge La Bagatelle Magique and 2018’s long-teased Honey, which centered on slow-building grooves and sparse manufacturing that begged to be blended into DJ units fairly than replicating the anticipated refrain and verse beats of a stereotypical hit.

And now she’s again, practically eight years after her final full-length album with Sexistential, with a stressed album that continues the humanizing ethos of Honey however revisits the punchy, dramatic electropop of her most enduring songs. Sexistential is about intercourse, a subject the artist says has solely grow to be extra emboldened and complicated in her work as she will get older. But it is also about Robyn’s relationship to pleasure at this level in her life, following the breakup of an extended relationship and the artist pursuing single parenthood, and, as she says, “all the contradictions before and burning down ideas that didn’t fit the situation I was in.”

This interview has been edited for size and readability. 

Hazel Cills: You have talked about this album being the product of feeling such as you had been floating round in house and asking your self large existential questions, and that this album felt like crashing right down to earth for you. What had been these large existential questions for you? What was that floating in house feeling coming from?

Robyn: I feel it actually was about letting go of a whole lot of management, and that is what the floating round in house feeling is making an attempt to explain. I at all times knew I needed to be a dad or mum. I hoped it might occur in a relationship. I got here out of an extended relationship and simply form of needed to renegotiate a whole lot of issues. That was a course of in itself, but it surely additionally coincided with the pandemic and with getting older. I began planning for having a household of my very own on my own, however then I did not know if that was going to be potential. I confronted a whole lot of fears and I feel on the point of form of simply strip your self right down to the naked minimal of what you anticipated your life to be is a really sobering course of. And additionally actually empowering, like studying form of exist inside one thing that feels very unsure and one thing that you simply did not anticipate will also be very liberating.

I simply began from a new level in my life. I feel all of us try this a number of instances in our lives. It’s regular. But I feel beforehand I’ve linked that course of to disappointment and one thing a lot darker. And this time it was very empowering and in addition made me reassess part of how I’ve made music over time. I checked out this character that I had constructed up a few instances, this heartbroken, lonely cowboy — the particular person in “Dancing on My Own.” I checked out her and it felt actually cringey and embarrassing for a very long time to be so unhappy. [Laughs] And then I realized recognize her and the ability that she has to outlive and that ability is definitely actually helpful. I feel the explanation why lots of people connect with “Dancing on My Own” is that there is one thing very actual in that feeling of loneliness, on the finish of the day. Nobody actually is aware of why we’re right here. It’s only a very large a part of being human, this phantasm of management.

You talked about turning into a dad or mum, which is one thing that you simply did solo with IVF. You sing about that on this album within the title observe, and that is a music that does play very liberatory — a music that is full of delight and getting into this unknown house in your life. Can you inform me in regards to the second the place you mentioned, ‘OK, I’m going to do that on my very own’?

I feel I at all times ready for it and I used to be actually fearful of that choice having for use. But the precise determination got here throughout the pandemic. We had been all quarantining and I used to be simply actually supported by family and friends and individuals who had been like, if I might do it once more and I needed to do it on my very own, I completely would. It was this surprising opening right into a new means of taking a look at one thing that I assumed I used to be going to be actually saddened by. And it did not really feel in any respect like what I anticipated. For me, the expertise was rather more complicated and addictive and attention-grabbing and peculiar and hilarious and form of excessive.

You’ve additionally mentioned there’s this concept with the album that “the purpose of your life is to stay horny.” Is {that a} pretty current revelation for you or is that one thing that you’ve got at all times thought as an artist?

I’ve at all times thought that. But I can take into consideration what it is wish to be a youthful girl and never feeling protected to precise your sensuality or sexuality — your wants. It was more durable for me, particularly as an artist within the ’90s in a really business a part of the music business; it was a disgusting setting in a whole lot of methods and a really miserable setting to precise this stuff in. There was no receiver, no playfulness round it and nothing that supported me in that. I feel for lots of girls and in addition for lots of people, it comes later on in life when there’s not as a lot at stake. You’re not as susceptible. There’s a way of security there.

But the horniness isn’t essentially at all times linked to intercourse, though I additionally assume that it’s. Maybe typically it is simply the straightforward factor of after I really feel good in my physique can be after I really feel sensual. When I really feel relaxed or when there is a sense of freedom. Sometimes it’s a must to seize that house for your self and never anticipate it to be given to you. That means typically additionally being just a little bit carefree, like perhaps you are being just a little bit careless. I feel to do this, for me, [it] was simpler after I knew belief myself.

I’ve at all times considered you as an artist who places all of their humanity into pop music, particularly the expertise of being a lady. It’s attention-grabbing to consider your background, developing in that period of the business the place it felt like there was a really particular, restricted means that girls might categorical themselves in pop music. How do you retain the humanity in your music as a pop songwriter? How do you retain all of that need, heartbreak, these revelations within the music?

