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Madonna on the Ray of Light music video setFrank Micelotta\/ImageDirect\/Getty<\/p>\nIs the world ready for midlife female pop star realness? The early reaction to the Swedish pop queen Robyn\u2019s new album, Sexistential, suggests they might not be. When she performed the title track on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert this year, a lot of the commentary online could be summed up in one word: cringe.<\/p>\n
A 46-year-old woman writhing on the floor in red leather trousers rapping about having hook-up sex while pregnant through IVF was too much for some people. Those sensitive souls had better avoid the album, which also includes a deliciously sexy ode to phone sex (Talk to Me) and a celebration of the physical bliss of breastfeeding (Blow My Mind).<\/p>\n
For listeners made of sterner stuff, though, Sexistential is pure joy. It\u2019s Robyn\u2019s first album since the woozy, downbeat Honey in 2018 and its lyrics reflect the way her life has been transformed in the interim. Shortly after Honey was released Robyn broke up with her long-term partner and embarked on solo IVF. In 2022 she gave birth to her son, Tyko.<\/p>\n
Maternity is hardly uncharted territory for pop music: 28 years ago Madonna reinvented her career and the possibilities for female artists with the album Ray of Light, which drew on her experience of becoming a mother at 38. It also \u2014 and this is where Sexistential is a departure \u2014 marked a break with Madonna\u2019s sexy era.<\/p>\n
Madonna on the Ray of Light music video setFrank Micelotta\/ImageDirect\/Getty<\/p>\n
Hard as it is to believe today, before Ray of Light came out a consensus had started to form that Madonna might be (whisper it) over. After decades of semi-pornographic provocations she was near-geriatric by the standards of Nineties pop. So for Ray of Light she did the perhaps most shocking thing she could: kept her clothes on and discovered spirituality.<\/p>\n
That launched her into her midlife career with a momentum that has kept her going all the way to the present. The switch to modesty was, it turned out, short-lived: the video for her most recent release, La Bambola, features her, at 67, wiggling in a basque and fishnet tights.<\/p>\n
More regrettably, the shift in her lyrical concerns was short-lived too. After the similarly styled 2000 album Music, Madonna has never sounded so open and vulnerable. Her reversion to songs about clubbing and lust yielded some great tracks (let\u2019s hear it for Hung Up) but also left the trail she blazed with Ray of Light for other artists to explore.<\/p>\n
That has taken a surprisingly long time. But now, finally, a cohort of pop stars has arrived who are making unabashed bangers about female middle age. Robyn\u2019s Sexistential comes on the heels of two hit albums last year that dealt with this previously unpromising subject: Sophie Ellis-Bextor\u2019s Perimenopop (the title is self-explanatory) and Lily Allen\u2019s non-monogamy and divorce-themed album West End Girl.<\/p>\n
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Allen\u2019s divorce album was a commercial successGetty<\/p>\n
This is part of a bigger cultural moment for women in their forties and older. You could also include Miranda July\u2019s outrageously horny perimenopause novel All Fours and the Nicole Kidman age-gap drama Baby Girl (which has lived in my memory less for the scenes of S&M than for the frank depiction of the extensive age-defying tweakments undergone by Kidman\u2019s character). Vladimir, the TV adaptation of Julia May Jonas\u2019s novel about the chaotic belated rumspringa of a middle-aged female academic (played by Rachel Weisz), is part of the same wave.<\/p>\n
On the one hand, this reflects where Gen X and older millennial women are. Women who are in their forties and fifties grew up with the expectation that their lives would not come crashing to a halt when menopause set in. We expect pleasure, adventure and fertility, and we have a disposable income that makes it lucrative for art to reflect those aspirations.<\/p>\n
But, especially in music, it\u2019s also a pleasant side-effect of the way streaming has transformed the traditional shape of an artist\u2019s career. Ellis-Bextor is a perfect case in point. In 2023 her song Murder on the Dancefloor \u2014 released in 2001 \u2014 was included in the memorable final scene of Emerald Fennell\u2019s film Saltburn. That propelled Murder on the Dancefloor to No 2 in the UK charts and gave Ellis-Bextor her first US hit, revitalising her career and introducing her to an audience who had no idea that she had been famous in the Noughties. As she told an interviewer, her children\u2019s generation (her oldest son is in his early twenties) mostly encounter music through TikTok where the age of the singer and the song are immaterial.<\/p>\n
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Sophie Ellis-Bextor\u2019s exposure in Saltburn gave the singer her first US hitAlamy<\/p>\n
That means an artist can stay relevant in a way that defies the ageist expectations once imposed by record companies: executives tended to assume teenagers would listen only to music by their peers. That\u2019s very much not the case now, as demonstrated at the 2022 Glastonbury Festival when Olivia Rodrigo (then 19) invited Lily Allen to join her on stage to perform Allen\u2019s song F*** You.<\/p>\n
It was a moment that acknowledged Rodrigo\u2019s artistic debt to Allen. In the 2000s, Allen\u2019s bratty confessionals about disappointing boyfriends and self-doubt brought something fresh to pop music. Decades later, Rodrigo would cover similar ground on songs such as Good 4 U and Pretty Isn\u2019t Pretty. By continuing the focus on a female perspective that Allen established, Rodrigo helped to make the space for Allen\u2019s West End Girl.<\/p>\n
You can see a similar relationship between Robyn and Charli XCX, who is 33. Robyn\u2019s commitment to autonomy in the music industry and her passion for the club scene are an inspiration to Charli \u2014 something Charli gave a nod to when she gave Robyn a starring role on the remixed version of the song 360 from the album Brat.<\/p>\n
Playful and brash but with moments of emotional clarity, Brat can be seen as picking up where Robyn\u2019s Noughties trilogy of Body Talk albums left off: the raw yearning of Charli\u2019s Talk Talk is a descendent of Robyn\u2019s heartbreak on the dancefloor classic Dancing on My Own. Brat even has its own moment of \u201cfertility pop\u201d, I Think About It All the Time, in which Charli wonders whether she should pause her career to have a baby.<\/p>\n
While Charli considers that question she can look to Robyn (and Allen and Ellis-Bextor) as proof that becoming a mother and embracing maturity in some ways doesn\u2019t mean giving up on being creative. Robyn has said that making Sexistential was in part about a commitment to herself to \u201cstay horny \u2014 it doesn\u2019t even have to be about sex, but it\u2019s feeling sensual and attracted to things that I enjoy\u201d.<\/p>\n