AAA<\/p>\n
When Swedish pop musician Robyn came out of her long-term relationship, it felt like she had \u201cbeen on this long journey into space, far beyond my limits, and I was crashing back into Earth, myself and my body\u201d.<\/p>\n
What was waiting for her was something she\u2019d wanted her whole life: motherhood. In 2022, aged 42, she gave birth to her first child via IVF and sperm donation. \u201cBeing pregnant is like you\u2019re a spaceship for this other human being that\u2019s about to come alive,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
On her first album in eight years, Sexistential, the artist born Robin Carlsson explores sex, fertility and motherhood in an era where software mediates romance and science can bypass the traditional path to parenthood. It\u2019s the latest act of self-determination from a woman who, alongside producer Klas Ahlund, set the synthesised, high-emotion template for everything from Taylor Swift\u2019s 1989 and Lorde\u2019s Melodrama to the devil-may-care world of Charli XCX\u2019s Brat. She\u2019s arguably the most influential pop musician of the 21st century.<\/p>\n
![\"Swedish](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/66ba035e04a7ef0d29f2b6d54e4a8f0d0f061d6e.jpeg\")
Swedish pop icon Robyn.Casper Sejersen<\/p>\n
Carlsson had always wanted to become a parent, but finding the right time was a different story. \u201cFor me, it was really uncomplicated to become a parent,\u201d she says. \u201cHow to become a parent, what happened before I became a mother, was a complex thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like many future parents, but perhaps more so for those whose physiological window is almost closed, Carlsson questioned her motivations for wanting a child. She wondered whether it was for purely altruistic reasons, to bring a new life into the world for the child\u2019s sake alone, or for more selfish reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll tell you what my therapist said: having children is a native need within human beings, and it shouldn\u2019t be questioned. It\u2019s like questioning [why] we exist, which you can do to a certain point. But I think just embracing and feeling okay that we\u2019re here, no matter if we understand why or not, is really beautiful,\u201d Carlsson says.<\/p>\n
![\"Robyn\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/b16e25268f77f045925ed1ccb482c38c4e74bfe5.jpeg\")
Robyn\u2019s new album Sexistential is her first in eight years.\u00a0Casper Sejersen<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t [need] children to have a complete life. But if you want to have children, that in itself doesn\u2019t need to be questioned. You can question your ability to be a good parent, and you can work on it and you can be self-critical in so many ways, but the actual need is not something that should be up for discussion. Which I think is a beautiful stance.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the album\u2019s title track \u2013 written about having one-night stands 10 weeks into her pregnancy \u2013 Carlsson lays out a tongue-in-cheek manifesto: \u201cF— a app. F— a single mum (shit is existential). F— a Plan B, baby. F— a therapist.\u201d It\u2019s almost certainly the only pop song to reference the Adam Sandler comedy, You Don\u2019t Mess with the Zohan.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave sex with a single mum. That\u2019s great,\u201d she laughs over Zoom, effortlessly chic in a camo fleece. \u201cFor the record, I don\u2019t mean \u2018f— a therapist\u2019 in the sense that I don\u2019t believe in therapy. I think therapy is really good. But there\u2019s a point where you feel, \u2018I can\u2019t think about it any more\u2026 I just have to live, and hopefully, it works.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Carlsson is sympathetic to anyone who decides to become a parent later in life, or who may be struggling or unable to have a child for medical, social or financial reasons.<\/p>\n
![\"Robyn](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ca8135b3cadc5d044403cd2fb0db366dd0129f3e.jpeg\")
Robyn released her debut album of pop-R&B, Robyn Is Here, in 1995.Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just women. I think all people who decide they want to be parents, and then have to work for it, kind of have to approach it in a very different way. You\u2019re aware of all the risks and all the possibilities that it may not happen.\u201d When it did for her, it came with other benefits, such as navigating loneliness, an emotion that has often surfaced in her music.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re a parent you don\u2019t have to negotiate your loneliness in the relationship,\u201d she says. \u201cOf course, my son should be totally independent from my needs. But you can\u2019t erase the fact that [by] having children, you create a family and a place that is a home. I think, in that sense, you become a better dater because you\u2019re not depending on it to solve your life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finding a way to make that home when she was younger, on the road and trying to create a career in music, was a more difficult proposition. The choice she made set her on a life-changing trajectory. Carlsson signed with Ricochet Records in 1993 when she was just 14 and released her debut album of pop-R&B, Robyn Is Here, in 1995. In 1999, her second album, My Truth, arrived with a level of candour that RCA Records found unmarketable: the track Giving You Back detailed an abortion she\u2019d had the year prior. When the US label requested she cut the song for the American market, Carlsson refused and the US release was shelved.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really scared of the idea of becoming a single parent. I always tried to avoid that,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then somehow that\u2019s kind of where I ended up anyway. Which is funny.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
