News that Robyn is opening a few dates on Madonna's Sticky and Sweet Tour this coming summer has just crossed the transom, but—surprise!—those shows will all be in Europe, at least as of this writing. (Perhaps this means she'll be opening for Madge on this side of the pond come 2011?) While looking for news on who Madonna's tour support in the States might be, I e-stumbled across what may be a leaked set list for the tour, and even though Hard Candy is far from my favorite album of the year, the older songs she's picked are mostly killer: "Everybody" (!), "Borderline," "Dress You Up," "Rain." Plus, uh, "Girl From Ipanema"? Scan and Robyn/Madonna tour dates after the jump.
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Latest by BobbyMoon: @dyfl: Don't you know? If you don't attend a Madonna concert before you die you get sent to purgatory... along with the babies who were never baptized. more »
Robyn's (and some Teddybears') performance of "Cobrastyle" on The View had Whoopi Goldberg so excited that they gave copies of her album to everyone in the audience! Unfortunately most of the middle-aged women present had already downloaded it in 2006. [The Music Slut]
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Madonna's Hard Candy was last week's top-selling album, shifting 280,000 copies in its first week of release and leaving every other commercially available offering in the dust. Candy was the only album on this week's chart to break the six-figures-sold mark; Mariah Carey's E=MC2, the runner-up to Hard Candy, sold 95,000 copies.
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Yet another new video for yet another old re-released Robyn song. (This time it's "Who's That Girl.") Pretty sure I still had hair when Robyn originally dropped; who knows what's gonna fall off by the time she manages to make another album. [Music Slut via PTW]
Not to be one of those douchey "I live in New York and OMG I get to go to everything" bloggers, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that last night I saw the first American show by Swedish teenpop star-turned-bloggers' delight Robyn, and my reaction can be summed up by this IM that I got from a friend also in attendance: "Robyn: awesome or AWESOME!!! ?" The answer, of course, is "both, duh!" This surprisingly decent phonecam video of her take on Prince's "Jack U Off"—part of her three-song encore, which also included a reworking of her 10-plus-years-old hit "Show Me Love"—is a little grainy and there's some dude who starts jabbering away at 1:46, but it captures the frenzy that she whipped the crowd into pretty well, and I only hope that she becomes enough of a pop star that everyone reading this will someday have the chance to witness this particular spectacle in person as well. [YouTube]
So the Swedish kook-pop princess/Idolator patron saint Robyn is finally going to have a proper release of her album in the States, only three years after she initially self-released it after breaking free from Jive's early-millennium teenpop clutches. This is very exciting news, not the least because she's actually going to be playing shows within the country's decadent coastal enclaves over the next couple of weeks. But yesterday, i observed a somewhat troubling development regarding how Robyn the artist and Robyn the album might be marketed on this side of the world, and it involved her playing second freaking fiddle to Snoop Freakin' Dogg:
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I quite enjoyed Ocelot's herky-jerky remix of Robyn's "Be Mine"—it reminds me of the times when, as a socially awkward second grader, I'd rhythmically plug my ears to make my elementary-school cafeteria's lunchtime din sound k-razy—but the video, which the Ocelot guys stitched together from footage shot by actionfigure.com, goes from "oh, that's an interesting slow-mo shot of a bubble" neat to "whoa, I never realized skin could ripple like that after receiving a blow" transfixing at around the 1:48 mark. Uh, did I mention that it's kind of violent, although in a way that will allow you to completely expect what's coming and shield your eyes as need be?
Naturally we heard more than 40 great songs in 2007. And so before we get to the top two slots, here are 10 tracks that might have made it into our list of awesomeness on another day, from Radio Disney to Brooklyn art-rock to Euro-techno to Britney:More »
Fittingly for the breakup mixtape highlight of 2005's Robyn (which will be "2008's Robyn" by the time it hits the U.S.), the video for "Be Mine" is downhearted and downcast and gray all over. Robyn walks around a darkened town and shoots some pool with her pint-sized pal, spies her former beau with his new lady, and has an "I miss you bad" fit on her bed. Some might complain that this is like yr average Robyn funfest with the color and life leached out, but cmon, did you expect pink puppies and rainbow-horned pegasuses for a song that's the synthpop equivalent of stiff-upper-lip sniffles?
