Welcome to Robyn Takeover Week on EQ.
She may have not gotten too much air time at the MTV Video Music Awards, but here at EQ, we are giving the queen of Swedish pop a whole week! It’s day two of Robyn Takeover Week and as hinted yesterday, I got to sit down with Robyn last week for a chat about all things “Body Talk Part Two” and here is the first snippet from our exclusive interview with Robyn in which she talks about life on the road, her thoughts about song choices for “Body Talk Part Two” and how she wanted to visually represent the “Hang With Me” music video. Keep EQ bookmarked for more Robyn interview snippets and Robyn content throughout the rest of this week!
EQ: Hello Robyn – You must be flying around a lot these days promoting “Body Talk”. What’s life like on the road for you like now?
Robyn: I like being on the road. When you do interviews like this, it’s cool. I feel really happy to be able to tour this album – at the moment for me, that’s a really important part of the whole thing. It’s important for me to showcase this record. For a lot of people, pop music is usually connected to huge shows with pyrotechnics and the like, but for me, I’m trying to do something that feels authentic and simple. A way of doing that and really connecting to the audience and communicating the music is really by being on the road with my band.
“Body Talk Part 2” is out now. Sonically, it’s a little bit different to Part 1. I was wondering what the rationale was for choosing songs for Part 2 was…
There’s no plan y’know – that’s the whole point. I think for me, the idea of releasing the album in parts was an attempt to find a structure that enabled me to do more of the things that I love to do at the same time. It’s never been a conceptual idea or something that I’ve tried to do – to make the three albums say different things or whatever. The eight songs that were on the first album were the ones that we recorded and were done by the time we had to send it off to the factory and that’s how it was done for Part 2 as well. So of course they have different feels, because they are different songs, but there was no real plan behind it.
“Hang With Me” is such a beautiful song – when I first saw the video it kind of drew me into your world where you were saying – “it’s hard to with me and my crazy life, but let’s not rule any possibilities out.” Is that what you were trying to portray with the video treatment?
I think usually what I want to do, is do something that is open enough for people to make their own interpretations and connect through the songs with their own emotions, thoughts, whatever…That’s definitely one thing that happened with the video that really made sense, but the idea from the beginning was to do something authentic and real. The “Hang With Me” video is a real documentation, it’s not made up or anything. My friend followed us around for two weeks on tour. It’s a beautiful song and I love it – it’s very sweet, but I didn’t really know how to perform it in a way that would give it the openness and the depth it deserves, so really the video is a way of showcasing the song, showcasing that I’m on tour and inviting people into my world. I think it’s “less cold” than what other pop videos usually are at the moment…
Remember “Body Talk Part 2” is OUT now on iTunes and you can get it in most countries! If you missed our wee chat with Robyn about “Body Talk Part 1” a few months ago you can catch up on that right here.