Honey [VINYL]

I do love Robyn’s previous albums but this one is much more chilled, which is no bad thing. Very mesmerising.

First of all, let me say that I think Robyn is a major talent and I've been blessed to see her live on quite a few occasions, both in small and big venues, and she never lets her standards drop, she's always totally committed and passionate on stage.But, I think, there's been a noticeable decline in quality when it comes to her recorded output. Here's my theory: she started off doing RnB with not much success, then found pop and electronica with huge critical acclaim, great sales and a very responsive audience. And then she collaborated with Royksopp in 2014 and the wheels fell off.I'm not blaming them entirely because she is very much her own woman, and a lot of people did like the work she did with them, but musically she moved in a more tuneless, clubby direction and lost her effortless melodic sensibility.She followed the Royksopp mistake with four 12" remix releases in 2017 whereby remixers of her choice were allowed to singularly murder her songs. All of them are rubbish, just thudding beats and no tunes and your heart sinks when you hear them (check them out on YouTube if you don't believe me).And now we're here and all that's followed from 2014 has lead to this. This album is an absolute shocker. It really has only one memorable song on it that you'd want to add to a Robyn playlist - "Missing U" - and even then it's not prime Robyn, it's more like a shadow of her former self. Her singing is as emotional and committed as ever, she's certainly not just phoning in her vocals, but there's just no substance to the music whatsoever.The songs just drift by leaving no impression at all. There are no thumping dance floor anthems full of longing and heartbreak, no soaring keyboard lines, it's all dreary and badly one-paced with muffled drums and distant bass.Things reach an absolute nadir with the truly appalling "Beach 2K20" - five minutes and 29 seconds (though it feels 3 x as long) of emptiness saying nothing and going nowhere. I just imagine her collaborators in the studio nodding along furiously and high fiving each other at the backing tracks like fools. She should've told them to step away from the mixing desk, take their crappy beats and get the f*** out of the studio!I would never say to anyone, "don't buy this album", because music is so personal and one person's used cat litter is another person's treasure. But honestly, do yourselves a favour and listen online before you decide. The fact that Amazon dropped the price from £10 to only £4 very quickly shows that they also know it's a turkey.In fact, if you do have £4 to spare, I'd recommend this unreservedly instead:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kleerup/dp/B0022NGA5M/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=kleerup&qid=1585798071&s=music&sr=1-1In my opinion, she did some of her best work with Kleerup and this album is stuffed full of wonderful melodies and soaring synth lines. In fact, she should give him a call and write with him again because she's gone down a musical cul-de-sac and needs rescuing from boring club dirges that don't connect on any level.

The perfect album and a beautiful, collectable LP. Love it!

I have loved robyns last two albums and this is as good - I love the fragility and innocence of her voice, the great production and great lyrics - its much more than your regular pop / dance album.The album opens with "missing u" ….which is as good as "every heartbeat" or " dancing on my own" her biggest hits to date! realised as a single and a great track and was released as a single with some great mixes."human being" is slower, darker and more sultry but its a great track- with hypnotic beats and lyrics..."because its in the music" is much the same.other standard tracks are the new single "honey" which is hopefully going to be a huge hit and "beach 2k20"its has a few standout tracks on first listening - quite a few sound the though and it does take a few listens to appreciate them.

One of the best albums of the decade - well written, well produced! A good introduction to Robyn if you haven’t listened in the past :)

Great album

A very enjoyable listen

A more mature release from Robyn...still not exactly ploughing the mainstream pop furrow but well worth a listen nonetheless.