Song Exploder - Robyn - Honey

Episode Date: September 4, 2019

Robyn is a Swedish singer and songwriter. Her first album came out in 1995, when she was 16 years old. It went platinum in the US, double-platinum in Sweden. Since then, she’s been nominated for five Grammys and started her own record label. But there was an eight-year gap between Robyn’s album Body Talk, which came out in 2010, and her most recent album, Honey, which came out last October. Time, Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork all named it one of the best albums of the year. For Song Exploder, Robyn breaks down the song “Honey,” the title track from that album. The first time the public heard the song was in a 2017 episode of the HBO show Girls, but that’s not the final version that was released on the album. In this episode, Robyn traces the long history of how she made “Honey,” a song that The New York Times called “her masterpiece.” songexploder.net/robyn

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. My name is Rushi K. Sherwe. Robin is a Swedish singer and songwriter. Her first album came out in 1995, when she was just 16 years old. It went platinum in the U.S. and double platinum in Sweden. Since then, she's been nominated for five Grammys and started her own record label. But there was an eight-year gap between Robin's album Body Talk, which came out in 2010, and her most recent album, Honey. which came out last October.

Time, Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork, all named Honey one of the best albums of 2018. For Song Exploder, Robin breaks down the song Honey, the title track from the album. The first time the public heard the song was in a 2017 episode of The HBO Show Girls, but that's not the final version that was eventually released on the album.

In this episode, Robin traces the long history of how she made Honey, a song that the New York Times called her masterpiece. My name is Robin. me and Marcus, who's in my band, we had a sound check and he had brought this little Casio synthesizer that I was messing around with. I don't know if you've heard those little casios,

but they sound amazing, they sound like video games. And so he showed me this thing where you could hold two buttons and there was something wrong with that particular cassio so that when you held these two buttons, it would glitch so that you could like separate the baseline out of these pre-recorded little bits that were in the synthesizer. And I did that with a waltz beat. It sounds really cool just on its own.

It sounds like this. It's not an even baseline because it's a waltz. And something about that just felt really groovy to me. I always love when music does that, when it does something unexpected, and changes the way you think about rhythm. And then I just kept that bit. We recorded it and I kept it and we started making songs with it, me and Marcus, just tried different things.

And I didn't feel like it was exactly what I wanted it to be, and I just kept it. And this was like maybe 2013, maybe. And then when I started writing again for this album in, like, 2015, maybe, I brought the beat out again. I was looking for, like, new ways to sing rhythmically. because I was feeling kind of claustrophobic coming out of the music I had done before. I mean, I love the music. That wasn't the problem.

It was more like rhythmically. I wanted to like feel freer. I guess that was what I was working out during those months when I was in the studio of myself. Just like rewire my own way of relating to rhythm. So I was in my studio in my house in the basement of the building where I live in Stockholm and I was trying like those are different sounds.

and rhythms freestyling on this beat. And I did for like two months or something. I would do it as an exercise because I knew there was a song in there, but it was almost like I was breaking it down, like trying to disintegrate or like maybe get to the core or something. And then I remember one day I just found my way into a melody that felt much more natural than anything I had written on it before, which was,

When I was When I was But down in the deep The honey is sweeter When I was writing this song I think the feeling that I was going for was to find some kind of healing for myself A place where I could calm myself down

And that felt really good when I sang it So I kept it, I recorded it and I kept it And then I took it with me to the studio Where I was writing with Klaus when I started writing together with other people. Klaus is my long-time collaborator. He's almost like the second member of the band, Robin, the person that I've made music with more than anyone the last 10 years.

I knew I was going to work with him for this album, but it took a while until I was ready to collaborate again. It was really exciting to collaborate on something that I had already put together. It gave me a lot of freedom to kind of describe my ideas in this one. more like protected way. Yeah, so me and Klaus, we wrote the chorus together. No, yeah, what you need. Come get your honey.

And we wrote the words for the verse together as well. I knew that I wanted the verse to be this abstract description of a feeling. Every color and every taste, every breath it whispers your name. It's like amyros on the pavement. It's not me saying I feel sad and happy at the same time and I feel hot and I want to have sex with you. It's not that as you know, it's like I wanted to feel free but also I wanted the person listening to the music

to find that own space where they could like associate more freely about pleasure, sensuality, peace of mind, those kind of things. Can you open up to the pleasure, suck it up inside like a treasure let the brightest place be your passion. Let go of your dad say yes. Let it soak up into the flesh. Never had this kind of nutrition.

And then this whole other process started where we started working on the production. And me and Claus made a version of honey that was used in the last episode of Girls, the TV series. Because basically, Lennaddenham asked me for music and I sent her these demos, wanted to use honey.

That's getting cold. And I was very happy that she wanted to use it. But I also knew that it was not finished. And so I went back to the demo and I started arranging it again with, you know, the song already written with me in class and went back and I took out his production and I started working on that. And then I asked Joseph Mount to come in and work on the production. He has a band called Metronomy.

that is one of my favorite bands. And I've listened to his music for a long time. And I got in touch with him, see if he wanted to work with me. And we spent a week or so in a studio very early on. And he started playing around with these strings. And he kind of stripped a lot of other things away as well. So he kept the vocal and the cassio.

