Robyn interview: 'I am finally able to enjoy myself again'

To the top of The Ned, for an 8.30am Saturday meeting with Robyn. “Wow,” she marvels of the City skyline, glowing in early morning sun and at eye-level with the rooftop restaurant of this palatial bank-turned-private members’ club. We agree it feels very Harry Potter or, more accurately, Fantastic Beasts.

After eight years out of the spotlight, the 39-year-old Swedish pop superstar is back back back and busy busy busy. As she prepares to release her sixth album, Honey — nine tracks of pitch-perfect electronic soul — every hour of every day counts.

Our interview is squeezed into a 24-hour flying visit to London from Stockholm. Robyn — dressed down(ish) for breakfast in knobbly blue jumper, geometrical skirt, clumpy boots and sculptural gold bomber jacket — is here for a fitting with stylist Tamara Rothstein. She is costuming the singer for her first concert in three years, a special event in the Swedish capital in a couple of weeks.

“It’s called A Secret Gig, because where and how it’s taking place won’t be revealed. This sounds like a huge marketing scam and you don’t have to write about it if you don’t want to,” she offers with typical honesty. “But it’s real, and I’m really excited about it.”

The only way of securing tickets is by playing a Pokémon Go-like app, which requires fans to meet other fans and exchange codes. The idea is to get people involved in a community, make new friends. Engagement: it means a lot to Robyn, whose hits Dancing On My Own and With Every Heartbeat are masterclasses in emotional intensity.

“And it’s actually working. There was a big swap-meet very close to my house — they didn’t know, of course... ” As to how big this show will be: “That’s not information I can give you at the moment,” she smiles. “But I can tell you that 10,000 people around the world are playing the game right now.”

The app was developed in collaboration with Red Bull. “I’m quite amazed at how they work. They’re super-open, and I’ve been able to do exactly what I wanted,” she admits. It’s a rigorously policed stance that’s both kept Robyn in music for 25 years — she was a teenage R&B/pop sensation, notably in America and Sweden — and also seen her in no rush to follow up 2010’s Body Talk.

Part of the reason Honey has taken so long to complete is that the woman born Robin Carlsson has been weathering grief. In 2014 one of her earliest musical mentors, Christian Falk, died of pancreatic cancer. She also split with her long-term boyfriend Max Vitali, a filmmaker. The two are back together (she wears a thin rose-gold band on her wedding finger) yet those losses are front and centre in Missing U, the sparkling but crushing first single from Honey, which this serial collaborator made with the assistance of, among others, Brits Joseph Mount of Metronomy and DJ/producer Kindness (Adam Bainbridge).

But for a long time, Robyn didn’t want to engage with music or the world at large. She stayed home in her Stockholm apartment watching TV (“Game of Thrones!”) in her pyjamas. She also spent a lot of time in LA, saw friends, went clubbing, read a lot of books. “And I went to therapy three times a week.”

No medication, or self-medication? Robyn shakes her head. “Well, I think psychedelic drugs are definitely useful,” she clarifies, “in those periods of your life.” Does she mean microdosing?

“Um, I haven’t microdosed — I’ve mega-dosed,” she smiles. “It balanced me chemically. To me it’s like a cleanse. Like self-care. But it was a very now-and-then thing.

“Psychedelics are like travelling — they shift your perception,” she continues. “You come to a new country and you’re like: ‘Oh, that’s what a bus looks like’. If you’re stuck in one way of thinking, travel, take some mushrooms, do something that just gets you out of your head. I’ve also done ayahuasca,” she says of the Amazonian plant-derived psychoactive brew, “but that’s a much more heavy thing.”

It was all about rediscovering her purpose. Or, the purpose of her music. “I thought: ‘What is so special about me that I have to take up all this space in people’s consciousness and tell them about my feelings? What can I offer them?’

“Maybe that’s why I like people like David Bowie and Prince. I seriously feel like Bowie was an astronaut who went into space and experienced things and brought back these... treasures,” she says, beaming.

The psychoanalysis, she concludes, made the music better. “In a way, that was my space trip.”

It was the album’s title track that was the breakthrough. She had sent an unfinished version to superfan Lena Dunham, who had requested something new for the soundtrack to last year’s final season of her hit TV comedy Girls. Its airing caused clamorous excitement — was the Robyn comeback finally afoot?

It wasn’t, and she admits with another laugh that she found that expectation really stressful. “Part of me was thinking, ‘Maybe I should just release Honey the way it is. Am I just being silly, thinking I can do something special here?’ But I decided not to, to try and get to where I wanted to get to. And I got there, I think.”

Robyn will be touring next year, although certainly not to the extent of the three-year trek she undertook in support of Body Talk. But certainly the creativity of this daughter of experimental Swedish theatre folk is, once more, firing on all cylinders.

“Honey was the first song I wrote where I was really enjoying myself again, after questioning the idea of being an artist,” she admits.

She listened to a lot of Michael Jackson demos, notably Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough: Michael playing bottles, sister Janet on backing vocals. “I felt really inspired by his happiness working with those rhythms.

“That excitement of how music makes you want to dance — that’s what got me back into it, and that’s what Honey is about. Me just being able to enjoy myself again.”

Honey (Island) is released on October 26