I must confess. What I am about to tell you is shocking. I love pop music. LOVE IT. I love the bad and the good, the cheesy and the innovative. Give me a catchy chorus and a crazy-hot hook and you have me for life. So when I heard that Swedish pixie powerhouse Robyn was coming to Atlanta this past week I snatched up tickets.
If you know who I’m talking about then you probably already know that she first entered the pop collective in the U.S. in 1997 with the top ten hits “Show Me Love” and “Do You Know What It Takes” from her first album Robyn is Here. I have a vivid memory of the first time I heard the track on a long drive back to Atlanta from Orlando, Florida. Robyn was interviewed by Casey Kasem for American Top 40 and they played both tracks. I was hooked. Then she disappeared.
I didn’t follow the European music scene much in those days so I had no idea that while I was still bopping my bleached head to a scratched and tattered copy of her first cd she had released two more albums in Sweden; 1999′s My Truth and 2002′s Don’t Stop The Music. I was shamelessly slung up in the Britney/Christina/Backstreet Boys maelstrom at this point and wasn’t paying much attention to anything else, much to the dismay of my more musically snobbish friends. To give you some idea of how bad it was I was routinely seen lurking around Tower Records for the Midnight Madness sales and even got interviewed by a local radio station because my partner and I were the only two men waiting around for the latest Nsync cd to drop. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem right? Well I had a problem.
In 2004 while I was engrossed with Beyonce being a “Naughty Girl” little Robyn was doing battle with her record company. Her label at the time was not happy with her new electropop sound and instead of compromising she left and started her own label, Konichiwa Records. The result of that decision was the absolutely brilliant self-titled CD Robyn. But the United States would not get wind of it until four years later when she signed an international deal with Universal. It was then that the song “Konichiwa Bitches” found its way to my iPod and my love affair with Robyn was rekindled. The album is perfection. To promote it she did a brief US tour before heading to Europe as the opening act on several stops of Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet Tour. Later when she accepted the award for Best Live Act at the 2008 Swedish Grammis Awards she credited her experience on Madonna’s tour with helping her improve her own live show.
Now back in the consciousness of gay men across America, Robyn embarked on an ambitious project. She would release three new cds in 2010, one in the spring, one in the summer and then another in the winter.
“I think this splitting a full album up into different releases is, in a way, how people listen to music as well. It’s more about songs now. But for me this is not an EP or a lesser version of an album. It’s an album, but it’s maybe not the normal length, so I can go back to the studio again and release these songs while they’re actually fresh, and go back to the studio and work on more stuff while touring.”
The result is the Body Talk series which takes the brilliance of the electropop sound she developed on Robyn and sends it into the stratosphere. Parts 1 and 2 of the series each contain 8 tracks each, such as “Fembot”, “Dancehall Queen”, “Hang With Me” and the amazing “Fembot”. What’s not to love about a song with the following verse:
My superbrain is a binary
Circuitry and mainframe tin-foil hair
I’m sipping propane topped with a cherry
(reboot)
In fact I’m a very scientifically advanced hot mama
Artificially discreet no drama
Digitally chic titanium mama
(reboot)
Ring the alarm
So cut to last Monday as my partner and I took our seats at the historic Buckhead Theater (formerly The Roxy) to finally see Robyn on tour. Her live shows have become somewhat legendary for their energy and this being her first time performing in Atlanta the gays were out in force. I won’t bore you with a moment by moment, play by play of the show. What I will do is urge you to check her out when she make the rounds through your town. Her show is electric. You won’t be sorry. In the meantime check out this video from the Monday night of her singing her 1998 hit “Show Me Love” with a very special nod to her Swedish pop roots.
Amazing right? The best part of the night was that we got to meet her after the show! Yes. I met Robyn! The meeting was brief but I got my copy of Body Talk Pt 2 signed and we shared a few words before I was ushered out the door by the cranky security staff. It was 1am so I really can’t blame them I guess. Here is couple of the pics I took that night.
Last night Robyn appeared on The Jimmy Fallon Show and sang her club hit “Dancing On My Own”, which was also featured on last week’s episode of Gossip Girl. In my mind of course she was thinking about her recent stop in Atlanta and that nice tall man she met after the show. It could happen.
“Dancing On My Own” first appeared on Body Talk Pt 1 and will be on the complete Body Talk album which includes five tracks from Pt 1, five from Pt 2 and five new tracks and hits stores on November 22. Check out her performance on Jimmy Fallon below.
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She’s an OK import from Sweden, but she doesn’t have the voice to carry anything but pop music. And her songs are just not as fun as those of ABBA.
Yeah, you can dance to it, but what do her lyrics really mean? Is there no depth in her songs? I just don’t think so.
To steal a phrase from another song, ok, so you’re hot, but that don’t make you a potato, or does it? Robyn should go back to the drawing board and do something to make her songs a bit more infectious instead of sounding like a weak version of whoever is popular on the charts these days.
Maybe if she sung more in Swedish we would all care a bit more about her music. Do we really need another Swedish singer who can’t pronounce words right?