Last year I made a thread, which is not listed on these boards anymore, about an artist named Robyn which whom you all might remember when she was big in the United States back in 1997 with her release titled "Robyn Was Here". She had big hits with her single "Show Me Love", "Do You Know (What It Takes), & "Do You Really Want Me (Show Respect)". She hooked up with Max Martin before Britney ever did.
Anyways, are you wondering where she disappeared after all these years? Well she's been releasing albums in her native Sweden. Then she had some big dispute with her label who wouldn't allow her to have her own creative control over her music and she was very upset. She ended up leaving the label on bad terms and she started up her own label and released her current album which is properly self-titled "Robyn".
This new album has garnered mass amounts of critical accolades. Some critics claiming it's the best pop record released in current memory.
It's already been released in her native country Sweden and throughout Europe where she has hit #1 on their charts.
Now she's finally releasing this album in the United States. Most of you might not have known because she hasn't been receiving much promotion for her outstanding and innovative album. The album is set for U.S. release April 29.
I hope she gets the deserved exposure for this work she's produced.
For those who have already listened to this record, what do you think? Isn't it a genius record?
This message has been edited. Last edited by: torontophenom,
Some reviews to get everyone an idea of the album.
From Slant Magazine:
4 Stars Robyn Robyn by Sal Cinquemani Posted: April 16, 2008
When I first heard Britney Spears's debut single, "…Baby One More Time," 10 years ago, I thought I was listening to a new song by Robyn, another blond, nasal-voiced teenage pop singer who scored two Top 10 hits a year earlier. A quick—or more accurately, painstakingly slow, thanks to a 56K modem—Internet search revealed the common thread: producer and fellow Swede Max Martin. But the similarities ended there. As Britney exploded into superstardom and subsequent tabloid infamy, Robyn vied for more creative control (an effective way to end a career in the U.S.) and faded into Swedish obscurity before starting her own label and releasing a self-titled comeback that was a hit in her native country in 2005 and garnered critical attention worldwide but failed to secure distribution here. Flash-forward a few years and Robyn is singing back-up on Britney's latest album, vamping on a Snoop Dogg remix, and a North American edition of Robyn is finally seeing the light of day.
A three-year-old dance record is like a stale piece of bread, but in addition to the fact that Robyn proves to be a surprisingly durable product, the U.S. version includes three new tunes (one of which, "Dream On," is exclusive) and a pair of revamped tracks. First the new: Most notable is "With Every Heartbeat," a more brazenly Euro, 4/4 companion piece to the vulnerable "Be Mine." The latter hit opens with the clever couplet, "It's a good thing tears never show in the pouring rain/As if a good thing ever could make up for all the pain" and builds to the devastating admission, "You never were and you never will be mine." (And that's the hook of the song. Bold.) "With Every Heartbeat" is harder both sonically and emotionally; when the beat drops out, the lush strings flourish and Robyn sings, "And it hurts with ev-ery heart-beat," and you can feel your chest tighten as the thump is brought back to life.
The new version of "Bum Like You" helps mend the original album's only notable flaw: inconsistency. And that's genre inconsistency, not quality, because Robyn plays the acoustic rock chick just as well as club diva and electro-pop siren. This club-friendly version of "Bum" makes a better bedfellow to the glitchy "Konichwa Bitches" than the smoother, more subdued original did. On the other hand, the new "Robotboy" is a fine remix but nothing more, and its inclusion in place of the adorable, minimalist original is downright criminal. Aside from the song sequence, the rest of the album remains more or less intact, including "Who's That Girl," produced by Swedish duo the Knife and featuring a wicked synth-pad drum break straight out of 1987. The track, the first to be recorded for what would eventually become Robyn, is a direct response to the marketing muscle that drove Robyn to leave her record label: "Good girls are sexy, like, every day/I'm only sexy when I say it's okay/I just can't deal with the rules/I can't take the pressure."
Robyn is definitely a slow-burner (unusual for a dance record, which typically provides a more immediate, transient gratification), but it's also everything pop music should be: provocative, poignant, inventive, and fun. Though Robyn isn't "the most killingest pop star on the planet" and has yet to find a cure for AIDS (as noted by Brooklyn rapper Swingfly on the album's intro), the album possesses a playful confidence and lyrical brio that should appeal to U.S. audiences accustomed to the circle-jerk hubris of hip-hop. Another subject familiar to Americans, tabloid culture is the target of "Handle Me," which finds Robyn canoodling with a "selfish, narcissistic, psycho, freaking bootlicking, Nazi creep," while the thumping, Prince-esque "Crash and Burn Girl" could be an ode to a certain self-destructive pop princess—had it not been written a good two years before Britney ever shaved her head.
RS: 3.5of 5 Stars Average User Rating: 4.5of 5 Stars
2008
Play View Robyn's page on Rhapsody Looking like David Bowie's little sister, Swedish starlet Robyn entered the arena in 1997 with "Show Me Love," a generic dance-pop smash co-produced by hitmaker/Britney Spears sculptor Max Martin. But sensing a future of head-shaving and How I Met Your Mother cameos, Robyn jumped ship to start her own label and work with some of her edgier homeys: electro-goth oddballs the Knife and freaky club fusionist Teddybears.
