Robyn Quotes

When I started making music, I made music in a very commercial space and I didn't have room to really explore things on my own terms. It took me awhile to create a little bubble where I could explore other things, and new things. When I did that, my tools were songwriting and arranging.

All the big pop acts that I've been into over the years - whether it's ABBA or Prince - managed to combine amazing melodies and honest human emotion. But coming out of the super-super-commerical pop industry in the 90s, maybe people forgot about the fact that pop music can do both of those things.

So don't stop moving forward. For a while, you may feel as though you're taking two steps forward, one step back. And there may be some personal heartache along the way. But when you look your little ones in the eye, you will find your voice and take a stand for them. We are their voices. And we must have the courage to stand up for them, whatever the odds or however powerful the opposition might be.

I didn't mind being in school. But I was usually uninspired and always late. I did what I had to, but not more.

The marketing is just as important as the music, almost.

I don't want to have that thing where I make an album and then I'm super-constantly present in everyone's life for three years, and then gone for the next three.

I think I'm always adopting a persona. That's how I look at pop music. I don't feel like I have to be myself. I feel like I have to be true to myself, but I don't have to show an exact picture of who I am.

Everyone's talking about how no one is buying records any more, but to me it's quite logical. In the 1990s, music was so hardcore-marketed to a certain group of people that I think a lot of kids felt taken advantage of.

Maybe I bring people into that pop world who don't usually find themselves there because there's not enough stuff for them to get excited about otherwise.

My parents had an independent theater company here in Sweden during the 1980s, so I was raised watching my parents create independently, having a lot of fun and just doing what they wanted to do. I think that idea of independence as an artist was something I was always used to. And then I entered the industry from a very commercial perspective, and things were very different then from what I grew up with.

Commercial music is music that a lot of people connect to at the same time, but that doesn't mean it has to be something shallow or without personality.

It was like the part of me that had enjoyed those friends had evaporated, leaving behind a huge, echoing emptiness, and I was scrabbling on the edge of it, trying not to fall into the hole within myself because I was terrified to find out how far down it went.

Even if I'm sad, dancing is a way to let stuff out.

I just want to have a normal life, like everyone else, you know?

Being onstage and communicating with an audience was part of my life since I was very little, but I was never pushed into singing. My parents were so uninterested in me making music.

When I'm in the studio, I become a total nerd.

The music industry used to be able to control a single dance on the very smallest level of when people are supposed to hear it, and when they're supposed to start liking it, and when they're supposed to start buying it. And that's trashed, you know, that big machine that takes control and works albums for a long period.

Prince is king to me. As this half-naked, short black guy who looked like a girl in the 70s and 80s, he was talking about women in a way that was very unusual because he didn't objectify them.

The orchid is Mother Nature's masterpiece.

I think that girls are always expected to have opinions about each other, and maybe I don't have an opinion about some things, you know?

When you're 17 and you have an idea, people don't really listen to you. I came out of an environment where my parents were always pushing me to do what I wanted and be creative, and I was not used to the industry's way of thinking.

Sure the Internet is the future, but what we do on the Internet is still very primal.