ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE: JUNE 14TH 2010

Robyn’s Body Talk series is one of the more interesting projects to look back on in the year that has passed, partly because it came in three stages but mostly because it was one of the most ambitious and successfully straight forward pop releases in recent memory. Announcing the release of Body Talk Pt. 1 automatically suggests further installments are to follow, in this instance not just once but twice. It’s a brilliant device through which to sustain interest in an artist’s singular focus, even more so when trying to see how Robyn fits into the bizarre and frankly mechanical amalgamation we term pop music in this decade. There aren’t many pop singers who could attempt a project as ambitious as this and there’s even fewer who could pull it off. Upon reflection it seems that the concept of Body Talk is the result of more than a decade of scattershot hit and misses that ultimately pushed Robyn further to make you sit up and listen.


The first installment is the strongest of the three and this makes perfect sense. Albums by Rihanna, Katy Perry and others of the general pop superstar ilk will hook you on the singles (routinely located at the beginning), leaving the filler to peter out the mandatory running time towards the end of the disc. Robyn did the same except split it over three individual mini LPs, released over six months with one glaring difference: none of the subsequent LPs had any filler, and therein lies the overwhelming ambition of Body Talk. It announces proudly that Robyn can dissect and ultimately magnify the individual tracks by distinguishing their release dates. The fact that a stand alone album, Body Talk, collecting the ‘best’ of all three installments was released concurrently with Body Talk Pt. 3 somehow defeats my point (alongside the fact that the latter has only five tracks and could essentially be classed as an EP). Regardless, the statement is clear; Robyn is underrated. Damn underrated. Body Talk is just her way of making it plain and simple.


Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do opens the album with a title that threatens to overshadow the song itself. Thankfully the production values and propulsive beat are the only reason why this song demands to be listened to. On headphones, it’s an entirely different experience and an introduction to the first of two sides that Robyn is projecting most directly on Body Talk as a whole. Fembot continues the bad-ass, robotic persona she’s envisaging on a track armed with enough poise to tackle the resilience of its spectacularly agile verses. The whole thing continually teeters on the edge of exploding. That it never does is evidence of an artist holding her own, in control of not only her words and her voice but the way she sings those words and the way in which she’s produced them. To quote, she’s a “very scientifically advanced hot mama, artificially discreet, no drama, digitially chic, titanium armour,” and I can’t help but be reminded of the cries of renewal and rebirth that Björk made in 1997 on Pluto. When Robyn’s on the dancefloor she’s always the observer, even when she exclaims “I came here to dance, not to socialise.” There’s no middle ground for a pop singer with a conscience who grasps the difference between one-off and mass production. None Of Dem rounds up every stereotype of nightclubs as she cries to be taken far away from here.Röyksopp are at the production helm revving Robyn up and down with every bubbling backbeat. She’s playing of course, but there’s a grain of truth to everything and everyone she’s discarding, a far cry from the android who fell asleep in front of MTV on The Girl And The Robot.


The second side of Robyn that comes forth is the role of the vulnerable disco girl, a role that’s worked for her in the past on With Every Heartbeat and again here on the record’s gorgeous centrepiece, Dancing On My Own. There’ll be many reasons why this song hooks people in the way it does, from the way the chorus hits you with each successive turn as though you were hearing it for the very first time, or the way she articulates so perfectly the angst of every teenage girl who’s ever felt invisible. But the biggest reward for listening to this song is its endurance. Robyn isn’t afraid to bare her soul and contradict her alternative feisty side, particularly when the results are this spectacular. Hang With Me (Acoustic Version) takes this heart-on-sleeve earnest even further, stripping back the gleaming production that’s gone before. Jag Vet En Dejlig Rosa is a version of a traditional Swedish song which rounds out Body Talk Pt. 1 on a quieter note, suggesting further things to come. Cry When You Get Older and Dancehall Queen sound like they belong together. They move in similar melodic circles and build solid chorus refrains, falling somewhere in the middle of the ballsy maverick on None Of Dem and impassioned solicitation of Hang With Me. 

One year since the release of the first installment of the Body Talk series and the concept seems to have sunk in a little deeper upon retrospect. It’s easy to seek out a novelty in the announcement of three mini LPs, but after one year - and six months since the project was fully realised - it’s clear to anyone who has heard and enjoyed these installments that Robyn was playing with no one. Body Talk Pt. 2 would go on to further solidify her penchant for knocking out instant pop classics. By this point one year on we’d only heard the first installment which, looking back, points at a direction of things to come as the final two tracks take a curveball approach to Robyn’s already triumphant aesthetic. The acoustic elements and pared down vocals of the last two tracks may be the least memorable on an album of flashy electro-synth brilliance, but they suggest - should her persistence to saturate the masses never be realised - very positive avenues for Robyn to seek further exploration down the line.