Every Single Album - 'Sexistential' | Every Single Album: Robyn

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

Nora and Nathan take a surprisingly delightful journey through Robyn's first album in 8 years, 'Sexistential.' They talk about the record's short, but efficient runtime of just 29 minutes (1:00), some of the wackier lyrics from the title track (16:17), and her specific brand of auteur-pop (32:42). Before they go, they quickly talk about the news that Olivia Rodrigo will be releasing her third album in a couple weeks (46:41). Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh, and welcome to every single album. I'm Nora Pinciotti, and as always, I'm joined by my friend Nathan Hubbard. Nathan, how goes it on this fine Tuesday? It's going. Are you going to read our text threads about this album, like about whether we were going to do the album that we were going to do today? It's not going to read them because I don't have them in front of me, but I can certainly communicate the gist. We're going to spend some of today's episode talking about Robin, who has a... the new album Sexistential, which I was really interested in talking about, one, because she's

opening for Harry Styles later this summer, two, and maybe this is actually more significant. I'm just like, I will always be very interested in what Robin has to say and do. Can we start there? Yeah, please. Why? Oh, gosh, because I'm a millennial woman who watched girls. Okay, so stick, go with me, like, help me understand. I am not.

So like, the use of dancing on my own, which comes up in a very pivotal moment, in a very deftly applied moment in girls, it was just like this, this, it was really well done. It was a huge moment in the show. He seemed gay. He seemed gay. Yeah, he was gay. And it's something that I think has made that song, like a totem in culture. that maybe makes it feel now and makes the body talk album or series of albums that Robin put out in 2010,

which is, I think, like, the moment in her career that kind of establishes the resonance that she has with me, makes it feel like huge looking back on it in a way that I do know that it kind of wasn't quite in its moment. But I think because of how it has been worked in. into a big TV moment, into things like, okay, you have her come and do it at the S&L 50th, right? Like, that was part of that show. There are these, it's really called her up.

Right. It's really call your girlfriend and it's dancing on my own, both from that, both from Body Talk. That to me, like, they're just these canon songs. And then I think you combine that with the fact that she is kind of the ground floor of something that I am very interested in, which is like, what are the different ways to be a pop star? And I think that album, which is, even though it was 2010, so it was a long time ago, it was only two album cycles ago for her, is kind of this like watershed moment of some of the indie kind of tastemaker publications and critical spaces, rethinking their relationship to pop and rethinking their relationship to pop. What does that mean? I think that there was a wave of,

okay, maybe that this is a type of music that we can write about. This is a type of music that we can take more seriously that came after this album. Because, Robin was simultaneously a product of the like Swedish pop hit machine that defined so much of popular music in the 2000s. But also she's like weird. She's an auteur. She like has a certain type of credibility as a weirdo underground artist. And the collision of those two things I think like really, really affected the way that that pop music was consumed

and treated critically, especially after her. And I think to... Go ahead. Well, I wish you'd finish the thought. Well, just to some extent, that goodwill, like, it is still absolutely there.

This is a 30-minute album. Like, it is very slight. No, it's not. It's 29 minutes. It's 29 minutes. It's 29 minutes long. It is not even half an hour long. It got a 7.9 from Pitchfork.

It has been reviewed and like a pint about at length, seriously, introspectively, incredibly well in The New Yorker. It had four stars in The Guardian. I mentioned pitchfork. Like every one of those publications is treating this album, which again is not even half an hour long. like a really serious event. And why that, like, why Robin is that person and occupies that particular space in music, but also in the sort of like commentariat class point of view is really, really interesting to me. So I'm almost more interested in talking about Robin and thinking about Robin than I am listening to Robin sometimes.

Well, her highest streaming track on Spotify is dancing on my own. It's 430 million streams, which for a pop artist is not a ton. I mean, it's great, but it's, you know, it's been out since 2010 and we're not halfway to a billion. so her sort of like statistical impact seems to be somewhat low. But I have not read a single review on this artist and or on this album. And I think if you were to characterize my general feeling about approaching this album and like doing Robin, like how would you characterize it? you were not enthused. I have like nine other things that I was going to let you talk about before we got to this

so that you didn't have to just dive in. Like I had a whole warm-up act planned, but you wanted to just get to it. Well, here's what I want you to know. I think I probably had very little enthusiasm for this. It's Master's Week. There's a bunch of shit going on. And this album is fucking awesome.

I never know what I'm going to get with you. And that's a compliment. Please go on, Nathan. I don't know what else I have to say today, but I'm like, it's not like brat or, you know, it's not going to get an A, a solid A for me. But I think this album might get an A minus for me.

