Robyn - Honey is Out

[Vitleysingur 13,790]

Edit: Robyn did a track-by-track review with Pitchfork

1. “Missing U”

Spoiler

Pitchfork: The album’s tracklist basically follows the order in which you wrote the songs, and “Missing U” is first.

Robyn: I started this song in the summer of 2014, upstairs in my apartment on my laptop. I made this beat with my LinnDrum machine and this software synth that I’ve used on all my demos. I was just interested in these chords that reminded me of something that my parents would listen to in the ’80s, when pop music was really soft and warm, like Kate Bush.

I wrote the chorus, the verse, the melody, and some of the lyrics there, but the song made me really depressed—it was about some heavy ****, and I didn’t know what it was yet. I broke up with my boyfriend, and my really good friend passed away from cancer. I tried to finish those lyrics for about two years and I couldn’t. I really waited and waited, and then I finished them with [producers] Joseph [Mount] and Klas [Åhlund] in 2016.

My demo of “Missing U” has the same chords but it’s very different. Joseph pulled out this bright sound effect, this feeling of light hitting water, in that arpeggio. He really put his finger on this kind of sadness: It’s quite exciting, even though it’s really painful. Arpeggiators stretch your brain and make you listen to all the different notes and harmonics in a song, but you can also just have it play a few notes, and then your brain starts filling in the gaps. On this record, the arpeggios are still there, but I tried to make them less even, less stiff, less on the 16th notes, and with a different groove.

“Missing U” is really about the psychedelic, trippy thing that happens when people are not there anymore, and how clear they become all of a sudden, and how you deal with the fact that there’s this big space in your life. In the beginning, there’s no segue between your life and that place where that person used to be. That’s what healing is about: finding ways through that space where that person was. After a while, it starts becoming about connection to other people instead, or to yourself.

2. “Human Being”

Spoiler

There’s a robotic sensibility to the lyrics on this song: “You know we’re the same kind/A dying race.”

I had just read the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari and I was inspired by the way that he described our relationship to animals. He wrote about what the future will be like, and how is AI going to treat us. The only other relationship we have with another form of life that would be similar to how AI would relate to us is how we treat to animals. So I wrote the song as if AI had taken over the world, and the human beings were the minority. AI will do everything better than us, maybe even have emotions. What is it that’s so special about us really? And if you take that away, is there any value still left in being human? I think the value is being connected to other people.

3. “Because It’s in the Music”

Spoiler

This track is really at the crossroads of sweetness and melancholy—it’s light as air, but then it’s got those low-end disco bass octaves to keep it grounded. What's it about?

I wrote it about a particular night, but also it came from just hearing Joseph’s track—it sounded very disco for me in this special way. It was interesting to write a song about disco music on a track that reminded me of disco. The lyric is about how there are songs that you connect to certain people. I wanted it to be like when you listen to a song that you know someone else had a relationship to, and maybe it’s over, and you don’t know if that person feels the same way and thinks about you. I wanted the bridge to just be bass and drums, but Klas and Joseph had these other ideas. Joseph basically wrote a new song—he said, “I’m going to write the song that this song is about”—and we put it in at the end. Also, Klas performed a flamenco solo for this song—but we all agreed to leave it off.

4. “Baby Forgive Me”

Spoiler

We’re knee deep into interpersonal relationship drama on this track.

It’s about power dynamics in a relationship. It’s about hurt. In a way, maybe it’s a submissive song. But it’s also quite an aggressive thing to demand someone to take you back. I don’t know if forgiveness is possible. Maybe it is. I’ve asked people to forgive me many times. Forgiveness is also something that can be discussed. It can be negotiated.

When I was writing this song, I was thinking of “Streets of Philadelphia” by Bruce Springsteen. The energy of it. The mood. For me, that song is a version of disco.

5. “Send to Robin Immediately”

Spoiler

This track reminds me of late night transcendence on a dancefloor. I love that the beat doesn’t drop until we’re halfway through the song.

It’s a song that I made with Kindness [Adam Bainbridge] right at the end of making the album. The file that Adam sent me was called “Send to Robin Immediately.” I played it for a friend, and he saw the file and said, “Is that the name of the song?” I said, “No, but maybe it should be.” The title stuck.

The lyric seems to be about urgency and immediateness, living in the nowness of things: “If you know that you really care/Don’t hold your breath.”

In the aftermath of losing people, you realize how important it is to appreciate them when you have them. Also, when you come out of a rough period, it becomes about the appreciation of life, of being here and having the things that you have, like friends and music. I wouldn’t say that making music is my therapy, but music does makes me feel like I want to be alive. There’s nothing that makes me feel as in love with my life like music.

6. “Honey”

Spoiler

I’ve read that this track took you longer to make than almost any other you’ve ever worked on.

The song was recorded in many different places: Sweden, Paris, L.A. All of those vocal sessions made it into the final recording. I was in a particular mood when I was writing it, and the lyrics talk about going to a sensual place, in the same way I talk about making music because it makes me feel good, that it’s a playful thing, something that I can do that soothes myself if I do it in the right way.

