11/20/2022 0 Comments Robyn dancing on my own piano tutorialIt’s a fantastical place, and empowering, and it makes you feel like tonight is the only night that ever was or ever will be.” “It’s this little world that she has tapped into, and no one else can really do it. “She has created such a unique sound that is so specifically Robyn,” Jepsen explains over the phone. One of Robyn’s acolytes this decade, Carly Rae Jepsen, says the singer is among her favorite pop artists ever. She’s everywhere, but impossible to pin down. By 2010, Robyn was strutting the pop landscape alongside a wave of artists, like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, who seemed to have drawn direct inspiration from her early hits. Thanks to the success of her 1995 debut, Robyn Is Here, and its attendant Max Martin-produced smash hit “ Show Me Love,” she was famous before anyone knew the name “Britney Spears.” Then she disappeared from American shores for awhile, struggled to free herself from a record contract, established her own label, and re-emerged triumphant around 2007, when Britney Spears was skidding out dangerously in public, and Beyoncé was just a pop star, not yet an icon. She has been around, in one form or another, for a long time, and by now her presence in pop music is like fluoride in water. There is a selflessness to her that is unique to pop stars: She is there with you in her music, but remote you are alone with her music, but not quite all alone. If she succeeds, you forget, perhaps, that any work is happening at all. The steeliness of Robyn’s craft isn’t always easy to point to, because the work she pours into her music is in service to triggering overwhelming emotions. She leaves lots of space for the disorientation that accompanies these feelings, complementing their emptiness. The phantom-limb tingle of a breakup or a loss is a universal emotion, and Robyn defines it so sharply in part because she defines it vaguely. The synths keep disappearing and then sneaking back in, much like the fragmented memories the song depicts. We’re left with a vague sense of encompassing desolation that snaps into focus the minute Robyn’s chorus arrives: “There’s this empty space you left behind.” Her word choice is simple but precise it’s not “ an empty space,” it’s “ this empty space,” with all the helpless gesturing and grasping-to-understand “this” implies. Echoes ring out between Robyn’s voice and the thump of the kick drum, implying miles of separation. The song opens with a glittering sunburst of synths, and the arrangement around them is nearly empty. With “Missing U,” it seems like she’s found it. Through all the holding-pattern EPs and single releases, there has been a distinct sense that she was holding out, awaiting larger inspiration. Yes, the Swedish pop star has never completely disappeared, but it’s been eight years since she released a proper album. Robyn built this world of hers, and her fans throng joyfully inside it. The human spirit doesn’t tend to grow in such generous straight lines without careful tending. This kind of goodwill is something you cultivate carefully, and assiduously-it does not just come to you. Robyn fans don’t hate other pop stars’ fans they don’t seek out negative tweets about their heroine and stage coordinated attacks. How many pop figures inspire a devotion this pure? It’s fervent, but has no sharp edges-it’s hard to imagine Robyn stans bombarding the DMs of some poor soul who said an unkind word. “She’s just brought a lot of joy into my life, so ultimately I just say thank you.” “This is the community that your music has made,” party cofounder Russ Marshalek said earnestly into the camera. Her new single “ Missing U” came with a sweet video featuring the DJs for Robyn Night, a themed dance party in Brooklyn where her faithful have congregated for years. When Robyn returned this summer, she was met by her adoring fans not as a queen nodding to her subjects, but more like the reappearance of badly needed weather-a shaft of light warming them.
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