Okay. Like, let's talk about it. But you're interested in thinking about Robin more than you are listening to this album. I wanted to pose that as a possibility, just that it's within the... I really like thinking and talking about Robin is really all I meant by that. I quite enjoy listening to Robin as well. I had no interest in doing this album.

And once again, I rolled into the gym having to hide my phone so that nobody looks at the... I got to make it so that my Spotify shit doesn't show on my home screen because it just creates... Or like, do we need to just get you one of... Well, I don't want to endorse this because I reject the premise that you need. to hide your phone from people because of the music that you're listening to in service of this podcast. However, should you just get one of those little phone screens, the things that makes it so that if you're not directly in front of your phone, you can't really see what's going on. I know. I'm sure there were men listening to Robin in the gym, but I don't know, you know,

here's my point. This album is terrific. And I mean, there's some stuff that I'm on move by, but you're right. It's 29 minutes of, that's all it needs to be. Yeah. Because I don't know, like, you know, hang with me is like almost a five minute, four and a half minute song or something. Like it's stuff from previous albums is longer. I love that song, Hang With Me.

But these are almost, I don't know, they're almost like chorus lines or, or just melodic ideas that she's turned into songs. I don't know, I mean, we'll talk about the one song from a lyrical perspective that we really need to spend a bunch of time on. It is unmissable, but the rest of it lyrically doesn't hold that much for me. And there's like random, unnecessary superfluous lasers all over this album. There's just a lot of Swedish. just pop embellishment.

Swedish. Poo! Pew, pew. Most of the time, I would be like, get this the fuck out of my ears. But it's just like industrial enough. And it's just enough of like peering behind the curtain

that I'm into it. Like the dopamine, I've probably listened to 50, times since Saturday, and we're recording this on Tuesday. And the first time that I listened to dopamine when you just get that like, do, do, do, I was like, do, I am going to hate this. I'm going to fucking hate this. And by the end, it is like a daft punk song. It is so fucking awesome. And but it's these compact, she's not fucking around, she's not trying to overdo it lyrically or rhyme. Like she's not, it's just this wonderful, like, I don't know, when you were a kid,

did you ever have those little, like, you'd have a pill. And if you just add water to it, suddenly it would like explode and expand into some giant fucking dinosaur. Yeah. That's what these songs are. They're giant exploding dinosaurs if you just add water. Well, and do you know who, this is like one of my favorite. facts about this album and that song in particular. Do you know who is a co-writer on dopamine?

No, I didn't even look. Dynamite's own Tio Cruz. There you go. See, and it occurred to me as it will to anyone who listens that Robin ought to be in the studio taking these lovely little lines, melodic lines, and injecting them a la Charlie X-E-X. into other people's stuff. Like, I don't, you know, I love it. The icon of pop Charlie collaboration, like, there are a lot of parallels between that song and a bunch of the songs on this album

where it's just like, fuck, yeah, listen to how like industrial electro pop it is. There's really only one line you need to hear, and it rocks. And it's going to earworm you for, at least in my case, for the entire fucking weekend before the Masters for shit. it's sake. And it's such a, it's a perfect balance of things that are really idiosyncratic and elements that are

as designed to hit right at your, you know, talk about dopamine, like your brain's pleasure centers as much as any like Sabrina Carpenter song or any pop song that you hear on the radio 80-bigillion times a day. and that is what I find so, like, that's the stuff that really, really makes me just interested in anything that she does. I mean, let's like take a step back a little bit. This is an album that is about becoming a single mother through IVF in your 40s, feeling super, super horny, sort of detaching the desire for partnership and sex from the desire for childbearing and like all that Robin thinks about that.

And getting on Raya to try to find Adam Driver. Getting on Raya to try to find Adam Driver. What's like really fun about it to me is that everything that I just said to you, you sort of hear like, oh, this is like a mature album. This is an album about like being a grown-up and sort of grown-up things and experiences.

It's so silly. Like, it's so silly. If you take this shit seriously, I mean, I'm sure there's serious stuff for her in there. Well, but I think it's, but it's like both can be true. It's sort of like a new version of what I feel like her calling card has always been.

which is the sound is euphoric, but the content is depressing. There's some horror show, like horror movie kind of moments on this album, where I'm like... Well, but now it's sort of more like... What is that little kid's voice? Yes. Well, yeah, the... Or like the end of really real...

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. What is happening here? I don't know. Yeah. And like, it's sucker for love. If you say you're scared, say you're scared. I'm like, well, now I'm scared. What are we doing?

I thought we're having fun. Is this? Yeah, it's like, it kind of feels like she thought this would be the soundtrack for a slasher movie where it's like, yeah, this is fun and there's lots of energy and heat and sex. But people are being like shredded in, you know, I feel that we cannot rule out that she did. Yeah. because I don't want to go there. I want fucking dopamine start to finish.

