Music Reissues Weekly: Robyn - Robyn 20th-Anniversary Edition

Sometimes, record labels don’t like what those on their roster have recorded. Such was the case with BMG Sweden and Robin Carlsson who, as Robyn, had made three albums with varying success and a raft of home-country hit singles for the label from the mid-Nineties to 2002.

She decided that hers would be the reins guiding what would became her fourth album. Up to this point, the credits of her dance-pop records were littered with the names of seasoned producers. Safe hands. Odd tracks had, early on, entered the US charts but that did not translate to a sustained international breakthrough. When BMG became aware in 2004 of what she aiming at through the proposed single "Who's That Girl" – a collaboration with art-electro-dance duo The Knife – the label didn’t go for it.

As a result Robyn left BMG and started her own label, Konichiwa Records. It took a little while, but the pointedly self-titled – this was about her – Robyn album became a line in the sand. Subsequently, despite her former label’s qualms, prolonged international success.

Robyn’s name was in the writing credits of much of what she recorded up to this point, but it was clear the driving seat wasn’t fully her’s. In Sweden, perceptions of Robyn were inevitably coloured by brushes with film and TV at age 12. She was first signed to a record label at 14. In 1997, there was a tie-in with producer Max Martin. This, it seemed – retrospectively and reasonably – foreshadowed what he would do with Britney Spears and, from 1998 onwards, Kelly Clarkson, Katy Perry and Pink. When Robyn came to make her fourth album, all this was in the rear-view mirror.

The story of the Robyn album and how it came to be has many more twists and turns. Further detail too. But the skeleton suffices. Happily, it was and is an exceptionally high-octane album. Little more needs saying about it, but head for any full-length track (ignoring the album-opening scene-setter “Curriculum Vitae,” that is) as confirmation of its wonder: “Who's That Girl,” “Handle Me.” Stuffed with emotion-invested dance-pop, Robyn also exhibits lyrical astringency. Now, a little late to mark its 27 April 2005 Swedish release, this pop milestone is reissued for its 20th anniversary (pictured above right).

What happened to the album after it was issued in Sweden is drawn-out. In a new sleeve, Robyn was released across most of Europe in April 2007 with a slightly trimmed tracklist and the addition of “Cobrastyle” and “With Every Heartbeat”– two years after first hitting Sweden’s shops. (pictured below left, the Robyn album as it was issued outside Sweden in 2007 and 2008)

A US release – with, once more, the non-Swedish packaging and further messing to the tracklist – followed in April 2008. Three years after it was in Sweden’s shops.

Re-reviewing Robyn is unnecessary. Nonetheless, looking at how the album was received beyond Sweden – what was written in English-language outlets in the three years after its home-country release – shows how Robyn and Robyn were seen as the album permeated the non-Swedish world.

Following flurries of blog interest, the first mainstream outlet to pick up on Robyn was the US website Pitchfork. In October 2005, when the album was still a Sweden-only release, Pitchfork ran a header declaring “Swedish has-been self-finances her comeback album and winds up making one of the year's finest, smartest, and most engaging pop records.”

A sample of what was below this: “Over canned synbeats and zaps, she struts her stuff, castigating silly boys who think they're playing in her weight class and generally acting like the shit. ‘Who's That Girl’ sez ‘no, no, no’ like Destiny's Child to institutionalized sexism – or something. ‘Handle Me’ tells bar star douchebags with flipped polo shirt collars that she's too much. Okay, so ‘Robot Boy’ is pretty much insufferable, a swerve too sickly for Radio Disney and kinda creepy when you factor in the songs about coming on tongues. (Those nails she's sporting on the cover don't look designed for wiping tears and mending broken hearts.) But ‘Be Mine’ is a disarming heartbreaker perfectly poised between twee and tuff, like if [Saint Etienne’s] Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley and The Neptunes got trapped in Jeff Goldblum's Fly pods.”