The result, released in Sweden in 2005 and now available in a virtually identical version here, is a shiny mainstream pop record with enough wit and weirdness to impress even jaded bloggers. YouTube fave "Konichiwa Bitches" nods to Missy Elliott, Eminem and a classic Chappelle's Show skit over hand claps and Eighties-style synth drums; it's such nasty fun that her dubious rap skills don't detract a bit. "Bionic Woman" quotes art-pop grand dame Laurie Anderson, while "Crash and Burn Girl" bites Buffalo Springfieldís "For What It's Worth" over fat party beats. Sexy without being pandering, arty without being pretentious, Robyn is a public service: a record that can make indie-minded geeks dance without shame.
I recommend Robyn to everyone and anyone. It has seriously been on repeat ever since I got it. The coolest electro-euro-dancey-clever-pop-perfection I've heard in a while. And anyone who comes up with a song called "Konichiwa Bitches" gets an A in my book haha. I'm definitely gonna be spreading the word. Hopefully she gets the recognition she deserves here in the States.
HARD to pick favorite songs, but I love "Konichiwa Bitches", "Be Mine", "With Every Heartbeat", and "Crash and Burn Girl".
Excited to get this next week and hear the new track.
"I present to you/unleashed in the east/best dressed in the west/sorted in the north/without a doubt in the south/the queen of queen bees," intones the booming voice on Robyn's opening track "Curriculum Vitae." It's not bragging if you can back it up, and Robyn does just that, channeling all the frustration of her creative differences with her previous labels into a freewheeling, accomplished pop album that is so fresh that it could pass for a debut -- and, as the first release for her own label, Konichiwa Records, it is a debut of sorts. Robyn feels like she crammed everything she couldn't do before into a space that can barely contain it, starting with "Konichiwa Bitches," a sassy hip-pop manifesto with a title that could very well have been the first thing she said to her old bosses once she got her own label set up. On this song and the rest of the album, Robyn sounds equally empowered and irresistible, and doesn't hesitate to tell off labels, trifling boys or anyone else that stands in the way of what she wants. She doesn't mince words on "Handle Me," but she purrs "you're a selfish, narcissistic, psycho-freakin', boot-lickin' creep" so sweetly that it stings even more. And even on the songs where she isn't so strong, like "Bum Like You" and "I Should Have Known"'s catchy recriminations, she's never the less than self-aware. She has a few words for the ladies as well: the cautionary tale "Crash and Burn Girl" is one of the album's funkiest tracks. "Who's That Girl," the song that her old label didn't want to release, and sparked her emancipation from them, is also here, and its distinctive skipping, tropics-go-Nordic rhythms and aggressively buzzy synths -- courtesy of the Knife -- sound great, but it isn't even the best song here. That honor goes to one of two songs that really hit home that true independence can be the hardest thing. "Be Mine!" nails the complicated, sad-yet-liberated feelings surrounding an impossible relationship, celebrating "the sweet pain of watching your back as you walk away" as it propels itself on a buoyant rhythm. "With Every Heartbeat," the epic, Kleerup-produced breakup song that was Robyn's breakthrough single in the U.K., pushes her forward on percolating, escalating synths and strings until it peaks with the chorus echoing all around her. Not every independent moment on Robyn is so lonely, however. The way the album moves from whimsical tracks like the Teddybears cover "Cobrastyle" or "Robotboy" to subtle ballads like "Eclipse and "Anytime Like You" just emphasize that this album is a space for expression for, and bym Robyn. And like any self-titled album should, Robyn defines what she's all about. Even if it took a few years to put together the label and album (and a few more to get it released everywhere), this is the pop tour de force that Robyn has always had in her.
Robyn - Robyn (Konichiwa) UK release date: 2 April 2007 4.5 stars Robyn - Robyn
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track listing
1. Curriculum Vitae 2. Konichiwa Bitches 3. Cobrastyle 4. Handle Me 5. Bum Like You 6. Be Mine 7. With Every Heartbeat 8. Who's That Girl 9. Bionic Woman 10. Crash And Burn Girl 11. Robotboy 12. Eclipse 13. Should Have Known 14. Anytime You Like
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The world of music listeners falls into two camps. On the one hand there are those who have never heard of Sweden's petite blonde bombshell Robyn. Then there are gay men, fans of The Knife and/or Basement Jaxx and people in Sweden who have. She used to be signed to a major. She had a UK top 10 single with Show Me Love. That was then. Now, Robyn is her own label boss and has brought DIY music making to an area of the industry not known for it.