I want talk to me start to finish. I want it don't mean a thing which is a great song. Yeah. I don't know if I want existential but I don't want it gone. I don't know what the fuck is going on.

I mean, okay. This is the best, this has to be the best lyric on the album. The whole song. is the best. I mean, what do we do? It's like, it's, it is the soundtrack. It's a Raya soundtrack, is what it is. This is what it's like to be on Raya this song. Well, but okay. So like the, sure, yeah, totally. But the part that is my favorite part is when she's like telling the story, she's in with the IVF doctor who's like, who's your ideal man? And she says, well,

Adam Driver always did kind of give me a boner. Yeah. But then the doctor, mistakes Adam Driver for Adam Sandler and says, wasn't he great and don't mess with the Zohan? Well, Adam Driver always did kind of give me a boner. She like, yeah, wasn't he great and don't mess with the zone. And the thing that I learned, I believe this was from a stereo gum review, is that there's actually like another layer to that, which is that in Sweden, your fertility clinic gets to choose your sperm donor. Wait, wait, what? In Sweden, in Sweden, if you go through IVF, your fertility clinic chooses your sperm donor for you. So if your doctor...

I mean, that's an argument against socialism just outright. That's it. Sure. Like, what are we talking about? If your doctor does, in fact, mistake Adam Driver from Adam Sandler, the consequences are significant. Wow. Okay.

I don't want to unpack that too. much because that's like a disturbing fact that I didn't want to know. There's doctors making decisions about sperm donors for women without their approval? I think the argument is that it removes the sort of market for a certain type of donor over a different type of donor from the process. And I'm sure that there are pros and cons to that. But particularly, I suppose that one con could be that if there is a case of mistaken identity, vis-a-vis the various atoms and otherwise,

it wouldn't be a great, great thing to have happened. Well, Raya is basically a fertility clinic where you can pick the donor. And that's what that song is about. And it's so ridiculous. From start to finish, I did have a question for you on sex existential. I've been on Raya while on IVF.

Like, it's just amazing that that's a line in a song. Was she... I just have to ask this question. I know it's probably a little personal, but I couldn't really tell at the outset. Was she particularly horny because she was pregnant? Which is a thing I'm not sure that she knows. Or is she seeking a donor pre-ivf?

I'm not sure that she'd. I think it's more of an, I get the sense. certainly not in her mind, but I've read the interviews and there are some comments that sort of speak not directly to this specific question, but give me some context. I think it's more of an all of the above. Like she has talked about, yes, it's, you know, there's hormones and that is something that she definitely was feeling during the time that she was making this music. Also, she's talked a little bit about just the experience of detaching the desire to have a baby with the desire to have sex or be in a relationship and how that was sort of its own journey.

And so I think it's a lot of different things. I mean, also like some of these songs are not new. What do you mean? On an album that is 29 minutes long, like blow my mind. is a song that she first released in a completely different incarnation 25 years ago. And the original was directed much more at a man, a potential partner. And now it's been like completely reworked with the whole, you know,

all the Swedish pu-pues. And it's about her son. And it's about like loving her little baby and just being like, you're so cute. I can't, I can't stand it. And like, that's kind of. an insane thing to do. And I think it would be so

corny in so many people's hands and like maybe this is kind of corny too, but I like it. I don't, yeah. It's not one of my favorites, but it's your unbearably cute, scrumptious little face crushing me every single day.

Is that what you didn't want to get into? No, that's fine. it's fine. I just, I'm never going to get over the lyrics to Sexistential. So you can take me anywhere else on this whole album. Were you prepared for that? Because the album doesn't really prepare you for it. Who could be prepared for that?

That's fair. That's fair. That's actually a really question resented. That's fair. I mean, Sexistential is referenced as a, I think it's in talk to me. It's in talk to me, which is the song right before. Which is like, it's about phone sex, but it's a lot more like, it's more generalizable. It's more like, this is a good beat.

Max Martin produced that song. It has some really good hook. Or he co-wrote that song. Has some really good hooks. It does use the words sexistential. Right. But yeah, I wouldn't say that it really prepares you for what's about to happen. I mean, not like it does in the actual sexistential.

I don't know that I could read the lyric. to this song in front of my daughters. And I have almost no shame or pride at this point in my life. Do you think when she opens for Harry, she'll play it? I hope she does. Fuck yeah.

She did it on Colbert. Spend too much on at sea. Spends a bitch, push, hold it, breathe. You have to. Fuck a app. Yes. One million percent. It's really good.

