Honey
If Robyn has found peace or happiness, you wouldn’t necessarily know it by listening to her first album in eight years. Opener “Missing U” sets the mood, with wistful lines about stopped clocks and empty spaces left behind. Yet it’s somehow one of *Honey*’s more upbeat tracks, with an insistent rhythm and glittery arpeggios that recall the brightest moments of 2010’s *Body Talk*. At its best, Robyn’s music has always straddled the line between club-ready dance and melancholy pop, and her strongest singles to date, “Dancing On My Own” and “Be Mine!,” strike this balance perfectly. But never before have we heard the kind of emotional intensity that possesses *Honey*; in the years leading up to it, Robyn suffered through the 2014 death of longtime collaborator Christian Falk and a breakup with her partner Max Vitali (though they’ve since reunited). A few one-off projects aside, she mostly withdrew from music and public life, so *Honey* is a comeback in more ways than one. Produced with a handful of collaborators, like Kindness’ Adam Bainbridge and Metronomy’s Joseph Mount, the album mostly abandons the disco of \"Missing U,\" opting to pair Robyn’s darker lyrics with more understated, house-influenced textures. She gives in to nostalgia on “Because It’s in the Music” (“They wrote a song about us...Even though it kills me, I still play it anyway”) and gets existential on “Human Being” (“Don’t shut me out, you know we’re the same kind, a dying race”). But for all the urgent and relatable rawness, *Honey* is not all doom and gloom: By the time closer “Ever Again” rolls around, she’s on the upswing, and there’s a glimmer of a possible happy ending. “I swear I’m never gonna be brokenhearted ever again,” she sings, as if to convince herself. “I’m only gonna sing about love ever again.”
Robyn presents her first solo album in eight years subtly, with slight builds and light hands. But her masterful command of emotions on the dancefloor slowly reveals itself across another enthralling record.
Pop punch urgency is replaced by a vaguer, more intense sense of loss on the Swedish pop star's first solo album in eight years
Gone is the heartbreak of Body Talk; hope and a deceptive simplicity reign in its stead
Paste Magazine is your source for the best music, movies, TV, comedy, videogames, books, comics, craft beer, politics and more. Discover your favorite albums and films.
The singer delivers a series of hard truths with a voice that sifts over the synths like icing sugar
In much the same way she reinvented herself in the 2000s by forming her own label and crafting bright yet bittersweet electropop that provided the blueprint for generations of artists to come, Robyn's return with Honey is more of a metamorphosis than a comeback.
Eight years is a long time in pop music. At least two generations of would-be stars have come and gone since 2010, when Robyn released Body...
“Can’t take all these memories,” Robyn sings one hundred seconds into her sixth album, “don’t know how to use
‘Honey’ isn’t the mainstream-conquering comeback that many Robyn fans might have hoped for. It is, however, the logical next step.
Robyn’s Honey feels raw and incomplete, like a work in progress—and maybe that’s the point.
Robyn returns with a personal and easily moving record while searcing for something more profound in our review of 'Honey'
By manipulating the modern pop palette to craft a complex heartbreak album, Robyn shows her imitators how it’s done
“I’m a human being,” insists a small, sad voice, floating amid melancholic synths and buzzing sound effects over a spaced-out beat.
Long-awaited album from beloved Scandi icon doesn’t disappoint. Music review by Jo Southerd.