As you are saying this, I’m fascinated with it as nicely. Like, how do I try this? My ideas simply journey to this distance between me and the way I’m perceived. And that house is at all times negotiated, proper? In your relationship with somebody, or between you and the way you assume you are perceived in your occupation, or in your loved ones.

Maybe I used to be conscious of it early on as a result of I used to be well-known earlier. I did not have a whole lot of anonymity after I was youthful. So I grew to become conscious of this sort of transit in between my very own expertise and different folks’s expertise. That simply at all times felt like comedy to me. That’s the place the efficiency occurs. That’s the place the trolling occurs. [Laughs] I at all times felt like there’s this drag facet to performing a feminine function. It was so claustrophobic for me after I was youthful however now it feels attention-grabbing to play with. Like this is what being a lady, what having a vagina, makes me do or makes me really feel.

I feel I used to be at all times speaking about it, like even “Fembot.” I did not perceive it myself however — bodily capabilities, what am I alleged to do with this? This consciousness of how I must soften all this stuff collectively and the way that is going to seem like; for me, that is the negotiation. When I’m capable of outline it, when I’m capable of resolve what that is going to sound like or be like, that is after I really feel human. That’s after I do not feel like a stereotype of one thing. In music, I get to resolve what that is going to seem like. And for me, the truth is at all times rather more complicated, and in a means undefinable. When it is each comfortable and unhappy, when it is each mild and heavy, the mixture and the contradictions make it extra actual.

Your final album, Honey, was such a lightweight, ethereal aspect of you. I at all times take into consideration you singing on that album, “I’m a human being.” But I hear just a little little bit of the “Fembot” instrumentally on this album. I hear the Body Talk sound creeping in, even when the issues that you simply’re singing about are completely different. Can you inform me about your imaginative and prescient for the way you needed this album to sound versus what you probably did on Honey?

The constructing blocks of the sound of this album had been there means earlier than the lyrics or the subject material. I did not know that I used to be going to put in writing about making an attempt to grow to be a dad or mum and IVF and my physique. If anyone would have instructed me that three years in the past, I most likely would have been like, ew. But it grew to become attention-grabbing after I was making the album.

It began from this want of defining distinction and duality. I had two entrance factors, one was [purely] musical. There’s a music that I at all times attempt to write that could be a form of pop music that is primarily based on traditional guitar riffs. It’s a music that Bruce Springsteen is aware of write. It’s a music that Prince wrote again and again, however particularly on Dirty Mind. AC/DC, even. It has its roots in so many alternative kinds of music, however when it materializes in pop music, what’s so cool about it’s which you could costume it in any go well with you want. And the go well with I used to be making an attempt, if it was a motorcycle it wasn’t a Harley Davidson. It was like a really colourful Kawasaki. Like, “Light Up” [from Sexistential], I hope sometime I get to document it with an artist that may make it the way in which it sounded after we wrote it.

But then this much more nerdy factor of honoring music that I grew up with, that did not focus a lot on heavy bass. Lots of instances in trendy pop music, there’s these lengthy bass notes that form of kill all of the white noise or the gorgeous house that exists in between notes. I needed to have much less bass, have extra rhythm, and have a extra conversational singing tone. In “Dopamine” it is like I’m actually making an attempt to speak to somebody, however then there is a melody in there too, and it is such as you’re hijacking the mind. When I entered into all this stuff that I wrote about with out fascinated with, I noticed that to ensure that me to make this attention-grabbing it needs to be so particular. And “Dancing on My Own” is rather more summary. It’s a broader feeling.

For “Sexistential,” I do know that you simply had been impressed by Andre 3000 a bit and an interview the place he talked about his jazz flute album and he was like, ‘nicely, folks do not wish to hear me rapping about my colonoscopy.’ And you had been like, I would wish to hear that. There are so many private, deep moments on this album. How do you toe the road between making pop music that anybody can come to and listen to themselves in, after which making private, susceptible work?

description of a colonoscopy is at all times going to be attention-grabbing, proper? A nasty description goes to be actually unhealthy. I imagine Andre 3000 is a genius and I feel he might make something attention-grabbing. But I simply assume that what you permit your self to speak about is admittedly as much as you and typically you are simply not in that house. For me, it was attention-grabbing to go there. I mentioned to start with, the issues which may have felt cringey or prefer it owned me or had outlined me earlier than, I got here again to it with no expectation. And I intentionally and deliberately positioned her, this archetype that I used to be bored with, this unhappy particular person, I might place her on the desk and be like, this is what she’s going to do that time. I perceive what she’s doing now. And then it felt attention-grabbing to me once more.