It's really good. I mean, you can't, like, she really went for it. It's fantastic. I just, fuck a therapist. Fuck it. I mean, I was 100. I've been on Raya while on IVF, PTSD from all the tests, hormonal rants on IG. I mean, it's great. It is fantastic for the world that this woman is out here doing this. Doing exactly what she's doing. lyrically, I just don't know that there's anything else on the album that I can even pay attention to or engage with in a meaningful way. I don't want to be pulled into the horror film stuff that dots throughout it. But it is, there are bops and bangers all over this fucking album. Yeah.

And it's only 29 minutes, so it's the easiest listen ever. There's nothing that I feel like I really didn't like. I didn't like Sucker for Love. love. Yeah, that was a cut candidate for me. It's not that I don't like it. It's perfectly pleasant. I do feel like, you know, one of the things that I think let's Robin sort of be the

anchor to these weird, kind of clubby, very electronic, very Swedish bleep-blue songs, is that generally speaking, I find her voice to just sound so incredible. incredibly human. Like it, it's just emotive and it makes you feel very conscious of your own feelings. That's one where like in the vocal, I don't totally connect to the emotional register of it. So it's more just doesn't, I just can live without it. I don't, you know, it's not that I hate it. It's not that I would actively skip it. I just don't need it. The other one that I feel that that way about, although I don't know. I was going to say that it's light up. I like how that builds.

I'm with you. By the end of that song, I like want to be on the dance floor. But I guess on the whole, I find it less memorable than some of the others. That's how I felt too. I didn't love Light Up, but it grew on me a little bit. I felt like it don't mean a thing is she sounds like Ariana on that song. I mean the songs, there's this song by this band Boy Meets Girl called Waiting for a Star to Fall. And the song has a lot of that in it.

But like I felt her voice does move around a bunch. Like it's a very accessible voice. She's not like playing a character. I worried when I listened to it that I was only going to be able to hear her hits. But, you know, obviously she like, she does a lot of shit to her voice on this album, including like whoever is, whoever is saying. fuck a app on Sexistential. I think it's better.

And she does the daft punk treatment at the end of dopamine. So she does enough to make it interesting. But I'm into her voice. Yeah. I just look, I don't have a lot of room for 46-year-old pop stars in my life intuitively. Intuitively. Okay.

And I was fucking wrong. I got all the room in the world for this. And it brought me back into other stuff in her catalog. Well, hang with me is fucking great. Yeah, that's a great song. And I like really real. As an opener, it was fine.

It just spooked me a little bit with the, make yourself a cup of tea. And clearly that's her child, like, and Robin's moving around the, maybe not clearly. Maybe that's just like a weird chucky, like, fucking kid killer that's just going to freak me out. But I think the point is that it's her child.

And they're, you know, speaking on the phone or on face. time or whatever. I think so too, but I do, and this is part of the beauty of it, I do feel that with Robin, it really could be anything. This could be from like the movie weapons or something. Totally. Or it could be from like the weird Swedish version of the movie weapons that we've never heard of. Definitely. It definitely exists. But this is what I want. Like we're not fucking around 29 minutes in your face. I'm going to give you like some bangers. I'm going to give you a couple of like, what the fuck on the seventh song.

I'm going to talk about IVF and Ryan Adam Driver. You get some real insight into somebody's life. I'm not wasting any of your time. This is what I have. Do you like Swedish industrial electro pop? And before you say no, listen to this album because stupid ass Nathan said no. And then listen to this album and it was like, fuck yes, feed me all of the Swedish industrial electropop that you possibly can.

Shoot more lasers unnecessarily into the air. Well, and also, by the way, you're going to get two songs, talk to me and Into the Sun, which to me are both in the upper half, which is a small group considering that there are not very many songs of this album.

Yeah, Into the Sun. I think that's like the third best song. I love Into the Sun. And both of those, Max Martin, is in the credits. So I think there are, like, I'm sure there are tons of people listening to this podcast who have been in on this album and are listening to it. I'm sure there are some people who have not heard, like, any of it. But if you want to weigh in, this person who we talk about as the go-to, you want to make something that a bunch of people are just going to think sounds great.

like he's on what, 22% of these songs, right? And you can hear it in the hooks and in the melodies, but you can also hear it all over the rest of the album because I do think that like that is part of her DNA from working with him but also being involved in the Swedish music scene. By the way, do you know who also shows up in the credits other than Max Martin, other than Taya Cruz. Who?

Think about it for a second. Who might it be? Who do we talk about sometimes? It's been a minute since she came up. Who do we talk? It's our girl Elvira. Oh, of course. Yes.

Okay, sorry. I had lots of things going through my head there. I love to just like, you know, I love to know what Elvira's up to. Vanessa Carlton is on this record. Could you imagine? I can imagine. I feel like I've also described it, like, weirdly. Like, if you haven't listened to this album,

you need to listen to it. It's not weird and Swedish. I mean, it's a little weird in Swedish. No, but that's the thing about it. It's totally weird and Swedish. And it's also not at all. Like, and it's both. But it's not like that S&L Nordic skit.

