A Swedish mile
in her shoes

>>A decade ago, Robyn was among the first
of the wave of pop ingénues out of the
gate. While many of her tabloid-bait
contemporaries have crashed and burned,
today the 28-year-old Swede is a comeback
queen in full command of her career

QUEEN BEE: Robyn

by ERIK LEIJON

Back in 1995, 16-year-old Robyn was a money-grubbing music producer’s wet dream. A clean-cut, blonde Swedish pixie with Nordic good looks, a smooth voice and a naïveté about the industry, Robin Miriam Carlsson was the appetizer before the smorgasbord of pop stars that would flood the airwaves a few years later.

Although she was unique among her peers because she wrote her own songs, like so many young singers she was tightly controlled by her record label and eventually saw her star diminish after an early commercial apex in the form of singles “Do You Know (What It Takes?)” and “Show Me Love.”

Not wanting the same fate as so many pretty young things who faded into obscurity or became paparazzi fodder in their darkest days, the headstrong Robyn cut the record-label umbilical cord, formed her own company, Konichiwa Records, and proved it’s possible for a pop star to be at the top of her game in her late twenties.

“I was just happy to get the opportunity to write songs and have them recorded,” the 28-year-old recalls as her second, eponymous North American release hits stores three years after finding success in the U.K. and becoming the darling of Internet music critics worldwide. “I was thinking how it was going to be great to travel from town to town, like my parents were doing when I was growing up. They had their own theatre company, so I was used to the concept of performing on stage and thought that was what I would be doing.

“Of course the pop industry I entered was a lot more aggressive and… (pauses) a lot stranger than I thought it would be. It came to a point where I felt very uncomfortable shouldering this role as a pop artist or as a teen star, acting as some kind of role model or living up to any expectations.”

Survival cool

Her disillusionment concerning her career trajectory began after the diminishing returns following 1997’s Robyn Is Here. Her second album, 1999’s My Truth, was never released in North America and 2002’s Don’t Stop the Music met the same fate despite a label switch from RCA to Jive. By 2004, Robyn had recorded “Who’s That Girl?” with critically acclaimed Swedish electronic duo the Knife, and despite knowing her myopic bosses would hate her new electro-pop direction, she presented the suits her doomed song anyways.

“They just totally didn’t get it and didn’t think it was pop music. It made me think, what am I doing here? There were rumours of Sony buying BMG. I felt like the music industry was falling apart and if I was going to protect my own interests and create a future where I could be comfortable and feel happy again about making music, I needed to make a change. Starting my own company was a survival mechanism.”

The Knife were a huge inspiration to Robyn, not only musically but also in how the brother-sister combo of Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer had circumvented big labels entirely by self-financing all four of their records.

After parting ways with BMG in 2004, Robyn spent the rest of the year getting in touch with the many industry contacts she had made over the years. The plan was to originally just secure enough money to release her album in Sweden. She had created a genre-splicing opus of electro-pop, dance music, hip hop beats and lyrics, along with more traditional R&B balladry, and with all her attention devoted to recording and releasing the record, restarting her stalled international career was the least of her concerns. When major online music sites in the U.K. and North America eventually latched onto her grimier, more aggressive style—which ran the gamut of influences from Gwen Stefani to Laurie Anderson—it did not surprise her.

“It’s a great album,” she says. “It’s a real album in a sense that there’s more than one or two good songs on it. I could do a Thriller with this album, and release all the songs as singles. I felt very comfortable and more confident that people would get into it if they got the chance.”

She also credits the more organic method of advertising. Robyn has been spread almost entirely via music sites and social networking pages, meaning it was more dedicated music fans who sought out her new material as opposed to the fair-weather fans who dug her when she was hailed as the next big thing.

Swede creed

When referring to the organic process by which her album was conceived and promoted, it is also a point of pride for Robyn to say her record was created entirely in Sweden, with her fellow Swedes. It has less to do with nationalistic fervour than with feeling comfortable in not having to rely on today’s big names to create a modern-sounding pop record. Although her contemporaries such as Britney Spears, Beyonce and Fergie have all delved into electronic and hip hop beats, chances are they wouldn’t release a record without an Akon or Will.I.am printed in the liner notes. Including her Knife collaboration, she also worked with a former member of Swedish punk band Teddybears, rapper Swingfly, indie darlings Peter Björn and John and house DJ Andreas Kleerup. The latter collaboration, which yielded the song “With Every Heartbeat,” became her unexpected comeback hit in the U.K.

To say that an incredibly catchy pop album came from Sweden may not be the most shocking concept; after all, the Scandinavian country of nine million people produced the likes of ABBA and Ace of Base. Sweden can also lay claim to having taught the Americans everything they know about creating fresh-faced pop stars, considering Robyn’s earliest songwriting partner, Max Martin, would go on to pen the most recognizable hits of the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and *NSync after perfecting the craft with his fellow countrywoman.

“I think there’s an impression he and other songwriters working with pop music are these evil people with a master plan for making money, but [Max] Martin is really just an outsider too. He was in a metal band growing up. He started out as this chubby guy with long hair, and Denniz Pop [the late co-founder of prolific ’90s hitmaking Cheiron Studios] put him in the studio for two years and he wrote all these amazing songs. It was really weird for him too. He came from the suburbs of Stockholm and he was just a really talented guy with a strong ear for melody.

“I’m still very much connected to where I came from and how I got started—Martin is someone I call when I have a song I don’t know what to do with. For me, he’s not a commercial monster.”

Same songs, different verse

In a prophetic, full-circle sort of way, Robyn did find herself back in bed with a big, heartless label for the highly anticipated North American release of her new album. She signed a distribution deal with Interscope Records, and they did suggest Robyn take advantage of Interscope’s large stable of hip hop and R&B acts as a way of re-introducing herself to an American audience that hadn’t heard from her in over a decade. The difference this time was, however, Robyn called all the shots. “Usually how I work is not as sterile and planned out like that, but when they asked, I said if they could put me with a real gangster, I would do it,” she says. This eventually led her to work on the Fyre Department remix of Snoop Dogg’s “Sexual Eruption.”

Although the term “comeback” has been used to describe Robyn’s recent hot streak 11 years after kickstarting the pop star revolution, the Swedish queen of queen bees (as described by Swingfly) says her evolution from wide-eyed singer-songwriter to confident electro-pop diva and successful businesswoman has been a gradual one. Even if many young artists are ashamed of their more idealistic early work, Robyn continues to perform her old hits such as “Show Me Love,” even as her first headlining North American tour celebrates where she is now as opposed to where she’s been.

“You know they’re still good songs,” Robyn says of her old material. “They don’t sound the same way they used to but they’re still a part of my career and they’re still great songs. You can really do anything with a good song.”

With Elsiane at la Tulipe on
Sunday, May 4, 8 p.m., $20