Robyn has been sending us warning shots suggesting the follow-up to 2018’s Honey is imminent, and now she’s given us what seems to be that new album’s lead single. We don’t know anything yet about the Swedish alt-pop pioneer’s new LP, other than the fact that she’s now releasing her music through Young rather than her own Konichiwa Records. But based on the sound of “Dopamine” — her first new song in seven years — it’s going to be some of her most direct, accessible music in years.
The track, a collaboration with songwriter and producer Klas Åhlund, is pure synth-pop bliss. We’re introduced to layers of percolating keyboards and digitally processed vocals before Robyn’s unvarnished voice comes through, full of passion and longing. “I just need to know that I’m not alone,” she sings. “I know it’s just dopamine, but it feels so real to me.”
Robyn’s statement:
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. 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.
Robyn lets her personality show in director Marili Andre’s “Dopamine” video, which you can watch below.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source stereogum.com ’