No. Where they're, like, doing the serious acting, and then they cut and they laugh and they... It's not... Maybe it is a little bit like that. You're too lazy to be a coward. A coward has the energy to hide. You just sit there.

And come! Maybe that's exactly what this is. It's like overly serious, but you can tell it's actually they're not taking themselves too seriously, and it's funny. It's really playful. It's the SNL Nordic skit. It was wonderful to see you work through all of that. I needed a moment, but that's what it is.

But it's not like weird and way left of center. Like this isn't, I don't know, there's some stuff from the Charlie Wuthering Heights soundtrack. Oh, yeah. Like, dying for you is a good-ass song. Like, I think that's a real great Charlie song. It's definitely good. House is fucking, that's what you would think,

his weird, Swedish, like, left of center art. So it's not house. It's more dying for you than it's way more dying for you. Robin is a, she's a freaky gal who's going to tell you exactly what's going on and not hold back and is going to wear some crazy outfits and spike up her hair. she is also someone completely schooled in the Max Martin et al school of there's going to be a big bang in chorus, it's going to happen quickly, it's going to, like, there's going to be hook after hook after hook. So it's really this combination of super accessible, super engaging with something that is autourish and weird and a little avant-garde,

and if you want to do that for 29 minutes, like this is a really good way to spend that time. It is. I want you to make the art that you want to make as an artist, but the mistake that some people make in their 40s and beyond is they think that they're re-invent, they're putting out something that's super novel and has never been hurt, like that people really want to hear like a double album

from a 40-plus year old after you've already heard like 10 albums from them. And I don't want to hear it. from the Swifties because that is an exception. And she's only 36. So come on. But Robin is 46. And I think she understood the assignment. It's like, do what you're great at.

Don't overstay your welcome. You know, she probably, whatever. Well, she also has not put out an album in eight years. And that album, Honey, which I think has some real highlights, but was a bit of a departure. sure. It's, you know, long songs. It's a little bit more like trancy dance floor. It was sadder than body talk. It was a little bit more like mellow. And this goes back, I think, a little bit more stylistically to what she was doing two albums ago. But again, that was like 16 years ago.

And this just feels like a remember. me, I'm back. I'm not going to make you delve in. You don't have to do a lot of work. But also, like, I've lived some life. I've thought about some stuff. Like, I have something to say and I can communicate it over the course of 29 minutes. And, like, you're going to, you're going to download a lot of what is going on with this person. Like, you're going to download a, in sexistential alone, you get up to speed with what's going on with Robin. really fast. This album is a metaphor for, you know,

what you probably want with a single mother on riots. Like, let's get right to. Let's, are we in or we out? I don't know, but in 29 minutes, she has a mother's efficiency. Yeah. And she's honest. She tells you exactly what she wants.

She's not fucking around 29 minutes. It's good stuff. To get out of my house after 29 minutes. Did you like it or not? I'm so glad you enjoyed this. Oh, it would have been okay. if you hadn't, but I'm really glad that you did. Here's a question that like...

Dopamine forever. Like, I am, like, inject it into me. That's so good. I'm so, just so happy to hear you say that. Do you think that, like... Does this go in the Grammy's conversation at all? It's 29 minutes long. No.

No. No, and the reason is because... And I know this isn't fair, but the reason is because it's not going to have a big enough footprint. It'll get a little bit of a darling treatment. She will show up at festivals next year and be awesome, and she'll get her flowers in the way that she should for this album. But it's going to be up against the new Olivia Rodrigo record that's coming out.

It's going to be up against a Gracie Abrams record that it seems like is coming out. It's going to be up against, you know, a whole lot of other stuff. that I think from a voter perspective is going to get more attention. And, you know, if I'm being honest, I really enjoy this experience, but I don't think that it has the grandeur of Ray, who we talked about last week.

That doesn't, I'm not comparing them. They're completely different things. Yeah. But as an album... I mean, even within her own catalog, like, there isn't a dancing on my own on this album. There isn't to call your girlfriend either. Those two songs are probably singular.

