Robyn reframes motherhood and desire

Adam Sandler’s 2008 film “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” is not among the comedian’s most noteworthy hits. The movie, which features a truly head-spinning plot about an IDF soldier moving to America to become a hairstylist and uniting his local Palestinian and Israeli population in the process, received dismal reviews and thankfully faded from the zeitgeist. Perhaps that’s why Swedish pop phenom, Robyn, can’t seem to shake the memory of her OBGYN referencing the film, which she details in her brilliant new single, “Sexistential,” a charged-up and charmingly weird electro-rap song about the IVF process and new motherhood. When her doctor asks Robyn who would be her dream sperm donor, Robyn coyly rhymes, “Well, Adam Driver always did kind of give me a boner.” To her surprise, her doctor replies, “Yeah, wasn’t he great in ‘Don’t Mess with the Zohan’?”

After an intentionally pregnant pause, Robyn’s vocal is chopped and edited into a confused stammer before she resumes the song’s mantra: “I-I-I, I like to go out, wear something nice and push!”

Here, Robyn delights in regaling the listener with the contradictory ideas of motherhood she’s encountered in the four years since becoming a mom to her son, Tyko. How fitting that the road to maternity began with her doctor confusing two actors; it was an ironic glimpse into a life where outsiders will believe Robyn, as a new mother, should be one type of person, when she’s someone else entirely. In “Sexistential,” the “and… push!” lyric refers to both the literal act of giving birth and the spiritual act of giving it all on the dance floor. To Robyn, these two moments are aligned. They are highly physical, intense and uniquely divine opportunities to understand the power of her own body. “Sexistential” finds the woman meeting the dance floor diva for a stunning moment of kinship and clarity.

Then, the beat kicks back in and things get silly as Robyn raps about her proclivity for “juicy hentai” and her impatience for dating apps. In the pop phenom’s typical fashion, it’s a lyrical wink to the listener, a sign that she doesn’t care whether they take her — as Lady Gaga once said — too seriously or not seriously enough. Robyn’s not interested in waxing poetic about society’s expectations of her as a mother. She’d much rather push the conversation forward by showing us her weird, horny and utterly intoxicating version of motherhood firsthand.

Robyn wasted no time bringing us into her world. “Sexistential” — the title track for the singer’s upcoming album, due out in March — dropped Wednesday alongside the equally passionate single, “Talk to Me,” in which Robyn yearns for her lover to take her on a verbal ride to euphoria. Though that song is certainly the more accessible of the two new singles, “Sexistential” is the more fascinating, wily one. It zigs as often as it zags, the synth dropping out just when things are picking up so Robyn can compare her body to a spaceship with the ovaries on hyperdrive. Everything about the song is unapologetically in-your-face, and that attitude presents the thesis for Robyn’s music right now: She’s not going to wait for anyone else to question, let alone understand, her sexuality. You’re either in or you’re out. If you’re not going to dance, don’t come to the club.

As someone’s first introduction to Robyn, that carefree, assertive approach may be jarring. But boldness is Robyn’s M.O. Since shedding her persona as a pop-R&B singer in the late ’90s and early ’00s and stomping back onto the scene with her second — and much more personality-rich — self-titled album in 2005, Robyn has made her eccentric nature integral to her art. As a musician, she’s as interested in sweeping, relatable drama as she is in peculiar artistic quirks. Few artists could make the grumbling bars of “Don’t F*****g Tell Me What to Do” sound as earnest and exciting as the powerhouse smash “Dancing on My Own.” That both of these songs exist on an album with a Snoop Dogg collaboration says all you need to know about how seriously Robyn takes herself.

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But even for an artist as self-assured as Robyn, becoming a mother, especially as a woman and public figure in her 40s, is a vulnerable and frightening experience. And like any major life choice, discussing it — and particularly, displaying it with joy and pride — is likely to elicit some interesting mixed reactions. People are going to say the wrong thing, or ask inane questions. Human desire will get muddled up with health and safety, with Robyn “on Raya while on IVF,” as she puts it in “Sexistential.” And that’s all just during pregnancy. Once the child arrives, a pop star parent’s every move is doomed to face that dreaded word: cringe.

