As the lights glow a soft orange and a piano is rolled onto the O2 stage, Robyn opens up to the audience before her. “I used to feel so embarrassed about writing these sad love songs. I’m like, ‘Grow up!’” she laughs. “But I feel like life is pretty embarrassing.”
She’s not wrong, but tonight (July 3), the Swedish pop superstar puts on a show that not only embraces every part of life, but is empowered by it. Whether she’s portraying the kind of outsized, dramatic feelings love can elicit or the carnal desires that women are often conditioned to keep private, on stage, Robyn makes everything feel liberating.
She’s back in London (her “favourite city in the world”) as part of her ‘Sexistential’ tour, the live accompaniment to an album that explored love and sex in characteristic Robyn form – sometimes yearning, sometimes silly, and almost always turning those feelings into grade A bangers. Early on, ‘Talk To Me’ shines a light on the sexy power of communication, while the album’s title track finds Robyn stepping off stage and greeting the front rows at the barrier as they yell back lines about lusting after Adam Driver and being “bossy, bad and bougie”.
Robyn credit: Gus Stewart/Redferns
That same song finds the artist declaring her body “a spaceship with my ovaries in hyperdrive”, and here, she creates a setting that often has a tinge of the otherworldly. As we wait for her to arrive, droning synths reverberate around the venue as lights flicker down onto the crowd, like a spacecraft drifting through unchartered corners of the galaxy. Before a sublime ‘Really Real’, a spotlight lands on Robyn, looking like it’s about to beam her up. When she kneels at the front of the stage during the climax of ‘Dancing On My Own’, glitter starts to fall from the ceiling, covering her in sparkling dust until she looks like a twinkling alien who’s landed on our planet, ready to dance.
There’s plenty of opportunity for that, whether to the bright beats of ‘Fembot’ or the juddering energy of La Bagetelle Magique collaboration ‘Love Is Free’, which threatens to turn the venue into a sweaty club scene rather than a cavernous arena. In fact, the only time the night’s pace dips is when Robyn brings out a piano and slows down ‘Be Mine!’ to ballad form – presumably, it’s felt that the original version would be one banger too many for us to handle.
By the time Robyn reaches the encore, The O2 is in a state of rapture. What follows is the triple threat of ‘Missing U’, ‘Call Your Girlfriend’ and one of the greatest songs of all time, ‘Dancing On My Own’. At the end of ‘Call Your Girlfriend’, she throws punches into the air, like a boxer who’s just clinched a title. If writing killer pop songs was a competition, Robyn would be the undisputed heavyweight champion, and tonight she makes it clear that there are few who can touch her.
Robyn played:
‘Blow My Mind’
‘Fembot’
‘Talk To Me’
‘Hang With Me’
‘Ever Again’
‘Dopamine’
‘Honey’
‘Life’
‘Love Is Free’
‘Sexistential’
‘Really Real’
‘Love Kills’
‘Be Mine!’
‘It Don’t Mean A Thing’
‘Sucker For Love’
‘Light Up’
‘With Every Heartbeat’
‘Missing U’
‘Call Your Girlfriend’
‘Dancing On My Own’
‘Show Me Love’
English (US) · 