But Carlsson has spent decades building the infrastructure for exactly this kind of independence. After meeting the indie Swedish electronic producers The Knife in 2003, she bought herself out of her record contract. In 2005 she founded her own label, Konichiwa Records, a move that gave her the total artistic autonomy she craved. The gamble paid off: her self-titled fourth album \u2013 released on her own fledgling label \u2013 yielded the UK no. 1 single With Every Heartbeat, a collaboration with the producer Kleerup.<\/p>\n
Sexistential is Carlsson\u2019s seventh full-length album, and it required characteristic patience from her fans. It has been nearly eight years since 2018\u2019s Honey, which itself followed an eight-year gap after 2010\u2019s Body Talk \u2013 a trilogy of short albums anchored by the contradictory, ecstatic loneliness of her beloved club anthem Dancing on My Own.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I was always writing about [parenthood] in some way,\u201d she says, recalling the Body Talk Pt. 1 track Fembot, written as she was entering her thirties and again contemplating parenthood. \u201cI was already thinking about the functions of my body, what it was meant to do and how that was relating to age and the life I was living. How to get those things to work [together] was always difficult for me to understand because I didn\u2019t feel like I wanted to embrace a totally conventional life. But I always felt really conventional in my way of relating to motherhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Robyn](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/e42b3c7aa13b0ed4a18a24a855000c08ff412d54.jpeg\")
Robyn performs on stage at Brixton Academy in 2012 in London.Redferns via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Duality has always existed in Carlsson\u2019s music. Dancing on My Own was a song about feeling lonely in a crowd; Call Your Girlfriend is a slice of ecstatic infidelity in which Carlsson convinced her new love to dump their partner (gently). Sexistential\u2019s dualities are intimate and abstract: the deeply personal, physical experiences of Carlsson\u2019s pregnancy and motherhood weighed against the mechanical and technological feats that made them possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you do IVF, there\u2019s also a technological aspect, the mystery is gone. You know exactly when it has to happen and when it hasn\u2019t happened. There are dates and even hours you can relate it to,\u201d says Carlsson, who once again had to reject the shame imposed by a culture she\u2019s often steps ahead of to create the life she desired. \u201cI felt like there was so much stigma around being a single parent, this feeling of failure. It\u2019s not a weird thing at all any more; there\u2019s so many different kinds of families.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sexistential contains one song specifically recorded for her son, a rework of her 2002 track Blow My Mind. Viewed from the outside, it looks like a merging of her past and present lives. Now 46, she\u2019s able to weigh her decision to postpone pregnancy as a teenager against where she finds herself now.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/30bdf197df1dc1eee7deff1232e62aac39d6f2e0.jpeg\")
The cover of Robyn\u2019s ninth album.AP<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a better time for me to become a parent. It gave me a lot of freedom to explore things before I had my son. And then there\u2019s this other way of looking at it, which is, if I\u2019d had him earlier, I would have more time with him,\u201d Carlsson says. \u201cThat\u2019s not even bittersweet. That\u2019s just bitter. But because I waited, I was able to enjoy it a lot more and I\u2019m a lot more present now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carlsson intentionally infused Sexistential with these philosophical \u201cdualities\u201d, big and small. The album opener Really Real is about the disparate perceptions on either side of a failing relationship. Its pounding kick drum, suspenseful arpeggiated synths, and vocal snippets of a soothing conversation between mother and daughter are interrupted by a breakdown of fractured electric guitars.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat song\u2019s about the way anxiety feels. Maybe the definition of feeling crazy. It\u2019s not a desired state to be in, but it\u2019s a part of being human,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
On Dopamine, Carlsson attempts to map the blurry border where free will ends and the body\u2019s chemistry takes over. Talk to Me is about intellectually induced physical climax. Both of those singles are up there with Carlsson\u2019s best club cuts. Elsewhere, there\u2019s wild production flourishes on the effervescent Sucker for Love and the thick funk of It Don\u2019t Mean a Thing. The album\u2019s rapturous closer, Into the Sun, channels the dark existentialism from which Carlsson was writing into a triumphant blast through the solar system.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here on this rock in space, and we basically don\u2019t know why. That\u2019s just mind-blowing to me,\u201d says Carlsson. \u201cThe feeling of that loneliness and the fact that we\u2019re going to die, these huge existential things that all human beings have in them all the time\u2026 That outside perspective is very hard to combine with the intimate feelings of, like, how your day is going to become meaningful, that you\u2019re hungry and that you want a hug.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"April](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1774639932_942_35702b4541842c7f71dfe3ae583d5921ef68351a.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n