Joseph is so sparse and minimalist in a way. That for a long time was like going to be the finished version. Joseph changed his mind. He was like, I don't think this is what we should do. And then we went back into the studio together, me and Joseph and Kloss. Basically, Joseph took all the things that we had done, the strings and the chords from Marcus, all the things that we had done, and he created this sample that we started calling the sauce.

We used this filter, this really fun, but stupid house filter. And he kind of made like this, underwater feeling, you know, of all those things. I think we wanted it to feel like you're underwater, but then you look down and you're like, there's thousands of meters down to the bottom of the sea, you know, this feeling like something opening underneath. I felt like, you know, the sauce was amazing,

but it's so undefined. And so I just wanted there to be more hints of like the actual chord structure. We just needed more melody, We needed like a hook in there. This like really simple melody that leaves a lot of space and like a lot up to the imagination. We're inspired by all this dance music that I've grown up listening to

basically music made for clubs. And that kind of music, it doesn't really have a beginning and an end and a chorus and a normal song structure as a way a lot of pop music does. It relates to the dramaturgy of, a song in a totally different way. I think that's what dance music is about, is about putting you in a place where you're in your body dancing

without thinking about when it's going to end. That is like more about the moment and how it makes you feel. So the demo that I made doesn't sound like the thing we released that much at all. But there's a rhythm in the baseline that's still there. That has a little bit of that first cassio. The cassio goes, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

So we kind of kept that kind of thing. And the other one that's more like an opeggio was a way to create this like galloping rhythm together with the kick drum. And it's kind of nice with the bass line as well. I think on this record I started to sing in a different way than I had done before. I didn't want it to feel pushed or pressured in any way. in any way. I wanted it to just feel relaxed and soft. And I started singing differently.

And I started discovering new kind of things that I could do when I just relaxed. Mm-hmm. And the sun sits on the water. But down in the deep, the current is stronger. So me and Klaus recorded the vocals for this song like three times. You know, I thought I had relaxed as much as I should have, and then I kind of took it even one step further, and I relaxed even more, and I was like, wow, it's sounding even better,

and then we did it a third time because I knew that, like, oh, I can take this even further. It was really interesting, I think, to discover that a lot of times it's not about pushing harder, it's about going softer. When I listen to the When I listen to the deep, the honey sweeter. When I listen to the song, even though I've heard it so many times, and I sung it so many times,

the line that still gets me is the line, but down in the deep, the honey, sweeter, because there's something about that, that talks about for me at least, like how when you kind of face yourself or if you, you know, dig deep into yourself, there's like a sweetness that comes with that digging or the depth or the pain sometimes of like going deep into things. Not saying that it's a reward because, you know, when you go through difficult things in life,

like you don't always feel like it makes sense or that it's necessary or that you want to do it. But I think when I was writing this song, I was coming out of something that I had been quite painful. And I knew that I had learned things from that and that I had maybe also been able to kind of come closer to something that felt like me, something that felt honest. I think anyone who has gone through difficult things maybe can understand what I mean. And so the singing also was a part of like the healing process. for me. When it was time to mix, I had this idea that I wanted to give the mix to Philip Zadar. Philippe Zadar was one half of the hugely influential French dance duo, Cassius, and a

Grammy-winning mixer and producer. Because I just felt like this song needs to be mixed as a club track. And Philippe is and was known for doing these amazing tastes. tape delay takes where he would put the vocals through a tape delay and that's what you can hear there in the mix. I think it's the first time in my life did I go to mix back that was good from the first time I heard it. I remember just getting stuck on the word honey.

I don't know why I was so obsessed with that word. I thought it was funny that it meant honey the way you call your lover and this weird kind of interesting but a little bit disgusting substance that bees make. Is there an image in your head of who the song is being sung to? Yeah. Is it a specific person? Mm-hmm. Does that person know that you were thinking of you know?

Mm-hmm. I think the intention of honey is like really good. something I feel really happy about, you know, happy that I found the space and that I explored it. I think my perspective on it has changed like several times, you know, but that's how it should be, I think. I still think that it's a healing song. And I also think that when Philip Zodar, who mixed the song, died a month ago, that also changed it for me. like right now the song is like very, very emotional again because he's not here anymore. And, you know, I'm sure it's going to change again, you know.

It's like that's how it works with music. And I think the experience of making this song, you know, all the way from me, like, starting these early demos with Marcus and then on my own and then spending all this time, writing it and really trying to define this feeling and then working with Joseph and Klaus and like redoing the vocals and the production, like, letting it really takes. take the time it needed to get where I wanted to be. It was really amazing. I'm really happy that I was able to follow that through the whole way.

Just being able to record this freedom that I felt that the song was trying to describe. Thank you. And now here's Honey by Robin in its entirety. Visit SongExploder.net for more information about Robin, her music, and her collaborators on Honey. You'll also find a link to buy or stream this song. Song Exploder is made by me, Rishi Keshirwe, along with producer Christian Coons. Sitting in for me as guest hosts this year has been Tao Wyn. She'll be back next episode.

Carlos Lerma is our illustrator, and Nick Song is our production assistant. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated collective of independent creative podcasts. You can learn about all our shows at Radiotopia.fm. You can also find Song Exploder on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Song Exploder. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening. Radiotopia.