I called the album Honey because of what this song means to me, and how it was important to the making of the record. Maybe “Honey” describes a state of mind instead of the actual substance. To get myself back into actually enjoying making music again, I had to do it in a sensitive way. There’s a sensuality that came out of that, that I wanted to achieve.

7. “Between the Lines”

Spoiler

We’re in the 1990s for sure now. The Korg M1 piano dance tracks you seem to be referencing here were made around the same time you were at the start of your recording career.

Throughout the whole album, I was interested in rhythms that that get repeated in many different ways in dance music. [She sings a ’90s Crystal Waters-style synth dance rhythmic pattern]: That was just something I was hearing. I was playing around, and Klas got into it, and we kind of freestyled that whole song. Sometimes you imitate stuff until you make something of your own.

Once you get into this way of relating to dance music in a club that’s really about being in the space you’re in and feeling your emotion with the people that are there and just enjoying it together, the music changes. It started to inform how I was writing music and how I wanted my music to be. Pop songs have their peaks, but with club music, it’s about the groove and liking where you’re at in that moment, riding a wave. Dancing changed my way of listening to music.

8. “Beach 2K20”

Spoiler

What inspired the beat here? Where was it made? I can almost guess from the song title alone.

Me and Rudolf [Nordström, aka Mr. Tophat] started working on the track in a house in Ibiza a few years ago. But it’s really Rudolph’s track: He’s the one who created that world. And I loved it. It was kind of like “Send to Robin Immediately”: I just heard something that I was really inspired by and I wrote a song on it. We worked with analog synths and the vocals and arranged it all together. I work that way a lot: Rudolf will make stuff, and I will edit it, we’ll take turns. He is so amazing at creating music that can put you in a trance.

Maybe that beat is inspired by my samba lessons. I always loved samba music—it makes me cry. I had to learn how to dance to samba because the music is so moving to me. My friend has been dancing for a long time—when I was low and wasn’t making music she would come by and give me lessons.

9. “Ever Again”

Spoiler

I love that the album ends on such an up note. It feels triumphant, given all that you’ve been through, and the relative darkness of the moment we’re currently living in.

This was a song me and Joseph wrote right at the end of making the record. We needed a break from “Honey,” as we’d been working on it for so long and it was so tiring. Joseph started playing these chords on his synthesizer, and I really liked them, and we changed them around a little bit together. And then the chorus just came like that [snaps fingers]. It was so nice to write something at the end of making the record where you have the whole thing in your system and you can add to it in this very natural way.

It’s an optimistic lyric. I don’t know if I’m an optimist—I used to be, but maybe not as much now. Things don’t always go well, that’s just how it is. I’m not a pessimist: I think there’s a lot of suffering that doesn’t make sense and it’s up to us to be responsible for what’s happened in our lives. I’m not always seeing the best outcome; it matters what you do. But the song is defiant in that maybe my heart will be broken again, but maybe I will think about it in a different way. Maybe I won’t let it destroy me.

Coming close to turning 40, I definitely feel more and more aware of my limitations as a human being. I don’t feel limitless like I did when I was 25 or 30. Now I can see life the curve of life happening in a certain way. But because of that, I feel much freer as a person.

[FlopSlurper 34,336]

I'm waiting for leaks, I can't wait until midnight here   @Robyn Baby Forgive Me.mp3

[Illuminati Freak 2,432]

LOVE the album! 

[tomsches 17,493]

What? is it a leak?

[DelusionalGaga 29,668]

10 minutes ago, tomsches said:

What? is it a leak?

He/she linked to Spotify so I assume it's officially out in Australia/NZ. 

[retroglamx 5,177]

Oh GAWDDDD why do I have to wait until tomorrow

(we waited 8 years, a couple more hours shouldn't do no harm)

[Andreu 37,216]

pffffff IDK

I liked body music but both the singles felt super uninteresting to me idk

[Boyboi12 2,125]

 it’s not out on apple 

[Vitleysingur 13,790]

14 minutes ago, Andreu said:

pffffff IDK

I liked body music but both the singles felt super uninteresting to me idk

This album might not have bangers like Body Talk while it's such a cohesive pop perfection.

Imagine Kate Bush in 2018

[Patrick Garcia 312]

Dancing On My Own is my favourite of her.

[Villanelle 1,254]

I can't wait to listen 

[That J 12,166]

I'm waiting until I can truly submerge myself into this album from start to finish before playing it but I gotta say HONEY is my personal song of the year. 

I love many things she said here.  "Sometimes you imitate stuff until you make it your own"...what a killer qoute. 

Also love how she mentioned the song Streets Of Philadelphia which has always been a fave of mine. I also always considered it on the very very low end of melancholic dance. 

This album sounds heavy but with that ROBYN sweetness.  I'm imagining feels like With Every Heartbeat, Be Mine, Indestructible, etc...

And if that's the case?  I'll be in LOVE.  

I have the feeling this is exactly the album I needed at exactly the moment I needed it.  

[HauntingHollow 4,310]

anybody got any links ?

[badgirlmeat 3,243]

well i have to wait 

i love Honey but Missing U is meh 

[Cloudbusting 1,548]

I'm so readyyy I love herrrr