Good evening, hi, hello everyone. Sorry I’m so late to this party. That’s still cool, right?
So, it’s 2015 today… but you still seem to be having an exemplary time dancing your socks off to Robyn’s series of Body Talk mini-albums. From 2010. Do carry on. I’m just going to tap my foot and craft a little paean to Her Unparalleled Excellence here in the corner.
Robyn’s oeuvre is a gift to us from the Swedish Master Race (all hail) and its socialist-funded bottomless bubbling Cauldron of Culture. She transcends so much that’s regrettable about our Western Pop Ghettoes, especially but not only their simplicity of sentiment. Even the best, from which I’ll suggest Rihanna and Beyoncé for comparison (oh, sister, you know I’m going there), might celebrate a banging drunken night out, an electric love affair or a hot sexual conquest; they might damn a cheating lover to arctic exile or (admittedly, nuance here) lament their own abuse in a relationship they can’t quite leave. It’s always funky and sumptuously textured, but it’s arguably all quite standard: one feeling over one issue per one song, presented by a sexy and desirable diva.
Contrast up!
In Call Your Girlfriend, Robyn gently encourages her new lover to make a breakup call to the other woman. To appreciate the nuance here, you have to watch the video, shot in a single take, of Robyn dancing alone and looking distraught in an empty warehouse with only lights for company. The lyrics span perspectives in this love triangle, bitterly evoking the clichéd uselessness of breakup talk and the agony of heartbreak even as they triumph that “I give you something that you never even knew you missed.” (The emotional dissonance was almost gruelling when I watched it for the first time, but by the third playthrough I’d made a kind of peace with it and now I love it unreservedly. )
Dancing On My Own is the counterpoint – each song’s intro is a mutually evocative thrumming percussive synth – where Robyn sings the other woman’s view: a voyeur on her ex-lover kissing the new girlfriend in a club while she dances in the corner, alone and falling apart. In Hang With Me, Robyn jubilantly sings a tangent to what she really means, warning a new friend against falling in love with her even as she shakily acknowledges their growing connection. The video acknowledges the grit and glamour of stardom alongside her wish to be “for real and not pretend.” Then she gets playfully hardcore in the completely charming Konichiwa Bitches.
The emotional range of these songs is particularly striking for – and amplified by – their genre, a carefree and delicious electro-pop whose danceability means even these poignant, complex situations still add up to something that’s merely fleeting, almost incidental. Robyn herself is tiny and cute, gorgeous but not a sex idol, perhaps queer, almost camp, defiant of classification (chalk up another debt to Scandinavian liberalism). Her music is so enchanting because it liberates us, giving us permission to feel conflicted and joyous, the ability to enjoy her stardom and swag while fully conscious they’re glossy veneers over her humanity.
K Imma dance now.
Asylury 