We’ve been “Missing U.”
Photo: Robyn via YouTube
Robyn fans just got their first hit of “Dopamine” in seven years. The Swedish pop icon released her first new music since her 2018 album, Honey, on November 12. “Dopamine” is trademark Robyn. Her clear-as-ice vocals are woven into a hypnotic beat that feels like being on a sweaty dance floor having a personal revelation. “I know it’s just dopamine / But it feels so real to me,” Robyn sings in the chorus, wondering if her relationship is good for her. “I’m tripping on our chemistry / It’s firing up inside of me.” As the blueprint for much of the pop underground, she takes on the role of a sage in the first verse. “Nothing’s ever gonna cut you as deep / As the very first time,” she explains to her progeny listening. “Nothing’s ever going to taste just as sweet / As when it is just out of reach.”
The music video, directed by photographer Marili Andre, sees Robyn dancing on her own again. It opens on a naked Robyn with sparklers in front of a black backdrop. Then, as the song starts, the camera focuses on her face, training on her eyes and mouth as she wistfully performs the track naked, in sweats, and in high-fashion red and white clubwear. As the video progresses, the singer starts to let loose while wind machines blow her hair. Then, rain falls, she really starts to dance, and, as the song climaxes, she parties in the downpour like she’s in a packed club, giving in to the rush.
“Everyone has a phone where they see their heart rate, and we’re learning how to decode our emotions through the hormones and chemical substances in our bodies,” Robyn explained in a statement. “It’s almost like we don’t even accept that we’re human anymore, like we’re trying to shoot ourselves out of it and explain every single thing — which I think is great, but that’s also why the world is shit, this idea that you can figure out and win life or something. The doubleness of ‘Dopamine’ is having an emotion that is super-real, super-strong, intense, enjoyable, or painful, and at the same time knowing that this is just a biological process in my body — and then not to choose religion or science. To just accept that they’re there together and to be able to go in between.”
“Dopamine” is a welcome return for the singer, whose last project, Honey, capped off over a decade of beloved indie pop music. That run began with her 2005 self-titled album and also featured 2010’s much-heralded Body Talk, which Pitchfork called the eighth-best album of the decade. These days, she is a legend for being one of the first major pop stars to walk away from a major-label deal with Jive Records, in 2003, and begin her own label, Konichiwa Records. Since Honey, she’s shown up occasionally to co-sign protégés, like Charli XCX’s 2024 “360” remix, where she boasted, “Started so young didn’t even have email / Now my lyric’s on your booby.” She also performed an uncredited spoken-word poem on Lorde’s 2021 Solar Power track “Secrets From a Girl (Who’s Seen It All),” playing a flight attendant. It’s time to remind these girls what happens when she’s in the pilot’s seat.
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