Opener In My Eyes is Robyn's most welcoming song yet, a warm swell of synths like a friend pulling you on to the dancefloor: "Little star, I got you – you'll be OK." The first Body Talk found Robyn bored or grief-stricken in the club, but In My Eyes' bouncy communality sets the tone for much of the new record. And if the vocal loop on We Dance to the Beat starts annoying you – as well it might – you can puzzle out the riddles, one-liners and jokes in the lyrics, or just bathe in the early-Orbital keyboard sounds.īefore it gets playful, though, Body Talk Pt 2 is inviting. The worst thing here is Criminal Intent, but even that has a lovely, draggy vibe reminiscent of Britney's Piece of Me, and a comic storyline involving Robyn getting arrested for freaky dancing to her own song. The big difference is that those acts' sub-par songs are just greyer versions of their good ones: Robyn's usually have an interesting idea behind them. Robyn sometimes plays up her distance from more tightly-managed pop acts, and her fans love her for it, but actually her hit rate isn't much better than a Kylie or Sophie Ellis-Bextor record. That's not to say her quality control is higher. This is the Body Talk for people who like their Robyn upbeat, fierce and dancefloor-ready. There are no tongue-in-cheek dancehall try-outs here, no Swedish folk songs, nothing as quirky as Fembot. Body Talk Pt 2 is the all-action follow-up: faster, harder, clubbier.
Body Talk Pt 1 was a tour of Robyn's world, spotlighting her urge to experiment and play stylistic dress-up. Even so, as with any good trilogy, the second episode has a different flavour from the first. Robyn has been entirely candid about the working process behind the records: these songs are just the ones she had finished when it was time to release the album. So the Body Talk albums aren't a grand thematic conceit or a decadent folly, they're a way of getting material out quickly and relatively cheaply. It earned her a deeply loyal worldwide fanbase, but you can forgive her for wanting the follow-up to be a little more spontaneous. She patiently toured, reissued and talked about her self-titled 2005 album for half a decade as different countries switched on to it. But Robyn takes "just friends" more seriously, and her song is a checklist of what that phrase might mean, with a tender but firm warning not to fall "headlessly" in love with her, whatever else happens.īut people do fall in love with her, and this generous and pragmatic streak is part of the reason why. So are a lot of pop singles, of course, usually sitting bitterly on the "friendship" side and sniping over the border. H ang With Me, Robyn's new single and the centrepiece of this second of three Body Talk albums she plans to release this year, is about the boundaries between friendship and love.
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