The case of Robyn Carlsson is certainly a curious one, especially for people of my particular age bracket (30, for the record, but I imagine the range can span a year or two either way). The internet tells me that Robyn’s debut record, Robyn Is Here, was released in 1995, so either I’m retroactively hallucinating enjoying her brief moment in the American pop spotlight as a teenager or I’m willing to tell myself as I age that it wasn’t that long ago; whatever the case, the two singles spawned from that record (“Show Me Love” and “Do You Know (What It Takes)”) caught brief fire in the music-video age before Robyn’s star fizzled, taking Robyn back to her native Sweden and away from the collective stateside consciousness.
And that was it for Robyn, at least as far as we ‘Muricans are concerned — her record would gather dust and eventually populate clearance bins the nation over, keeping company with Cathy Dennis and Tal Bachman for all eternity. We’d hear “Show Me Love” in the grocery store or on the radio during a throwback hour, and remember it with vague fondness, and think back to 1996 and go “aw, man, I remember this playing at the school dance!” or “man, Clueless really was a cultural phenomenon and we had no idea,” and that would be it. In Sweden, Robyn was still plying her pop-spiced-with-a-hint-of-r&b brand, and we had no idea and never really cared. She was the very definition of a forgotten artist — not a one hit wonder, per se (and not only because, mathematically, she was at least a two hit wonder), but an artist that briefly existed as commercially viable and then left, just because we moved on.
The distinction’s important. There are usually two reasons why artists disappear from relevance: either their product is so niche and novelty that it’s impossible to exist outside of it (Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out?”, Los Del Rio’s “Macarena”, Lou Bega’s “Mambo #5”, ad infinitum), or they were so perfect once that the public collectively ignored any subsequent efforts to recapture it (Matthew Sweet’s “Girlfriend”, New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give”, Michael Penn’s “No Myth” — not coincidentally, these are the artists that either cultivate devoted underground followings or go on to lucrative touring careers). Robyn kind of exists outside of these two concepts. Her two ’90s hits weren’t particularly novel, existing at a time when vaguely r&b-influenced pop was particularly en vogue, nor were they so good that she simply couldn’t live up to them. They’re a pair of fine, kind of dated pop songs, and that’s pretty much it.
And then, one day, Robyn came back.
She didn’t emerge into the national consciousness or anything. Rather, her 2005 effort Robyn saw success in her native country, crept across Europe, and then, through the magic of the internet and a then-flourishing level of online music journalism, into the States. This was the new Robyn Carlsson, a thing that we never even knew we wanted until it happened. She was a little less cookie-cutter than the last time she stopped by, although each song on the record is a coulda-been hit in a more just world; she was fresh and updated for the aughts with a busy bed of electro-dance that sounded kinda-new and kinda-retro in the same breath, particularly existing as it did in a pre-Ke$ha/Lady Gaga world. It was Annie (remember when people went nuts over Anniemal?) with more soul; it was Madonna with shinier, cooler production. It was fantastic, is what I’m trying to say, and if it doesn’t sound as novel now as it did at the time, it still delivers the goods because Robyn’s pop smarts on her self-titled record were sharper than ever.
On paper, it’s an album of shiny, candy-coated dance-pop. “Konichiwa Bitches” predates Ke$ha’s rapping pop-princess by a few years, upping the ante from Gwen Stefani’s recent weird solo shot; it’s clunky, but endearingly so, and the Sega Genesis juiced up with snare and handclaps beat even more so. (The delivery of the final punchline is actually kind of hilarious, even still.) “Cobrastyle” ups the ante with big fuzzy bass and beat changes, but Robyn weaves so gracefully through styles that she flexes her melodic gifts on the insidiously catchy “Handle Me” and “Bum Like You”.
What makes this album of shiny, candy-coated dance-pop so beguiling, however, is the beating heart at its core. It’s tempting to call this kind of music soulless, and that’s had some merit in the past, but there’s a singular power in some of these tracks that’s missed in a lot of modern pop music. The much-vaunted single, “Be Mine!”, is both deeply catchy and genuinely heartbreaking, a torch song masquerading as a top-40 single, a legitimate candidate for the top ten songs of the decade. Poignant, too, is Robyn’s Kleerup collaboration “With Every Heartbeat”, included on stateside reissues of the record; the additional track only fortifies the album, providing it with a large, monolithic slab of musically-arresting, atmospheric, heartbreak-pop. It’s a terrific track from start to finish, but it approaches something like transcendence when the beat drops out, leaving a soaring string interlude to take us into the coda, wherein the one-line chorus (“and – it- hurts – with – every – heart – beat”) is doubled, then harmonized, then harmonized again over burbling, churning synths.
And, sure, Robyn sometimes affects us with a simple piano ballad like the lovely “Eclipse”, but more often than not, she does it within the framework of her nominally-escapist genre of choice; sometimes the songs are full-on, heart-on-sleeve barnburners like “Be Mine!” and “With Every Heartbeat”, but sometimes she just finds the poignancy in the little moments like that surprise minor chord at the end of the core progression in the kiss-off “Handle Me”, or in the way multi-tracked Robyns rejoin the beat with that three-parter on the “x-ray shine” lyric in the affably goofy futuristic love song “Robotboy”. And that’s what makes Robyn such a perfect pop record: it’s not how good the beats are, or how shiny the melodies, but that beautiful blood-red heart that beats at its core.
(Post-script: Some versions of Robyn, including the one found on Spotify, include a “new version” of a track called “Dream On”. It’s fine, and very sharp lyrically, but it doesn’t compare to the original by the late Christian Falk, which featured not only Robyn but a prominent vocal contribution by Ark frontman Ola Salo and can be found here, you’re welcome very much.)
Playlist track: “Be Mine!”
Drew's Album of the Day 