A US release of Robyn didn’t immediately follow, but April 2007's Europe-wide availability generated a response. In the UK, NME asserted, in full: “In her native Sweden, Robyn is musical royalty – a tweeny icon Mouseketeer-turned dance diva-turned edgy electro cyclone. In pop terms that means she’s older than all of [the then-trendy] The Twang combined. Her UK debut album manages to piece together many of the elements of her chameleon-like career (Robyn is essentially a Best Of collection) and come up with what is the most inventive pop album you’ll hear all year. The Knife-produced ‘Who’s That Girl?’ is like their indie disco perennial ‘Heartbeats’ times ten, ‘Bionic Woman’ is 16 seconds of Laurie Anderson vocoder weirdness and ‘Should Have Known’ a downtempo Prince-style love-in. All of these tracks and more suggest that Robyn’s just what’s needed in these post-Britney crisis times.”

The Guardian also covered the album. Its review read, again in full: “Robyn is a former pop puppet (in 1995, she had an international hit aged 14 with ‘Show me Love’) who has cut her strings. Desiring creative freedom, she bought herself out of a major label to set up her own imprint. But far from being deliberately artful or wayward, Robyn remains defiantly pop: the chorus of ‘Cobrastyle’ even goes ‘bum, diddy, bum de dang de dang diddy diddy’; and ‘Be Mine!’ recalls Madonna in her ‘Like a Prayer’ prime. She deals with her suffocating contractual problems on the synthetic ‘Who's That Girl,’ penned with fellow Swedes The Knife, and on ‘Handle me’ she emits a put-down unlikely to ever come from the mouth of a JoJo [nowadays, its unclear what this refers to] clone: ‘You're a selfish, narcissistic, psycho freaking boot-licking slimy creep.’ All enough to make you want to holler: go, girl!” (pictured right, the 2005 Swedish "Who's That Girl" single)

Before the April 2008 release there, US mag Spin had a look at Robyn in September 2007. Under the heading “The original Max Martin starlet stages a brilliant reinvention,” the review said the album was a “bonanza of multiflavored synth bubblegum” which “achieves the sort of pop perfection her more mainstream records never did.”

In May 2008, Rolling Stone’s partly dubious (cf the Britney Spears-related comments) analysis stated “Looking like David Bowie's little sister, Swedish starlet Robyn entered the arena in 1997 with ‘Show me Love,’ a generic dance-pop smash co-produced by hitmaker/Britney Spears sculptor Max Martin. But sensing a future of headshaving and How I Met Your Mother cameos, Robyn jumped ship to start her own label and work with some of her edgier homeys: electro-goth oddballs The Knife and freaky club fusionist Teddybears. Sexy without being pandering, arty without being pretentious, Robyn is a public service: a record that can make indie-minded geeks dance without shame.”

Now, the 20th-anniversary reissue. A double LP with a gatefold sleeve, it’s pressed on – rather ugly – “coke bottle-clear vinyl” (as the marketing material puts it). The cover art is per the original Swedish release but – with “Cobrastyle,” “With Every Heartbeat” and “Jack U Off” (which first surfaced as a bonus track on the 2007 UK album) – the tracklist is not what Sweden took delivery of in 2005. This is a hybrid, rather than what was issued 20 years ago. (pictured left, the 2008 UK "Who's That Girl" single)

Robyn is a CD-era album, and the only previous times it’s been on vinyl were as a 2007 German single album which thoroughly sheared the number of tracks – copies sell for at least £170 and can fetch up to £270 – and a 2020 Record Store Day edition on red vinyl which was a double featuring the 2007 tracklisting (ie: what's used here) as well as the original Swedish packaging. These days, the latter version generally goes for £50 or £60.

The fresh, 2025 version – essentially a repress of the 2020 Record Store Day edition – sells for around £40. Considering the landmark status of the Robyn album, it is disappointing that it has no liner notes, nothing contextualising it. Surely Robyn herself has something to say? Or perhaps fans such as Charlie XCX have thoughts? Even so, despite the whiff of “will-this-do” and the non-2005 tracklist, this no-frills reissue honours a record which still needs to be heard.

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@kierontyler.bsky.social