In one of her many viral interview clips, Björk proclaimed that she’ll be techno raving until she’s 90. Kelly Lee Owens had one question for Robyn: “Do you feel that you’ll be doing the same?” Her one-word response is unsurprising, but the Swedish pop icon keeps confounding expectations each time she decides to return to the spotlight, especially when it comes to aging into the industry. At one point on her self-financed, self-titled, and first independently released album, she assumed the role of a captain attempting a crash landing before launching into a song called ‘Crash and Burn Girl’, echoing her description of Sexistential as feeling “like a spaceship coming through the atmosphere at a really high speed.” More than two decades after Robyn, and aided by early collaborators like Teddybears member Klas Åhlund, her music still prioritizes the pleasure principle – “I’m never inspired by pain,” she told another celebrity fan, Tinashe – while defiantly eschewing the trappings of a “maturing” pop star. “Do I have the consistency to persist and finish this ride?” she wonders at one point on the title track, referring to the universe of a person growing inside her. But the same question surely comes up whenever new musical ideas are being born, and the answer, for her, remains the same at 46 as it would in as many years.
1. Really Real
Robyn plunges headfirst into the liminal space of a relationship you aren’t sure is ending or just getting serious: “And I slip through the crack in between it.” The time-bending, reality-splitting nature of her experience is mirrored in some of the most dizzyingly bizarre production on the record, from the fractured guitar shredding to whiplash-inducing synths that catapult the song into space, rendering the question “What time is it where you are?” all the more surreal. She’s speaking to her own mother, who brings the track back to earth, suggesting she make herself a cup of tea and go to bed. But not without belting out the chorus one more time.
2. Dopamine
It feels really real, Robyn resolves, which is maybe all that matters, even if the feeling is determined by chemicals firing off in her brain. As the first single from the record, the pulsating, infectious ‘Dopamine’ upholds this straightforward explanation, only to foreground its underlying complexity through the sheer expressiveness of Robyn’s voice, flowering above the robotic insistence of cynicism. “Something here’s opening deep inside of me/ I can finally reach it,” she sings, and that’s the real trip.
3. Blow My Mind
A quarter of a century ago, Robyn released a cutesy, vaguely sensual love song called ‘Blow My Mind’ for the album Don’t Stop the Music. There’s nothing actually transgressive about her refashioning it into an ode to her young son here, but its weirdness is commendable. Instead of leaning into its lullaby-like qualities, Robyn, Klas Åhlund, and Alexander Kronlund punch it up almost beyond recognition, imbuing its unabashed corniness with verve and candour. Maybe it’s the same chemical process, she suggests, that compels her to say things like: “Your unbearably cute scrumptious little face/ Crushing me every single day.” Far from slowing her down, it deepens the euphoric rush.
4. Sucker for Love
Despite a few little flourishes, ‘Sucker for Love’ comes off more one-dimensional than previous songs, maybe because it’s sung in less of a drunken state, like a well-constructed argument. Or maybe because it was written over a decade ago with Röyksopp for the Do It Again EP. When she sings that she used to have thicker skin, she might as well be referring to the heftier beats the record has given us so far; but even when the hurt becomes all too familiar, almost trite, it doesn’t mean you won’t let it consume you again.
5. It Don’t Mean a Thing
The bubbly vulnerability of ‘Sucker of Love’ gives way to the weightier, significantly more heart-wrenching ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing’, where Robyn is quick to admit, “I don’t really go there anymore, but sometimes I think about how you used to make me crack up so hard, I couldn’t keep it together.” The roboticized shadow of her voice, buzzed with a different combination of chemicals but just as alive, returns to prove the futility of her human endeavours, as convincing as a good hook. But its nihilism is once again trumped by the largeness of her feelings, the way she equates total devotion with silliness and sin like only someone who’s crawled beneath the surface would.
6. Talk to Me
Months after its release, ‘Talk to Me’ remains a strong candidate for Sexistential’s standout, the song you’d put on to make a case for the album in a tenth of its runtime. Precision-engineered with Max Martin in their first collaboration since Body Talk’s ‘Time Machine’, it funnels the album’s horniness in the most universal and least potentially cringe-inducing language (only one mention of the album title), because nothing curbs a lonely vibe like phone sex primed for pop radio.
7. Sexistential
For some, “potentially cringe-inducing” might sound like an understatement when referring to the title track. Released as a single alongside ‘Talk to Me’, like its weird little cousin, ‘Sexistential’ is the unadulterated soul of the record precisely because it works so well towards the end, following through on at least one kind of longing from ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing’: “All I ever wanted was for you to get silly.” Robyn goofily raps about IVF and dating apps, PTSD and Etsy, with a winking sense of humour that confirms her most outrageous ideas will always feel most authentic. It helps that the atmosphere is thrilling, too: when she describes her body as a spaceship, it sounds both cosmic and vacuum-sealed. By the way, did you know Adam Driver played an astronaut who survives a crash landing in a movie that must have come out around the time Sexistential was conceived? Just saying.
8. Light Up
Taio Cruz, who forever changed the global pronunciation of “dy-no-mite,” co-wrote ‘Dopamine’, but is nowhere to be found in the credits of ‘Light Up’. That had to be a conversation, right? Maybe a remix is on the way. For now, the chorus remains simile-less and pleading over trance-like production: “Baby, light up the way to your heart.” It offers permission for your mind to drift off slightly before the album’s conclusion.
9. Into the Sun
Having just watched Project Hail Mary, the new sci-fi film in which Ryan Gosling (sorry) wakes up on a spaceship light years from home, I can imagine someone making an edit of it soundtracked by ‘Into the Sun’. The soaring synth-ballad is more triumphant and altogether stronger than ‘Light Up’, thanks in part to the reappearance of Max Martin. It’s a full-circle moment that reframes the reckless abandon of the opener into something slightly meta: “You don’t have the end of the story and it’s pushing me/ Into the sun.” However long it takes for Robyn to return, she’ll already be light years ahead.