in the catalog, but I don't think that they're here. Yeah, no, but I mean, I give me the last minute and a half of dopamine any time. And you're so into it. Yeah, I agree with you. I don't, if I have to make a prediction, I also don't think that we're going to be talking about this in the Grammy conversation. I just, even as the person who was, no, I think that's totally fine. Even as the person who was suggesting that we should do this,

and even as someone who is very aware of the goodwill that Robin has in a certain segment but a wide segment of the music press, I was still a little bit, not startled, but I was a little bit surprised to see just how effusive and like big the coverage of this was again in that like it's the New Yorker it's New York magazine it's pitchfork it's stereo gum it's NME it's the garland it's that just because that's like a bunch of dorks who don't want to say nice things about Taylor Swift and so they pick Robin to try to have it be the cool kids. I just say nice things about Taylor Swift. I think that it is different but I think that No. Like I think that those places have, for instance, like Charlie is probably, there's no one-to-one, but Charlie is probably the best, like, truly contemporary stand-in for Robin. Because Robin is like, she's obviously working right now and she's totally relevant and we're talking about her right now. But I don't think she is in conversation with the current crop.

of pop stars for various reasons. I think Charlie is the person who is in that conversation, who draws the most clear career parallel to Robin. And I don't think that all of those places are like completely bought in on Charlie XX. But I think that there is a particular thing where, and also regardless of the reasons for it, right? Like the fact remains that she is taken that way.

and this 29-minute album was also taken that way in those spaces. And I just, it makes me wonder, like, what does that do? What does that mean exactly for the impression that this album makes? I don't, like, that feels not really that relevant to me. I don't think that it should be in that conversation. I just think that it's sort of out on a cool island doing its own thing. it just made me wonder if there is a little bit of an impact that might be kind of surprising from that. Well, the album is on Young, which is like, it's in the sort of beggars group labels.

It's like it's like a imprint of XL, which in the UK has a lot of the cool kids, right? It's got the XX. It's got FK Twigs. It's, so there's, you know, it's been the birth for the cool kids in the UK for sure. And that makes me think that she, that's part of why I think it's easy for the critics to think of her as, you know, their darling. But I just appreciate she made this very easy for us to absorb. It's fucking cool. We don't normally get great stuff like this at 46.

And I just, I think it's because they didn't. And again, I'm not putting any, I'm fucking old as shit. But like, I think that from a creative contribution standpoint, the fact that she kept this so short and sweet is part of its appeal. I agree. You went with an A minus? I did. I did.

And I have no idea if it's because I was so not looking forward to this. And I was so pleasantly surprised. The privilege of low expectations. I really think like it stands out. This is what we want. That's the Ray album stands out. The Rosalia album, it stands out.

This album stands out and it's got a song on it that I think is big. I really think that, you know, I mean, it's not streaming. Dopamine is not streaming like a, you know, your classic pop hit. It's doing 120,000 streams a day on Spotify. People are into it.

but she's punching above her weight, let's just put it that way. It's basically streaming more than anything in her catalog other than dancing on my own. And she has this history with getting songs into culture in various ways that I think then like... She'll sink this somewhere, you think? I don't, you know, I don't know, but I could see it happening. The decay curve is like not what you expect.

Right. Because people people just seem to get into her in all these different ways. So maybe that's the next one. I don't know. I think we're going to see some of this stuff get remixed. Totally.

I had a conversation the other day with a manager of a very high profile electronic DJ. And we were talking, I was like, hey dude, have you heard the nude Robin album? And he's like, it's magnificent. And I was like, whoa. Okay. So that just tells me that, like, Gracie brought Robin on stage.

There's, like, DJs who are paying attention to this. Like, she is not just the darling of the press. I think that there's people in the industry who really appreciated and leaned in to listen to this. And it wouldn't surprise me if this starts to make its way into, you know, live shows. Yeah. But on that side. Yeah. It just wouldn't be the first time that there's a Robin song,

comes out, people like it, people, you know, the people who are into it, are into it and listen to it and maybe it gets a little bit of traction. But then two or three things happen and all of a sudden, the songs find a way to sort of level up through the ways that they get adopted by other people. And I'll be, I'll be honest with you. Like, it doesn't make me feel like I now need to go down a rabbit hole of Robin lore. I don't need to get deeply invested. in her, like, personal narrative the way that I think there's some other pop stars that draw me in that way.

And it's totally cool. Like, this was a... It was a 29-minute affair. I had a great time. Thanks. Also, because, like, all of these songs do one of two things. Most of them, even if there are some specifics

about, you know, coming from her point of view as a new mother or whatever, like, they're pretty generalized. They're pretty much about a certain type of yearning or horniness or love or like they're broad. And then there is sexistential, of course, which is incredibly specific. That's why it's like, what the fuck? But the broad ones don't make you need to go down the rabbit hole because they're not inviting you to do that necessarily. They're just sort of inviting you to exist on the plane that they're already existing on.

Just not your head. Sexistential doesn't invite you to go down the rabbit. habit hole because you know everything that you could possibly need to know. Yeah. There's no, any questions? Nope. I'm good. I'm good.

I got it. I mean, I guess the only question I didn't know I had. Yeah. I did have a question of whether or not, whether or not she, she was pregnant at the time just looking for it or whether it was pre-IVF and she was, yeah, I don't know.

