Chris Schulz: Robyn - Sexistential

The ninth studio album from Swedish musician Robyn, ‘Sexistential’ is a return to an earlier form. 

Unlike the softer sounds of her previous album ‘Honey’, her latest release is reminiscent of her 2010 trilogy ‘Body Talk’ – Robyn working with the same producer, Klas Åhlund, as she did on that project.  

In Chris Schulz’s opinion, the album is easily the best pop album of the year so far, and he joined Jack Tame to share his full thoughts. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at b.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
This is Robin. The song's called Talk to Me. It's
from six Essential, her first album in eight years, hotly anticipated.
Our music reviewer Chris Schultz is with us this morning.
He's been listening. Good morning, sure to Jack.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
I'm very happy to be talking about Robin with you today.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah. I feel like, do you know what you know
how they say that the music you listen to in
those kind of formative years, from the time you're about
seventeen to the time you're twenty five, is the music
you will listen to for the rest of your life.
I just I still go back and listen to Body Talk.
You know, Robin's Body Talk that amazing. It was like
twenty ten, twenty eleven, maybe that album.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Was She's just classic.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
It's just an a classic.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yeah, it so is. But she had already had a
career up to that point. They really tried to turn
her into this like Britney Spears style, like a real
kind of you know, over sex sort of teenage type
of musician, and it didn't work. She rejected at all.
I read this incredible interview with her in the New
Yorker recently and it sort of said she threw a

(01:35):
tantrum in America and just went, no, that's not for me.
I'm going to do this my way or I'm not
going to do it at all. And that's why we
ended up with that album, and that's why we've ended
up with this new album yesterday. Sex Estential. Yeah, a
great title for an album.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, Well, I was going to say, give it. Given
what the record company tried to turn her into Once
upon a time, what does Sexistential achieve?

Speaker 3 (01:57):
It's her version of that.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Right.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
She's forty four now, she is a single mum, she's
got a four year old at home. She did IVF
during COVID. She was actually trying to do it in
America and called a flight to Sweden and that's when
lockdowns happened and she couldn't get back to continue the treatment.
So she started all over again in Sweden and that's
where this album came from. So it's it's her doing that,

(02:22):
dancing on my own thing in nine different ways. There's
nine songs on this album, and she's sort of repeating
that trick. These songs are about like loneliness and about
raising a kid on your own, but still wanting connections,
still wanting love, still wanting attention, and they're bangers. These
are these are just euphoric classics. Honestly, I've been listening

(02:45):
to this since it came out yesterday and it is
the It's the best pop album easily this year. So
it's been a rough year for pop. I think, yeah,
you know, Harry Styles album is probably the best we've had.
And even that reaction was a little muted, it felt
like a very vibes the album. Bruno Mars didn't quite
land it with his album, and Jack Harl made an

(03:07):
awful R and B album that we shouldn't even mention,
but this is going to be I think this is
like she got in the studio with daft Punk and
decided to make nine like instant classics. I love this album.
It just has this pulse to it, this heartbeat. It
feels alive, like you're standing in the middle of a

(03:27):
dance floor and she's whispering like really personal intimate thoughts
since your ear. It somehow manages to do that to
be huge and euphoric and powerful and still be really intimate.
It's a really clever trick. That she's nailed.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Oh, that's so good. So I think the last album
was Honey, right, which was a kind of so if
you go back to body Talk, which was twenty ten,
I've just double checked it was that had that real
kind of edgy electronic sound to it, and then her
last album, Honey kind of took away some of that edge.
It was a bit softer, still kind of a bit

(04:05):
of a housey vibe to it. Where does this sit
on the continuum do you think it? Does she have
that kind of that that edginess that she had.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, it's a strange album about.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
What's good about her that like, she is a bit strange.
That's the thing that is interesting about her, you know.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Yeah, there's a there's a song on here. The title
track is a is a rap song about breastfeeding your
child while scrolling dating apps. That's how strange this is.
But but that's what makes it special. You're right, it's
it's it's the most robin album I think she's ever made.
It feels the most her and it also fits in,
I think with those albums that we've all loved recently,

(04:46):
you know, the Charlie h c X brat the Lord Virgin.
It's it's so raw and just it's unfiltered. Like you know,
you look at those big pop albums by like Sabrina
Carpenter or Katy Perry or whatever, and there are like
ten or twelve or fifteen different producers, you know, they
work with all of these different songwriters, and this is
just Robin in the studio, the same person that she

(05:07):
wrote Body Talk with and most of her records with.
It's just the two of them, and I think that's
why it's it's special. It's it's her on her turns,
doing what she wants to do and expressing herself in
her way, and it's genius. It's just brilliant.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
I'm so pleased to hear that. There's honestly made my day.
I've carved out some time when I'm planned to sit
down and listen to it end to end, so very
much looking forward to sex Estential. Have you given it
a rating for us this morning?

Speaker 3 (05:35):
Chris? Look, I've only had this for a day. I'm
going to go out here and say this is going
to be the pop album, the pop experience of the year.
I'm going to go up five stars.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
So good the stars for.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
Not coming to New Zealand. She's playing Australia in November.
I do know people who are going to those shows. Yeah, yeah,
it'll be special. It's a shame she's not coming here.
But we've got the album and the album is.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Great, fantastic, all right. Sex Estential is the album. Robin
is the artist. You can hear more from Chris of
course on his sub stack Boiler Room, and we will
have a bit more of a listen to Robin a
couple of minutes for.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
More from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live to
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