Robyn returns: patron saint of sad pop bangers is finally back with a new album – UK Times

Call your girlfriend… Robyn has decided it’s time for her first album in seven years.

The queen of the sad banger has announced that she will release her hugely anticipated ninth album this year, ending the long wait since her critically acclaimed 2018 record Honey.

Sexistential will be released via her new label Young Recordings on 27 March, with the Swedish singer sharing two new tracks today to tease the album.

One, “Talk to Me”, is a glittery, self-described “horny” club banger referencing Girls star Adam Driver; the other, the title track “Sexistential”, is a surprising rap about Robyn seeking one-night stands while pregnant from IVF.

The album itself is being teased as the “most ecstatic” Robyn has ever made, “the sound of one of contemporary music’s most influential artists coming home”.

Comprising nine “deeply playful” pop songs, it is, Robyn says, designed to feel “like a spaceship coming through the atmosphere at a really high speed and crash landing”.

“That’s how I felt,” she continues, “like I’d had all these experiences searching too far out into space, and now I’m crashing back into myself.”

Robyn has form when it comes to making fans wait for new music. Honey arrived almost a decade after its predecessor, Body Talk, the final part in her trilogy of the same name. But that doesn’t mean the “Dancing on My Own” artist has stayed completely off the radar – news of Sexistential comes after her New Year’s Eve performance on CNN plus two sold-out shows at Brooklyn Paramount.

She also sang with David Byrne as part of Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary celebrations, and teamed up with Charli XCX and Yung Lean for a version of the British pop star’s track “360”, from her zeitgeist-domating 2024 album, Brat.

Sexistential’s title apparently began first as an in-joke, until Robyn realised it expressed her belief that “exploring my sensual life is the same feeling as when I make a good song”.

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“It’s such a beautiful kind of sensitive vibration that takes so much work to keep afloat,” she continues. “I feel like the purpose of my life is to stay horny – it doesn’t even have to be about sex, but it’s feeling sensual and attracted to things that I enjoy, and not letting anything take over that.”

She certainly achieves that on “Talk to Me”, a dizzying dance-pop track produced by Klas Åhlund and Oscar Holter, and co-written with Swedish pop svengali Max Martin (his first collaboration with Robyn since 2010’s “Time Machine). “I wrote it during the pandemic when there was no way to be physical,” Robyn says in her announcement for the new album. “I like talkers, that turns me on.”

She says “Sexistential” was conceived after Andre 3000 claimed no one would want to hear him rap about his colonoscopy. Robyn disagreed, loving the idea of a rap that some might deem to be “too much information”. She’ll perform the song tonight (Wednesday 7 January) on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Robyn’s return signals the latest big moment for women in pop, following a gargantuan 2025 that saw major releases from Lily Allen, Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Dean and Lady Gaga, along with new milestones for rapper Doechii and pop star Chappell Roan.

The tracklist for Sexistential is as follows:

1. Really Real

2. Dopamine

3. Blow My Mind

4. Sucker For Love

5. It Don’t Mean A Thing

6. Talk To Me

7. Sexistential

8. Light Up

9. into The Sun

The album is scheduled for release on LP, CD, limited cassette, digitally and as a deluxe LP, all of which are available to pre-order now.