Debuting “Sexistential” live on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” this week, Robyn gyrated on her knees, thrusted her hips and writhed all over the stage while the song’s lyrics appeared on a screen behind her, written inside a Venn diagram. The performance was a fervent display of sexuality that, to many online, clashed with some of the song’s intentionally funny lyrics. “This is the worst song I’ve ever heard,” one user said. Another called the performance “embarrassing.” While others understood that the song and performance were quintessential Robyn, others lazily lumped it in with phoned-in dance songs from Idina Menzel and “SNL” parodies. It would seem that the Venn diagram that appeared on-screen during the performance was intentional, as rife with meaning as her use of the word “push.” Robyn’s music will — at this point, in this stage of culture — always fall into one side of the chart. It will be great to some and terrible to others. Never mind that “Sexistential” is Robyn mocking up her own diagram, with her sexuality on one side and conventional ideas of motherhood on the other. Her volition and intention don’t matter because an artist who is in on the joke makes hating less fun for the thoughtless critic. They would rather relegate Robyn to “cringe” status. But by rolling around on that stage and knowingly rapping about her awkward sexcapades while still exuding sensuality, Robyn defied that title before it could even be given to her. A mother’s intuition is always one step ahead.

What’s so surprising is that these conversations persist. Women in pop have always had to prove their worth all over again when they come back to music after having a child. Too many people still assume that motherhood means that women have no time for sex, or that desire falls away entirely with age. After seven years spent proving that motherhood made her into an even more mature artist with interesting observations and new things to say, Madonna was met with raised eyebrows when she returned to dance music with “Confessions on a Dance Floor” in 2005. Reviews cited Madonna’s age as often as they spoke of their surprise that the pop star could still deliver a stellar dance record so far into her career (aka, so many decades into her life). During an interview with British talk show host Michael Parkinson that year, Parkinson asked Madonna, “How much longer can you go on doing this?” Ever the raconteur, Madonna balked: “I don’t know, how much longer can you go on doing what you’re doing? Don’t limit me.”

In the years since, others have followed suit. Britney Spears famously championed herself as a woman and artist on her 2007 single, “Piece of Me,” saying, “With a kid on my arm, I’m still an exceptional earner.” Last year, British pop star Sophie Ellis-Bextor released her album “Perimenopop,” a play on “perimenopause,” filled with exuberant, upbeat dance singles that proved the “Murder on the Dancefloor” singer was just as viable more than two decades after her hit single, now beloved by a new generation, was first released. As pop evolves, so have the progenitors of its modern sound. Without Robyn, there would be no “BRAT.” That kind of clubby defiance was Robyn’s bread and butter long before Charli XCX released her first album — something even XCX would admit and has paid homage to in a remix of her song “360,” which notably features Robyn admitting, “I’m the realest ever.”

That’s the kind of cool confidence that Robyn wants to live in now. Three decades into her career, Robyn hasn’t dialed it back for anybody. She wants to push her body and the boundaries. She lives to rip up the picture of what a woman in pop should sound like and what a mother’s sexuality should look like. Yet, she’s not so much redefining these things as she is reframing them in her own electric perspective. “I feel like the purpose of my life is to stay horny,” she wrote in a press release accompanying the album’s announcement. “It doesn’t even have to be about sex, but it’s feeling sensual and attracted to things that I enjoy, and not letting anything take over that.” For Robyn, motherhood is filled with discrepancies. She can breastfeed while scrolling Instagram. She can buy things from Etsy and still be “bossy, bad and bougie.” She can be a mom and still enjoy going to the club and dancing to her heart’s content. “Sexistential” presents both sides of a modern mother’s Venn diagram, with Robyn gyrating in its overlapping middle, inviting us to her party.

The post Robyn reframes motherhood and desire appeared first on Salon.com.