I think it's, I think the answer to that is all of the above. But that's great. It's fantastic. I'm really glad. I'm really glad that you went on this journey and I'm just so pleased that this went well for you. I gave it a B plus. I gave it a lower grade than you did.

Yeah, I might be a little high on my own supply. I just ride the wave. I'm going to stay with it because I really do think that I will come back to a few songs on this album. I will put it on in the background. A minus. You'll put it on in the background. you'll forget about it. And then all of a sudden you'll hear

Adam Driver kind of gave me a boner. Yeah, well, I mean, you put it on the background and before you know it, like you can't even get through a casserole in the oven and this thing is already done and over and your Spotify's going to start feeding you, you know, Charlie XXX songs to try to get you to stream.

So that's, it's such an easy journey. Take it. We have already talked about this album for considerably longer. than the album itself. Can I do my little housekeeping notes that I was planning to do at the top of this podcast to like coax you into this gently? 100%. Let's go. Okay. So a couple, one artist who you mentioned in passing in this conversation is Olivia Rodrigo, who we do now know. She's coming. She's coming. She will be releasing. You seem pretty sad for a girl so in love on June 12th, the lead single.

Drop dead will be out April 17th. How are you feeling about the length of this title, first of all? Stopped me in my tracks. There's no purple. There's no four-letter title. Olivia Rodrigo has decided she will not be contained by... She's done with that. Yeah.

And I'm good with it. I am ready for more Olivia Rodrigo. I think that... I think there's also going to be a little bit less rock on this. album, Nora. And what do you think that it will be replaced by? I think it's going to be a little more cinematic. I think there's going to be, I mean, unfortunately for you, I think, and unfortunately for you, fortunately for me, I think there's going to be more sad love ballads. I think it's going to be a lot of that. Interesting. Interesting. And is that just because of the title? I agree with you that I get the sense that

she's moving a little bit away from the kind of pop punk focus. But I don't, I still don't feel like I can put my finger on how much is going to be sad ballads, how much might be more like I get a kind of ethereal like dream pop almost vibe from some of the visuals. What is leading you to those conclusions? Well, it's what we know about our personal life. Sure, sure. And a few comments around this that imply that she's in particular intrigued with what it means to write a love song and that maybe in the moments where she feels like she does her best work, it's actually sad more so than sort of revelatory. So I'm here for it.

I'm here for Olivia Rodriguez all in her feelings because the last time I feel like we got Olivia Rodriguez in her. you know, tumultuous love-torn heart situation. We got fucking driver's license. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that even as someone who doesn't tend to love all of her ballads as much as you do, I think that's a smart move because the way that the second album, I think, was received and felt like it didn't entirely match up to the first.

even though I think it's really good, I think that was made more complicated by the fact that they were very similar. And so I think a pivot sidesteps a little bit of that. There are some stuff out there that to me seems like relatively unsubstantiated and just rumor mill at this point,

suggesting that Phoebe Bridgers is in some way, shape, or form involved in this. Do you think that's real? We have no confirmation of that, do we? No. No, it is absolutely just in the realm of rumor. Yeah. I mean, fantastic if it is,

I don't understand why Phoebe would put out songs before her solo album with Olivia Rodrigo. Her own third album. Yeah, this is the problem, right? It's like you're getting so much shit that's fed to you that actually comes from poo bass instead of pop bass. Nathan and I did get got initially by, an announcement of when this album was coming out,

which was like much sooner than it actually is. And then it was, in fact, um, it wasn't poo bass. It was one of the other ones. It's one of the ones that doesn't have poo, but is still poo. Pub bass is what it was.

Bob base. Yeah, we got got by pop bass. And what I'm going to say, I mean, producer Kai said something that day that is really stuck with me. She was just like, you guys,

the internet, it's falling apart. It's falling apart. And I was like, what? And she's like, have you tried searching for anything? And I was like, yeah, it sucks. Like Nate Silver just came at Twitter with some real data that's like, no, no, no, you guys are disseminating so much bullshit right now.

It's just really hard to find, like, it's just this deconstruction and devolution of truth. Anyway, I'm excited for Olivia Rodriguez's truth. And I think that that is what we are going to get on this album. And don't forget that. that she is the original worker with Dan Nigro before her chapel was brought to us. And so I'm not sure what our, you know, next album appetizer is going to be for Olivia.

But I'm interested to hear from a production standpoint how Dan's work evolves in this post-chapel era because I think the last time that he was at the controls with her, obviously, you know, he did the Olivia record too. but he made a hell of a lot of magic. Did you see that they're listening to Pink Pony Club in space? I did. And I really did some workshopping for about, I don't know,

25 to 30 seconds on what the right joke was. And I just didn't get it. But there is a really good chapel ron in space, pink pony club, something about astronauts. I just couldn't get it. So I'll let the audience chime in. Okay. Yeah, everybody can prickulate on that.

