LIKE ALL THE TIME

I know I'm late to the game, but I've been listening to Robyn's self-titled album from last year, put out on her own Konichiwa Records. It's not as engrossing as Come and Get It, or as insanity-inducing as Biology, or as immediate as either of those. Plus I usually skip a few tracks. But I've definitely been playing it a lot the past few days. Once you skip past the intro (which feels a lot longer than two minutes) it's extremely light, fun, and definitely sets in after a little while. Addictive. Part of this seems to stem from an air of familiarity, which I am starting to think isn't a coincidence.


A few notes:

My favorite song right now is the first one, "Who's That Girl?". This must be one that The Knife helped produce, since it almost exactly like "Heartbeats", the giveaway being the steel drums - which, once again, I don't mind based on the strength of the rest of the track. Also, the hook seems to be lifted directly from the bridge to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", which is like crack.

"Be Mine" is my other favorite. The cello sounds fresh and really drives the song. The chorus feels like it's taken right from "Time After Time". But again: crack.

"Konichiwa Bitches" is the one that made the most waves on blogs last year, a semi-rapped rant adapting Dave Chappelle's saying. Did anyone else notice that halfway through the track, the synth line that comes in is the first half of the hook from Salt-n-Peppa's "Push It"? Like, exactly? Seems right that the "rap" track would appropriate something from another female hip-hop artist.

I would love to know if any of these were intentional. Maybe since Robyn's only U.S. hit was in the nineties, she's doing shot-outs to that decade... or not, who knows.

I'm still looking for some good remixes from this album. Here's a pretty decent one someone sent me on ILM.

Robyn - "Be Mine (Meatboys Remix)"

No, I don't know who the Meatboys are. If you have any Robyn remixes, please feel free to send them my way (sovietpanda [at] gmail [dot] com).