Robyn: Body Talk

Is it me, or is there a hidden undertone of sadness in a lot of dance music? The music designed to get people to move their bodies can't quite tear them away from the pain that plagues their very souls or end the turmoil in which they live their lives, numbing themselves to the burdens of life and trying to forget for a stolen instant on a dark, crowded dancefloor, to escape and pretend they are just a glorious carefree being among many submitting to the groove before finally crashing back down to reality at the end of the night? It's not just me, is it?

If I'm hearing sadness and loneliness where I'm not meant to in other dance songs, it's clear that I'm meant to hear it here. This is Robyn, she of late-90's "Show Me Love" fame, who had been relegated to the discount bin alongside Savage Garden and Sky. Incidentally, I find all of these songs to be rather chilling, but this is all harmless fun from the era that brought us Vitamin C. "Show Me Love" was 90's kitsch, lightweight nostalgia, it was a memory, it was gone, and Robyn had presumably left the music biz to become a waitress or something.

Not so. In fact, she spent the ensuing decade destroying whatever career path she had laid out for her in 1998, resurfacing with this album. The strange thing is how it sounds not-that-distant from her late-90's work in many places (the innocence of "In My Eyes" and "Stars 4-Ever") but with the key difference that there's a 3rd dimension of sound and character that brings that sadness I can't help but imagine and works with it. This is a thinking, feeling, breathing album, not that far off from fellow Swede Lykke Li, in some ways. (Very far off, of course, in many ways.) It is, in many places, sad (or angry) music to dance to, a contradiction I wouldn't think anyone would indulge deliberately. But go Robyn. The album's called "Body Talk," and there's a lot your body says without knowing it... most of which is addressed here.

"Dancing On My Own" is the most brilliant composed confessional, emotionally direct and powerfully danceable, that could still qualify as a dance track. While Britney Spears sings about "Dancing 'til the world ends", Robyn can't help it that she's "In the corner, watching you kiss her," wishing she was "Indestructible" and warning that "Love Kills," laying her issues out bare over synth riffs and pounding kick drums.

I'm not sure if this confessional version of dance music works for actual fans of this type of music, but it does it for me. Maybe it's because on the regret-flavoured reflection "Time Machine," Robyn pines for a DeLorean. Maybe it's because it's easier for me to get into the music because the singer is addressing the fact that she is a real person with real problems, rather than an invincible dance machine here to get everybody's body moving. I don't know, maybe I'm nuts. Despite the rushing artificial electro-pop sound of the whole album (and the lampshade-hanging "Fembot") it just feels so much more human than other singers.

I love, for example, the simplicity of "Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do," which consists of a very poetic litany of "(x) is killing me" and of course the title phrase. Or the badassery of "U Should Know Better" where Robyn proves her chops as an MC and also does more for Snoop Dogg's cred than anything else he's done in years (because fuck Far East Movement and Big Time Rush.)

A couple of other songs in the middle of the album are at the same level as "Dancing On My Own," the gentle letdown of "Hang With Me" (whose lyrical content is just being friends) and "Call Your Girlfriend." There's a sweet honesty in both of them and they make a good pair, both in that area I mentioned earlier of being weirdly honest lyrical matter for a dance tune. Both of those songs pack huge hooks that draw attention to, rather than obscure, their emotional content.

The album was honestly a very odd pick for me, but it works. It does a great job blending those "ignore everything and move your body" tendencies with that reality that we all have to face every now and again, making it an impressive artistic statement in addition for effective background noise to club orgies.

Plus, the video for "Dancing On My Own" has the best angry dancing since Kevin Bacon in Footloose. Or at least Flight of the Conchords.

Buy this album from iTunes now