ROBYN
Sexistential (Young)
Consider this as an example of Swedish pop institution Robyn’s continued reign over the alt-electro dancefloor: during Charli XCX’s London stint of her Brat 2024 tour, she brought Robyn (as well as Yung Lean) out to perform the 360 remix, on which the singer is featured. Among a set that included appearances from other remix collaborators like Shygirl and Caroline Polachek, it was a delightful but not earthshattering cameo.
However, the more significant moment came when Charli – during the victory lap of Brat-mania – exited her own stage to allow Robyn to perform Dancing On My Own in full. The crowd, which included a significant portion of the LGBTQ community to whom the song has become a crying-through-your-mascara anthem (thanks partly to a Drag Race All Stars lip sync duet), went wild.
Skip to 2026, and Robyn is continuing to ride the wave of a phenomenal career that only seems to exist in peaks. Sexistential, her ninth studio album, comes 26 years after her self-titled debut, and almost a decade after her previous album, Honey. Right from the release of lead single Talk To Me, an instantly infectious floor-filler, it’s been clear our pop queen is not only on her rightful throne but enjoying the view from it. The album has a retrospectively reinventive theme: designed as a sequel of sorts to Body Talk, the album Dancing On My Own comes from, some tracks are salvaged from 15-year-old demos, while the vaporwavey Blow My Mind is a retread of a 2002 song.
However, Sexistential isn’t Robyn looking nostalgically backwards while bereft of new ideas. The 46-year-old is so assured in her own, unmistakable sound, she’s able to effortlessly transmute her life experiences – most significantly here, becoming a solo-parent through IVF – into songs that are lyrically mature, experimentally referential, and music that is dizzyingly high on life.
Pop music is brutally unforgiving to women of a ‘certain age’, either demanding that they settle into a retirement of gentle crooning or mocking the Madonnas of the industry for clinging to the last gasp of youth. Whatever elixir of life Robyn has been sipping on since 1995 runs through the dopamine-drenched veins of Sexistential – a record from a woman who never stops dancing to the beat of her own drum machine.
words HANNAH COLLINS