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Latest by Jfrankparnell: Is she miming Tawny Kitaen? Is that why I like this? more »
Robyn's self-titled album, which has been out in Sweden for three years and was supposed to come out via Universal Stateside Dec. 4, now has a U.S. release date of "an unspecified point in 2008." What, is the OiNK shutdown making the suits at Universal a little cocky about the possibility of import editions being pirated? [Pitchfork]
It's hard to pick one favorite aspect of the video for Robyn's bubbly new UK single, "Handle Me": Is it the part where she's all dressed up in an outfit that turns her into the greatest pugilisitic jukebox to come out of Sweden in forever, or the way she, uh, manhandles the large stuffed bear that shares her cube for a verse or two? Either way, if anyone can figure out the exact dance that's on the footwork-instruction dress she's wearing, please let us know in comments.
Robyn's self-titled album is—finally!—coming out in the U.S. on Dec. 4, and yes, I am going to shell out for a second copy for the sole purposes of supporting the e-scene. [EW]
Back in January, I found the credited-to-Robyn track "This One's For You (Remix)" on Discobelle and immediately got hooked on it, although trying to figure out exactly what said song—a half-crazy, half-breezy bit of pop sugar—was a remix of proved challenging, thanks to its titular vagueness (no, thanks, I'm not looking for old Budweiser ad campaigns, really). I guess my Google skills have gotten a lot better in the last eight months (hooray for small victories!), because I finally found the original over the weekend. It's by the Swedish string quartet/electropop outfit Fleshquartet, and while it's not as loose-limbed as the version that I've been playing all these months, its glitches and hiccups do provide a pretty plausible alternate soundtrack to Robyn's breakdown.
Latest by Maura Johnston:
@holdyourownhand: Yeah, I've listened to both versions today a bunch and I really do prefer the remix by a lot. (I did say "plausible," not necessarily "better," after all ;) ) more »
Swedish kook-pop queen Robyn gives "Since U Been Gone" a delicate electro makeover. If you listen hard enough, in the background you can hear the collective brains of the Internet's pop fiends exploding! [Electroqueer]
After watching the Technicolor clip for Robyn's cheeky "Konichiwa Bitches," we'd like to propose a rule for all video auteurs going forward: If you're going to go down the oh-so-serious route of having credits roll before your song kicks in, you must spend at least one verse of the clip either a) dressed up as a piece of candy or b) wielding a four-foot cardboard mallet against someone's feet. Preferably both.
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Over the weekend, Discobelle posted another new track by the Swedish enigma Robyn. It starts off sounding cheery enough (thanks to some handclaps and glinting guitar chords), but then you notice that she's singing about dynamiting buildings and being unable to sleep at night without leaving the TV on. Things get more unhinged from there, but Robyn recovers just in time to make "This One's For You" nab this week's "Most bittersweet lost-love anthem" crown.
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We were fans of the chameleonic Swede Robyn even before she ditched her label and gave herself a makeover, and she's managed to outdo herself again. "With Every Heartbeat" is a sweeping, sad breakup ballad, full of regret, fuzzed-out keyboards and a stunning string breakdown.
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Idolator
News that Robyn is opening a few dates on Madonna's Sticky and Sweet Tour this coming summer has just crossed the transom, but—surprise!—those shows will all be in Europe, at least as of this writing. (Perhaps this means she'll be opening for Madge on this side of the pond come 2011?) While looking for news on who Madonna's tour support in the States might be, I e-stumbled across what may be a leaked set list for the tour, and even though Hard Candy is far from my favorite album of the year, the older songs she's picked are mostly killer: "Everybody" (!), "Borderline," "Dress You Up," "Rain." Plus, uh, "Girl From Ipanema"? Scan and Robyn/Madonna tour dates after the jump.
More »
Yet another new video for yet another 
