Robyn

Robyn is one of the clearest examples of how radical pop music always functions as an ongoing renegotiation of boundaries. Since her breakthrough, she has consistently used the format to explore desire, loneliness, control and freedom, often years ahead of her contemporaries. With the decision to become an independent artist in the 2000s, she laid the foundation for an expression where commercial precision and artistic integrity are not necessarily in conflict. “Body Talk” (2010) became a global benchmark for emotional club music and placed Robyn at the center of a new pop canon where vulnerability was a strength and the dance floor a place for existential confrontations. When she later released “Honey” (2018), she dismantled pop’s traditional dramaturgy in favor of something more sensual, airy and introspective. An album that did not seek climax, but permission, and that further solidified her unique position as an artist beyond categories and eras. On this year’s “Sexistential,” Robyn makes her most life-like album to date. Here she sings about sexuality during IVF treatment, about dating, lying and longing as a 40-plus woman, about choosing single motherhood and about uncoupling love from the narratives that society still tries to present as self-evident. It is pop music that moves straight into territories where the genre has traditionally turned its gaze away. A confrontation Robyn makes with curiosity, precision and the ownership of the body that has become one of her hallmarks.