Robyn previewed new music at Acne Studios’ show at Paris Fashion Week – check out clips below.
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The Swedish pop icon hasn’t released an album since 2018’s critically acclaimed ‘Honey‘, but speculation about her imminent return was fuelled last month when her longtime collaborator, Klas Åhlund, appeared on the Nordmark Pod and said he had “just finished a new Robyn album that’s coming out”.
On October 1, Acne Studios held its SS26 womenswear runway show at Collège des Bernardins in Paris. Jonny Johansson is the co-founder of the fashion house and a long-time friend of Robyn’s, and she and Patrik Berger arranged the score for the show.
Among the material on the soundtrack was a revamped take on ‘Robotboy’ that saw her joined by Yung Lean. Speaking about teaming up with him, Robyn told Dazed Digital he was ”a kindred spirit” and said the song felt like “it was made for him” rather than her.
Touching on creating together a soundtrack to the show, she continued: “There was an unexpected dialogue between the music and the clothes that I just didn’t see coming”.
While she was tight-lipped on details about the new record, she told Dazed she had used “sounds and some lyrics to build a new collage which is very personal and real”.
As noted by Stereogum, the material heard in clips posted by Acne aren’t all entirely new, and included a reworked version of 2005’s ‘Should Have Known’, with new lyrics including: “Fuck a app, I need me some IRL/ Fuck a single mom, I’m not judgmental/ Fuck a Plan B baby, it’s no big deal.”
Her last studio effort ‘Honey’ was awarded four stars from NME, in a review that noted: “From an artist who conjures up so many lofty titles – pop genius being one of them – this is a record that takes an altogether different tack to cut through to the raw, complex tangle of emotion.”
Speaking to NME at the time of its release, she explained the album’s title, saying: “I’ve been obsessed with this word for a long time, it’s such a weird substance, it’s both disgusting and amazing at the same time. That’s what self-love is, it’s not all good; it’s self-indulgent and also requires you to be deep and look at things that aren’t so comfortable.”
Two years later, Robyn was honoured as the Songwriter Of The Decade at the NME Awards.
Presented the award by Charli XCX and Héloïse Letissier of Christine And The Queens, Robyn went on to say: “I’ve prepared a long speech. I feel like I’m at the awards show at the Fifth Element, the [Luc Besson] film and I’m very flattered for the appreciation that NME has shown me over the years. But this is kind of a lifelong prize to be the Songwriter Of The Decade and I appreciate it so much.”
Talking to us in the winners room, Robyn said that she was planning to work on new songs that didn’t make it onto ‘Honey’.
“There are leftovers,” Robyn told us at the time. “Some of them I’m going to record this summer, I hope. Usually, I finish songs. If I start them, I finish them. The last album took eight years. I hope it won’t take that long next time.”
In the years since the release of ‘Honey’, she’s appeared on a few tracks with other artists, including ‘Call My Name’, a 2021 collaboration with the Swedish duo Smile, and a remix of Charli XCX’s ‘360’ with Yung Lean last year.
This year, she’s made a few live appearances, starting off by teaming up with David Byrne for a rendition of ‘Dancing on My Own’ at Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary concert, and later with Gracie Abrams at Lollapalooza.
In March, she made a surprise appearance, joining Jamie xx on stage in Copenhagen for a live version of their track ‘Life’, which was released on his album ‘In Waves’ in 2024.
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