As seems to be the case these days, people in Sweden get to hear good Swedish music months before the rest of us. Robyn, the album, has been available in her native Stockholm since 2005. As with The Knife, who license their music from their own Rabid Records, Robyn has gone down the self-released indie route, foregoing the majors and indies alike in favour of total artistic control of her output. Having bought herself off her former label (Sony BMG's Jive division), she needed this record to work. Having dipped a toe in the UK market with her vocals on Basement Jaxx's Hey U, the scene was set. All she needed to do was step up to the plate, in boxing parlance.
So it is that she's taken her time at crafting an album of quality that sounds thoroughly up-to-date and that looks set to stand testing against the best pop any of the majors can throw in her way this year. Opening with a declaration of intent so ballsy it'll have rappers running for cover, called Curriculum Vitae, Robyn provides a boxing match style catch-up for anyone needing to know who she is. "She split the atom, invented the x-ray, the cure for Aids... the most decorated field operative in the industry..." and on it goes. Tongue in cheek, certainly, but there's more than a hint of truth running through the outlandish statements. This is Robyn bigging herself up to cartoon-sized pop star proportions.
What follows is a solid pop gem of a record, at least half of which deserves to be released as singles. Konichiwa Bitches continues with the bigging-up, laced with some grin-inducing sound effects and laugh-out-loud lyrical turns (watch out for how she gets into her jeans). Cobrastyle, Be Mine! and Handle Me are all catchy enough to stand on their own as singles too, while Crash And Burn Girl's big ballsy synth bass gloriously underpins Robyn's coy whispering.
Karin and Olof, aka The Knife, penned Who's That Girl, a slice of electropop perfection that sounds nothing like the Madonna track of the same name. The beats and synth sounds are unmistakably The Knife's - had it not been for Robyn's vocal line this would have been at home on Deep Cuts. Robyn refers to it as The First Robyn Song, and it's a good one, but before it is the album's highlight With Every Heartbeat. A string quartet is integral to it, not tacked on like strings often are in pop. Here the strings complement the upbeat synths and Robyn's refrain of "and it hurts with every heartbeat". It lacks a big bang conclusion, but it makes up for it with originality and a sense of the unexpected - a rarity in pop, that.
The big numbers out of the way, the latter part of the album does sag a little. Robotboy isn't on a par with what went before, despite cutesy lyrics designed to appeal to her fans, while Eclipse is the quietest, balladesque moment. Should Have Known continues the downbeat ending into the womb-like Anytime You Like. These three tracks live would form an underwhelming encore, but they're saved by what went before, and the variation of tempo and instrumentation is at least welcome and suggestive of Robyn's willingness to head in whatever direction suits each song.
So, well into her 30s, Robyn has assured her contemporaries that pop life does not end as a tweenie, that pop music can be for adults, and that adults can be Do It Yourself indie artists, so long as one thing is in place: talent. Happily for Robyn, she has it to spare. - Michael Hubbard
"With Every Heartbeat" Robyn's collaboration with Kleerup went to number one two weeks last year in the UK charts, and the video was awesome...great recording, unfortunately the two follow up singles "Handle Me" and "Be Mine" didn't reach as high a position...good luck to her in the US now.
Posts: 3839 | Location: E.S. | Registered: January 10, 2005
This album is incredible. Absolutely amazing. Who knew that Robyn would actually do something this amazing? After Show Me Love I just assumed she would just fade away into oblivion which she practically did. I've been listening to this cd non stop for weeks. And after just listening to Madonnas album which for me was a complete disappointment, i must say that I feel that Robyn should be getting the airplay and exposure that Madonna is having right now.
My Fave Tracks:
Be Mine(Ocelot Mthfckrs Remix) Cobrastyle Bum Like You With Every Heartbeat Handle Me Konichiwa Bitches
This message has been edited. Last edited by: mistersamgoody,
I LOVED her debut album lol. It reminds me of one of my first girlfriends who had the album. I remember enjoying "Show Me Love" and I still dig that tune.
I was more-or-less shocked she wasn't just another teen fad who didn't fade into oblivion once her 15 minutes was up. It's nice to see that people can be a product of a movement (like Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake) but break out of it and go on to do big things musically.
Posts: 6118 | Location: Canada | Registered: October 26, 2005
Is she really that good? I've been seeing her name around the Internet and TV lately (randomly, actually). Sounds like I might need to go check her out.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: MrTalented,
Originally posted by MrTalented: Is she really that good? I've been seeing her name around the Internet and TV lately (randomly, actually). Sounds like I might need to go check her out.
She's most likely not your style, but you still should check her out. You never know.
Posts: 6118 | Location: Canada | Registered: October 26, 2005
I'll call it right now, Mr.Talented will hate the hell out of this album. It is not your style at all.
Fighting, I think (and hope) you enjoy it. It's also a grower. The more I listen to it, the more I like it. (And I'm sure I've heard it at least 300 times by now).
Originally posted by bildo10: I'll call it right now, Mr.Talented will hate the hell out of this album. It is not your style at all.
Fighting, I think (and hope) you enjoy it. It's also a grower. The more I listen to it, the more I like it. (And I'm sure I've heard it at least 300 times by now).
Who knows? Maybe MrTalented will like it. Let's see what he personally has to say.
