Big-time pop stars sell millions of albums and chart countless hits. Swedish singer Robyn hasn’t really done that. In an earlier, late ’90s incarnation she was briefly a teen pop sensation until a quest for autonomy sent her in a different direction, but she remains a pop star all the same, albeit a star of a different sort. She’s the kind with song after song that should be hits, were the mechanics of contemporary hit making suited to her particular blend of independence and hip cachet.
While Robyn, now 31, would surely prefer a couple of proper global smashes to go with all those should-be hits, she likely took some solace in absolutely packing the sold out Metro Saturday night thanks to largely to her grassroots support and hard work. And make no mistake — Robyn works hard. She emerged Saturday night wearing what looked like a sci-fi tracksuit, hood up like a prizefighter before a big match. Midway through the first song, “Fembot, the hood was down, the jacket off, and Robyn a blur of manic dancing.
After tirelessly supporting her self-titled 2005 comeback for half a decade, Robyn seemed refreshed by the infusion of fresh songs drawn from her dual 2010 releases “Body Talk Pt. 1” and “Body Talk Pt. 2 (themselves about to be combined into a third album featuring still more new songs), and the audience in turn responded to her efforts with equal, sometimes ecstatic, enthusiasm. “Cry When You Get Older” was treated like a long-beloved club track, and the lithe, cool “The Girl And The Robot” embraced like a lost electro-disco nugget from producer Giorgio Moroder’s vaults. When Robyn began to sing the perfectly bittersweet anthem “Dancing on My Own,” the best of her new tracks, the sing-along crowd practically exploded, threatening to drown her out.
Backed by an unconventional band composed of double drummers and a pair of keyboard wizards, Robyn, in keeping with the tone of the evening, otherwise stuck mostly with the more aggressive tracks from her back catalog, songs such as “Cobrastyle” and “Konichiwa Bitches,” and while it would have been nice had she shown off more of her sensitive side, her vulnerable dance-ballad “With Every Heartbeat” eventually did the trick. By the time Robyn ended the relatively compact set with a tease of ABBA and a subdued rendition of her practically ancient 1997 hit “Show Me Love” Robyn was no longer working the crowd. Instead, she was relishing the supreme satisfaction of a job not just well done, but done better than many of her more famous peers.