“Robyn” was, technically, her fourth album, but it was self-financed and released on Robyn’s own label, Konichiwa Records. Her third album, “Don’t Stop the Music,” didn’t get a U.S. release, as Robyn refused to rewrite two songs that referenced an abortion. She had signed her first record deal at age fifteen, and her first album was a successful experiment in generic teen-R. (The album came out in Sweden that year but wouldn’t get a proper release in the United States until 2008.) Robyn had been famous since her 1997 hit “ Show Me Love,” a Max Martin production that evoked TLC’s “ Waterfalls” and presaged the rise of Britney Spears. I have reacted this way to Robyn since 2005, when her self-titled album leaked in America. On weeknights, I’d come home exhausted and put “Honey” on in the shower, and then the inside of my body would flood with confetti and warmth and electricity, and I’d stay up until three in the morning. When “ Honey,” the title track from Robyn’s long-awaited new album, was released, at the end of September, I found myself taking hour-long walks around Brooklyn at midnight just so that I could listen to it over and over. The spell it casts can be habit-forming you submit to it at your own risk. I’ve always understood the music of the thirty-nine-year-old Swedish pop star to be something like a club drug: a substance that drastically increases your likelihood of dancing and crying simultaneously. And nine years after the song’s release, it finally reached Platinum status.The feeling you get when you listen to Robyn-the instant sense of obliteration in the surge of synth and strings-is almost too powerful. Calum Scott’s cover snuck onto the Hot 100 in 2017.
“Dancing on My Own” never appeared on the Hot 100 when it came out in 2010, but in the time since its release, it’s taken on a life of its own. Robyn still uses that move today when she does the song live, to the delight of audiences. Making out with yourself dance, I called it,” says Decida. But there is a moment of levity that comes when Robyn turns her back to the camera and feigns intimacy with another person by wrapping her arms around herself. The video shows a serious-faced Robyn standing in a harshly lit rehearsal space and a darkened club. “ was like the spirit animal of the Body Talk album,” Decida says, “and you can spot that in the video.” “There was a lot of angry energy,” she says, recalling how she channeled Rosie Perez’s dance sequence in the opening credits to Do the Right Thing. The year prior, while Decida was at her parents’ house for Easter, she found herself in her old childhood bedroom working on moves for “Dancing on My Own” while remembering her own experiences as a teenager. A video, choreographed by Maria “Decida” Wahlberg, followed in May. The song was officially released in June 2010, but it started making the rounds and breaking hearts that April. Watch Kelly Clarkson's Wistful Cover of Robyn's 'Dancing on My Own' It had like three chords.” They fattened things up during production, only to realize that they preferred the original and stripped it all back down, though they swapped the acoustic guitar for synthesizers with frayed edges and a beat that aimed for a TKO.
What they came up with was an acoustic “campfire” version of “Dancing on My Own.” “In the beginning it was more of a country song, almost,” Berger recalls. “When she got to the studio, the first thing she said was, ‘Can we sit down and write a song on an acoustic guitar today? I’m so tired of writing over electronic beats and tracks,’” says Berger. In preparation for their session at his Stockholm studio, Berger made a slew of electronic tracks and beats for Robyn to write over, but she had other ideas. Producer Klas Åhlund was back in the mix after working on Robyn, but for one of the songs Robyn was toying with, she reached out to Patrik Berger, who contributed to 1999’s My Truth and the 2005 self-titled set, for a different perspective. In 2009, Robyn was in the midst of making the songs that would become the acclaimed 2010 Body Talk series.