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Honey is the eighth studio album by Robyn, and her first since Body Talk (2010). It was released on 26 October 2018 through Konichiwa and Interscope Records. It features the lead single "Missing U" and second single "Honey", a version of which featured in the final season of the HBO series Girls in 2017 before being released in full in 2018.
The album features collaborations with Joseph Mount of Metronomy, Klas Åhlund, Adam Bainbridge, Mr. Tophat, and Zhala. It has been called a "significant departure from the hooky, sparkling electro-pop" of the Body Talk series of albums.
Background, writing and recording
Robyn began work on the album in 2015 following the death of close friend and collaborator Christian Falk and the breakup of a relationship. Early on, she reached out to Joseph Mount of Metronomy, and they kept collaborating beyond the expected one-off session. Mount said he had to adjust to Robyn's "emotional transparency" while writing, understanding over time that it is "integral to what she does".
Robyn has stated that the album, recorded in part at studios in Stockholm, London, Paris, New York and Ibiza, features "much more production work on my end". She also said the album represents "this sweet place, like a very soft ecstasy. I danced a lot when I was making it. I found a sensuality and a softness that I don't think I was able to use in the same way before. Everything just became softer." Robyn initially began working on the record alone, which she said allowed her to be more sensual. The album was named for its "glowing, transcendent" title track, which The New York Times has called Robyn's "masterpiece".
Robyn created the demo for "Missing U" in the summer 2014 on her laptop along with a LinnDrum machine and a software synth. She noted that the lyrics for the song took 2 years to complete, before finishing them with producers Joseph Mount and Klas Åhlund.
Music
Robyn became more involved in the production of Honey than she had been on her previous albums, including making beats herself. This resulted in sounds including what The New York Times called "outré future pop" on the track "Human Being", "sensual throb" on "Baby Forgive Me" and "playful '90s house" on "Between the Lines". The song "Send to Robin Immediately" samples the 1989 house track "French Kiss" by Lil Louis, which was the idea of English musician Adam Bainbridge, better known as Kindness. Pitchfork writer Jason King notes the album is a "breathless, existential post-disco record".
Promotion
Robyn announced she was working on a new album in February 2018 and teased new music throughout the year; after releasing the lead single, she appeared at one of the regular Robyn-themed dance events hosted at the Brooklyn Bowl, where she played "Honey" in full for the first time. At the Red Bull Music Festival in New York in May 2018, Robyn stated: "With this album I've gone more back into the softer I get, the more it happens, and the more colors and dynamic a song gets. And for me, that meant shutting down for awhile and being sparse with my impressions and sensitive to what I needed."
The album was officially announced by Robyn in a video message posted to her social media accounts in September 2018. She explained, "It's a personal album, and there are so many things that happened throughout making it that it's really hard for me to explain in one go. I think the best way is for you to listen to it." On 24 September, Robyn revealed the track listing. The full version of "Honey" was premiered by Annie Mac on BBC Radio 1 on 26 September, and was made available as a two-track single online the same day along with the album becoming available to pre-order.
User Album Review
“I’m a human being,” insists a small, sad voice, floating amid melancholic synths and buzzing sound effects over a spaced-out beat. It would be a cold-blooded listener who could deny this plaintive assertion on the maverick star Robyn’s (very) long-awaited sixth album, Honey. Across 10 tracks of ultra-modern dance music, she takes listeners on a journey from vulnerable heartbreak to love reborn, beautifully reminding us that flesh-and-blood-emotion is the essential ingredient of great pop.
Robyn Carlsson has a critical reputation, fan devotion and peer respect greatly outweighing her commercial impact. Signed as a 15-year-old ingénue in 1994, she is big in her native Sweden (a country that knows a thing or two about pop), but has only notched up a handful of international hits (With Every Heartbeat was number one in the UK in 2007 but Robyn hasn’t charted in the US since Show Me Love in 1997).
Yet her bold but sweet Nineties Europop was a direct prototype for Britney Spears, while the blend of effervescent melody, techno beats and emotionally acute lyrics to be found in her 2000s synth-pop set a template for the EDM generation, influencing everyone from Rihanna to Taylor Swift. Following her acclaimed 2010 album Body Talk, however, Robyn faded from view, coping with the death of a friend and a break-up (and subsequent reunion) with her fiancé.
Middle age is a difficult transition for a pop star. Yet at 39, it feels like Honey could be the moment Robyn gets her due as an artist in complete command of her medium. Deftly sketched lyrics of relationship travails glide across irresistible beats on gossamer melodies, driven by nimble bass figures, sparkling synthetic strings and off-kilter, earworm noises.
Because It’s in the Music evokes the bittersweet addictiveness of pop, memorialising a break-up tune (“The day they released it/ Was the day you released me/ And even though it kills me/ I still play it every night”).
Halfway through the album, she switches audaciously, between the sadness of Baby Forgive Me to the dynamic empowerment of Send to Robyn Immediately, when the same lyric is transformed from plea to ultimatum (“If you’ve got something to say/ Say it tonight”). From there, the only way is up, on a journey through sensual reconciliation (Honey) and joyous romance (Between the Lines) playing out on the delightfully buoyant Ever Again (“never gonna be broken-hearted, ever again”).
Robyn is not a vocalist given to diva-style over-singing but the feeling in her songs is utterly transparent. “All these emotions are out of date,” she gently laments on Human Being – but real emotion never gets old. Honey is moving in more senses than one, a hypnotically groovy dance floor opus, set to the beat of Robyn’s tender heart.
SOURCE: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/what-to-listen-to/robyn-honey-review-sweetness-comes-strength/
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