The last thing that I had for you, which is, I don't know if you've followed this little dust-up between Sky Ferreira and Charlie X-E-X over the Wuthering Heights songs that may or may not have emerged. Did you understand the response? Charlie's response? That wasn't a Charlie's response? Yes. I think that Charlie's teams response. Was that a lawyer? well, whoever it was, I think it centered two things.

There are a bunch of demos and a bunch of different ways from various sessions and yada, yada, yada that got chopped up and integrated into a bunch of different pieces of music, including the Wuthering Heights soundtrack. Okay. That were, according to them, all cleared appropriately. but they're not saying that it's not true. Like, they're not saying that the roots of some of those songs aren't from some of these old demos,

but they're saying that it was by the book. I thought they also did something very smart, which was they completely pivoted the conversation by being like, Charlie's in the studio working on her eighth album. And so now all of a sudden, what I'm interested in talking about is, hey, Charlie XX is working on her eighth album. this is interesting, this is exciting.

I wonder when we're going to hear it. I wonder what it's going to be. And it like, it, you know, I think that's good PR. It moves the conversation away from the thing that she doesn't want to talk about onto the thing that she does want to talk about. I guess, like, I don't know. It seems like they are saying, yes, some of the roots of these songs are from old demos. Like, not denying that, but it was cleared.

I'm inclined to give, I don't know, maybe this is silly. I'm inclined to give Charlie something of the benefit of the doubt just because she's so accustomed to working in, like, in both roles. She's been a songwriter. She's been the artist on stage. She's done soundtracks. Like, it just seems like that's a universe that she knows so well that it feels strange to me that she would get. sloppy with it, but I don't really know. Yeah, I don't know either.

I mean, what it just says to me is that Charlie continues to be everywhere. You know, she's just the movies and the music. And her team has made a decision that we are putting the pedal of the floor and we're always on. That response was just too lawyerly for me to really engage fully in it. But I was expecting something that was like, this is bullshit. What are we talking about? And it came off as very carefully worded. legally tight, airtight explanation of basically we cleared all the copyrights, like,

what the fuck are you talking about? It does get in, it does sort of unearth a little bit about the writing process that's happening in these cases where there's snippets and things are being taken and it made me curious, but. Does it unearth anything? Because this is an artist who, like, a huge part of her career has been that she is sometimes on the writing side. And she's, sometimes in front of the microphone, and she's been in so many different roles in various studio sessions. So, like, I'm, you know, obviously you want to feel like she's not exploiting anyone

or playing it fast and loose with the rules on that stuff. But the idea that Charlie X, X, X, X has her hands on a lot of old demos. Like, that feels like, yeah, duh, to me. Yeah. Well, I don't look, these things should not be litigated in the press. And I don't know that it's that big of a deal, honestly. It just says that like stuff gets made. Who owned it?

I don't know. Let them work that out. Just give me a great Charlie XX album, please. Give me a great album and we'll all be happy. The other thing that Charlie's up to, because you're right, she is up to a lot that I'm very interested in, is the A-24. for pop star movie with Anne Hathaway, Mother Mary, that she's doing the music with Jack Antonoff for. The director of that movie did an interview

and spoke about how reputation and the reputation concert tour was like incredibly influential in how they sort of thought about the performances in the concerts. Better be careful, because that's what Olivia said about some of her music. And she got some phone calls from some lawyers. Speaking of people who are going to get sued.

Oh, shit. You gotta know not to say shit like that out loud at this point. Like, I understand you want to use Taylor Swift for clickbait in literally everything that you do, even if it's completely unrelated. But like, you better be damn sure that you are not infringing on IP of the queen because her ass will come and defend her IP if nothing else. She is a warrior above all else for the. defense of her intellectual property. Yes, I think that's all very true.

I also look, if, you know, hopefully everybody avoids litigation, and I do think that it would be kind of interesting to see what that crew doing the music would come up with if the prompt is kind of, let's use that era of Taylor and that tour as inspiration for this fictional character in this movie. So it certainly piqued my interest. It's certainly a convergence of things that I like to engage with. So she's busy. That means we'll be busy.

This was such a lovely conversation. This went so many places that I didn't expect. I'm just so delighted. I'm just disappointed you. I'm so happy to over-deliver. That's not true. That's not true at all. However, you absolutely have made my day.

This has been every single album. As always, I'm Nora Pinciotti. he's Nathan Hubbard. Thank you to Kai McMullen for producing this episode. And to you for listening, we'll talk to you next week.