Robyn
Body Talk, Pt. 1

Once You Go Tech, You Never, Never Comin' Back.

As much as the creators of such music would love to argue the point, the words in dance music are almost always about love. It’s not hard to understand why—love is the great connector. Love causes the most violent of mood swings, the most intense urges, the sharpest pains and the highest elation. Dance music is all about swinging the emotions as much as the hips, despite the surface vapidity of the genre’s artists.

Robyn is not like that.

The Swedish pop star (who is 30, btw) has been releasing music since she was 15, and has competed with Nirvana, Radiohead, The Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and now Lady Gaga for her rightful place at the top of the charts. But amid the fierce competition that has always easily vanquished her (although this year may change that), Robyn has an air of the confident woman, the woman who arrives at the club not to swing her emotions around man, the kind of woman who says “fuck boys, I just wanna dance tonight!” and actually means it. Her latest album, the first in a year-long, three part Body Talk series, is a self-centered, dark and fuzzy but powerful bit of international pop, built for the disillusioned club-goer.

Body Talk, Pt. 1, as much as it’s title may indicate the opposite, is very mechanically driven. Everything feels computerized, filtered through processors and smashed together, but in a totally good way. The weakest track, a collaboration with Royksopp called “None of Dem,” is a darkly industrial crawl about the inferiority of everyone else to Robyn, which in the end might be the message you should take away most from the record. The heart plays almost no part in Body Talk, replaced by the over-thoughtful and insecure brain, an oft-misused organ in the spectrum of dance-pop.

This is not to say there are not moments of emotion in Body Talk. Opener, and oddly LCD Soundsystem-like bop “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do” ends with Robyn, in her most garbled voice in the entire song, emoting the title of the song over and over again before transitioning into “Fembot.” By the time the Robyn roars in with a surprisingly deft rap in the first verse of “Fembot,” we’ve lost all the emotion. Somebody split Robyn’s “heart in two,” and in the process of ripping, said fucker turned her into a monster of hi-tech proportions. For the next 20 minutes or so, the pitch-perfect dance-pop doesn’t let up.

“Dancing on My Own,” which turned out to be the first single despite “Fembot” being the first release, is a prime example of the un-romantic, bio-engineered pop that makes Body Talk Pt. 1 so excellent. Robyn casually asks the typical lovelorn questions, “does she love you better than I can,” as well as the creepily stalker phrases like “I just gotta see it for myself,” but in the end, the premise of the song is simple—Robyn is dancing on her own. Whether this is supposed to be sad or not is debatable—the first verse seems to say ‘yes,’ while the second says defiantly ‘no.’ The point is, “Dancing on My Own” ups “Paparazzi” by a lot, and ends up being that track you’d wish Gaga would right if she didn’t have to put on a radio worthy act. The wall of sound next track “Cry When You Get Older” ups the ante again, supplying the best track on the record, and the most removed. Here is Robyn, who “has something on my dirty mind,” proselytizing to the younger sect, letting them know that the dance-floor holds clichés that N*Sync and Xtina have been promising for years, but in the end, “love hurts when you do it right,” so shut up and “get high and make out on the train” to quell your boredom. Rarely is a PSA so ridiculously fun, easy to digest, and filled with waves of synth. Next up is the Diplo mid-tempo joint “Dancehall Queen,” which is a bit like a chopped and screwed Lily Allen song filtered through a Metroid level.

Body Talk Pt. 1 sputters a bit towards its end. “Hang With Me” is good in message, decrying love in favor of just hanging out and fucking once in a while, but slows down the pace a bit too much. And as precious as the traditional song “Jag Vet En Dejlig Rosa” turns out to be, and as good as Robyn’s voice is, it closes what has been an incredibly powerful, computerized 25 minutes of dance wonderment on its most human note. But perhaps Body Talk’s end serves as a reminder that we would prefer Robyn taking about how awesome she is (“Dancehall Queen”) than lowering herself down to talking excessively about star-crossed love on the sweaty club floor. Robyn rises above the naivety of youthful playfulness, creating a half-hour of power that is less “The Notebook” and more “GI Jane.” As Demi Moore said to her sergeant, and as Robyn might say to Gaga, “suck my dick.”

Overall: A-

Tracklist:
1. Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do
2. Fembot
3. Dancing On My Own
4. Cry When You Get Older
5. Dancehall Queen
6. None of 'Dem
7. Hang With Me
8. Jag Vet En Dejlig Rosa