Robyn, the space-age disco queen with a dark bent
Robyn, the 36-year-old Swedish pop star, was in Los Angeles recently, decked out in a pale blue bustier and lying on a bed, as part of the video shoot for her latest single Love Is Free.
Around her, the soundstage resembled a block party for Brooklyn hipsters as tattooed men in Dickies jumpsuits danced around with fanny packs on their belts. Markus Jagerstedt, the music producer, was by a mirror, laughing about the way he looked with his face slathered in red paint, his orange hair blown high as a skyscraper. The staccato house beat from Love Is Free thumped from the speakers.
Everyone was having a grand old time, except Robyn.
One minute, the camera zoomed in for a close-up and she seemed nearly on the verge of tears. The next, she moved to her dressing room for a touch-up, where she tossed everyone out, bellowing: “Can I get a little peace?”
Robyn may be known for her up-tempo dance music, quirky lyrics and sky-high platform shoes, but pain and sorrow lurk beneath her rave r-style armour.
Nearly 20 years ago, she rose to fame with Do You Know (What It Takes) a teeny-bopper anthem that was produced by Max Martin, the producer who helped jump-start the careers of Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys.
But that sort of music never really inspired her. After having a religious experience dancing at the Shelter, a popular club for gay black men that started in Tribeca, she left her record label in 2004 and re-emerged as a space-age disco queen with a depressive bent.
If Bjork and Cyndi Lauper gave birth to a love child in the techno tent at Coachella, she would assuredly be Robyn.
At a time when superheroes dominate the box office and airbrushed pop stars top the music charts, misanthropy and melancholy have yet to bring global stardom to this pixieish woman with short spiky hair and a penchant for black eyeliner. But her influence has clearly been felt.
In 2005, Robyn selected a l argely unknown producer named Klas Ahlund on her first foray into dance music, Robyn. The album drew raves from critics, and Ahlund went on to work with Katy Perry, Kylie Minogue, Kesha and Jordin Sparks.
In 2009 and 2010, Robyn released a three-part music collection called Body Talk, which earned a four-star rating from Rolling Stone, a solid A from Entertainment Weekly and a Grammy nomination for its first single, Dancing On My Own. Madonna gushed about the album in interviews, saying: “I love Robyn.” She also collaborated with Ahlund on the very Robyn-esque song Some Girls, for her 2012 album MDNA. Nicolas Ghesquière, one of the fashion world’s pre-eminent arbiters of cool, selected Monument, a moody track from Do It Again, Robyn’s 2014 recording with Royksopp, as the soundtrack for his debut show as artistic director at Louis Vuitton.
As for Perry, she tapped Robyn to open her California Dreams world tour, telling MTV that Robyn is “the tastemaker”, the person she and Prada and Rihanna and everyone turn to for inspiration, from the music she makes to footwear she sports onstage.
“She’s just, like, the epitome of effortless cool,” Perry said.
(Robyn didn’t exactly return the love. Asked by Time Out New York what she thought of Perry’s music, she laughed and said: “You know what? I have to go now.”)
Which in a way was a fitting response from an artist whose biggest hits, including Be Mine and Dancing On My Own, are about feeling overlooked and ill at ease. Her latest work continues in that trajectory for reasons that extend beyond Robyn’s uniquely Scandinavian flair for despair.
The five-song recording Love Is Free was released this month and was recorded in Stockholm between the autumn of 2013 and the spring of 2014. It was produced by Robyn with her longtime collaborators Jagerstedt and Christian Falk.
Shortly after they got to work on it, Falk was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died that July, leaving Robyn and Jagerstedt with a laptop of unfinished tracks along with a blessing from Falk to complete the material in his absence.
The resulting recording is credited to Robyn & La Bagatelle Magique, the group the trio formed.
Back at the video shoot, a large photograph of Falk hung on a wall near a smiley face that was meant to evoke an acid tab. Robyn seemed to be striking a balance between holding on to a friend who died and wanting to prevent Love Is Free from turning into a wake for him.
“We didn’t want to make a memorial album,” she said later that afternoon, when she re-emerged from her dressing room and returned to the set.
This time, Robyn seemed chipper and ready to go, holding a white veil that evoked an early Madonna, circa Like A Virgin.
The song Love Is Free, which sounds like a mash-up of Technotronic’s Pump Up The Jam and Missy Elliott’s Pass That Dutch, was turned up high, and Robyn started bouncing up and down on the bed as if it were a trampoline.
The video’s storyline, if there was one, was utterly incomprehensible. Maybe that was the point.
“It’s not about being as absurd as possible,” Robyn said. “But it’s also not about being about something in particular, either. We just wanted to do something fun and inspiring and playful.”
Moments later, she was done with the shot, and the crew broke for lunch.
“Good, good,” Robyn said, as she walked toward Jagerstedt and gave him a hug, this time flashing a hint of a smile. And for a moment, what shined through was not a downbeat diva’s air of perpetual discontent, but her resilience in the face of it.