Ecstatic misery

Last autumn, anyone who a) has an interest in pop music, and b) reads the weightier end of the press, would have come to the conclusion that the world was shortly to enter some kind of musical singularity, in which all of civilisation would be transformed by the 39-year-old Swedish pop singer Robyn. ‘After more than a half-decade of psycho-analysis, a relationship meltdown, the death of one of her closest collaborators and four years spent working on her masterpiece… a new Robyn is ready to return,’ a profile in the New York Times solemnly pronounced, ahead of Honey, her first album for eight years. The Guardian devoted 6,000 words — 6,000! — to her ‘seismic cultural impact’. The New Yorker rolled out its editor, no less, to speak to her for its podcast, and its reviewer said of the album: ‘Honey is loose and free and physical. It captures and concretises the wordless, ephemeral moments of bliss and sorrow that come when you’re in a crush of strangers, unsure of the future.’

And then Honey was released. It spent one week in the US album charts, at No. 40. In Britain, it soared to a mighty No. 21, and spent a whole fortnight on the chart. Which didn’t seem to be indicative of a singer who had transformed the world in her image. To be fair, one might have seen that coming, given that she had said of Honey to the Guardian: ‘I was interested in songs that didn’t have a beginning and an end… I wasn’t interested in melody at all.’ And not being interested in melody is rarely suggestive of an album for the ages.

That this was a show that aspired to something profound was signified by the stage set — all billowing white sheets, like a sixth-form theatrical recreation of Scott of the Antarctic — and the fact that Robyn had a dancer.