WORSHIPPING AT THE ALTAR OF ROBYN

The elusive pop legend is back with a new baby baby and a refreshingly horny perspective middle on n age. So we e invited musicians, artists, and taste akers to ask here absolutely anything!

- 

It's the first Monday of the New Year, and Robyn is sprawled out on a mattress in St. Andrew the Apostle, a modest Roman Catholic church in Brooklyn. She's wearing a skintight leopard-print outfitperfect for a horny 46-year-old iconoclast who enjoys a godlike status in contemporary pop. It's a rare sight: Robyn operates on her own schedule, disappearing from the public eye until she's ready. Seven years have gone by since her last album, Honey, which was widely considered one of the best of 2018. Now she's returned, in the middle of a loneliness crisis and mass division, to remind us of the hard-won pleasures of human connection.

In two days, Robyn will announce her ninth album, Sexistential, set for release March 27. The lead-up has been cryptic. She teased its first snippets—remixed extended versions of tracks “Really Real” and “Sexistential”—to lucky attendees at Acne Studios’ Paris Fashion Week spring-summer show in October, before officially releasing the endorphin rush of a new single “Dopamine.” Then a week later, she appeared in Los Angeles for a one-night-only show at the Fonda Theatre. (Anya Taylor-Joy, Kyle MacLachlan, and Miranda July were among the many fans who congregated.) Crossing coasts, she rang in the New Year with a CNN performance in Times Square and two “Robyn and Friends” nights at Brooklyn Paramount, where she played “Dopamine,” “Talk to Me,” and “Sexistential” and treated those of us who snagged tickets to a performance of “Show Me Love,” a breakout single from her debut album.

In her youth, Robin Miriam Carlsson was kind of a proto-Britney, propelling Max Martin's career as a pop kingmaker. She grew up in Stockholm, touring with her parents' independent theater troupe, and got a record deal at the age of 14. A decade later, unhappy with the artistic compromises imposed by the label, she went independent with her own Konichiwa Records.