Is this Swedish girl from the Future? Pt. II

Funny, she doesn't look like a Japanese robot. Because, seriously, Japan has singing robots.

So, after a long (like, very long) absence, I have returned to satisfy the 10 or so of you out there who have been patiently awaiting our follow-up to the "Is this Swedish girl from the Future?" post from almost a month ago.

In our last blog, we explored the first part of my two-part thesis to explain the Swedish musical phenom known only as "Robyn". Recall that the first prong of my thesis was that Robyn was a musical genius, akin to WC Handy or Little Richard. Further recall that this prong was thoroughly and quickly debunked when it was revealed that it was not Robyn who was the musical genius after all, but her songwriter, Max Martin.

Crestfallen, we dive into prong two of the two-prong thesis: that, in the alternative, Robyn is from the future.

Now, I know this is yet another incendiary thing to say. Surely Robyn cannot be from the future, for time travel has not been invented, right? And if it was invented, surely it was not invented by the Swedish, as they spend their time inventing safe automobiles and expensive-yet-cheap furniture for young professionals to covet.


"Use the giant screwdriver on the giant screw and hold a map in front of your upset tummy while putting together this miserable furniture." - IKEA instructions for the Bjarnum.

Or, no, only the Japanese are from the future, because that's the only logical explanation as to why they would produce such weird toys, literature, and anime?


I mean, seriously, this is weird, right?

The reason I'm positing that Robyn is from the future is because after she had moderate success as the proto-Britney Spears, she went on to have (probably) less-than-moderate success being the progenitor of another pop singer: Fergie from the (hopelessly embarrassing) Black Eyed Peas.


U-g-l-y, Fergie has no alibi.

Now, wait a minute, you say. How can this Swedish chick be both the forerunner or Brit-Brit and the forerunner of meth-faced Fergie? There hasn't been that much talent in one person since at least Michelangelo!


At least not since this Michelangelo...

But yes, I do believe Robyn was the talented forerunner of the talentless Stacy Ann "Fergie" Ferguson. And here is the song that helps me prove it:

Robyn - Konichiwa Bitches.mp3

That's Konichiwa Bitches, from Robyn's 2005 self-titled album. For those scoring at home, Robyn also speaks Japanese (or at least knows the same amount of conversational Japanese as I do), which helps lend some credibility to the whole future hypothesis a little more, don't you think?
Also, check out this creepy video with a sock-monkey playing drums while she inhabits a 2D cut-out world reminiscent of a Tex Avery/Pee-Wee's Playhouse acid trip:



But back to the music, doesn't that song sound a whole lot like a little hit Little Miss Devil's Dust had in 2006, Fergalicious?

	Fergie - Fergalicious .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

I know the songs are not EXACTLY the same...but just like in our Britney/Robyn comparison, I think there are strikingly similar elements in the delivery of the lyrics and some of the melodic content. Not literal copying here, but copying of the "essence" of Robyn, which I think lends credence to Robyn's talent outshining the talent (or lack thereof) of Stacy Ann "Hillbilly Crack" Ferguson.

Now, this time around we don't have the songwriting link between the two works (will.i.am wrote Fergalicious, while Robyn and Klas Ahlund wrote Konichiwa Bitches. Actually, there were ELEVEN writers listed for Fergalicious. Yeah, ELEVEN. I guess it's really difficult to come up with lines like: "My body stays vicious/I be up in the gym just workin' on my fitness" or to rhyme "I'm tryin' to tell" with "clientele"), so it's not a Max Martin-type thing. Further, we don't have the connection of working with the same producers at subsequent times, either (as Britney Spears worked in Sweden with the same team that had worked with Robyn). So, without any other evidence, I think it's pretty obvious: Robyn brought back her musical genius from the future.

Or, said another way, Robyn was simply born too early. The world wasn't ready for the slow-rhyme-talking and disinterested style of Robyn in 2005. Perhaps it was the inclusion of the Japanese word that people didn't respond to? Perhaps it was the "Bitches" in the title, as the world was maybe a much more conservative place in 2005 than it was in 2006?


Glenn Beck didn't get on TV until 2006, so there was no one in the country to compare Hitler to everything while using "air" "quotes" in 2005.

Probably not. I think it's just another case of poor Robyn getting passed up, in the right place, but a little bit early.

Or...maybe they're just both rip offs of this (start at the :29 second mark):

Supersonic.mp3

That's JJ Fad's Supersonic, from 1988. I definitely spent some time roller skating to this jam back at Doyle-Ryder.


Uh...yeah, something like that.

Turns out Arabian Prince (a former member of NWA, no less, which proves that gangster rap was not nearly as threatening as white people would have you believe) wrote and produced this song. He eventually sued will.i.am for the striking similarity to Supersonic. Looks like he won, or at least settled, too, as 3 of those 11 writers on Fergalicious are the writers credited on Supersonic.


Arabian Prince is the guy you don't recognize over there on the far right.

So, perhaps my second prong of a well-crafted thesis has also been disproved: it wasn't that Robyn was some Swedish angel from the future coming back in time to give us a glimpse of the music Americans would spend their dispensable incomes on; it wasn't that Robyn was only a conduit for the fame and fortune achieved by a Crank Skank and a man who uses lower-case letters and punctuation in his own moniker in order to appear ironic or artistically wisened (Fergie and will.i.am, respectively); it wasn't that Robyn really got screwed over for being too talented, either.


"Scante" Ferguson and Billy "i.am.william" Adams, Jr.

It was that they both probably had old copies of the same JJ Fad record.


Stockholm was rotten with copies of this record in 1989.

Not nearly as groundbreaking or sexy a proposition, if you ask me.

Is this Swedish girl from the future?

Robin Carlsson - the Swedish Marty McFly?

Anyone out there heard of Robyn? If you were graduating from high school and watching a lot of MTV back in 1997 like I was, then you've answered "yes" to the preceding question.
Robyn is the Nordic pop-princess that brought us such hits as, "Do You Know (What It Takes)", "Show Me Love", and "Konichiwa Bitches" (to which we will return).
I remember seeing the video for "Do You Know (What It Takes)" on MTV (at a time when they still showed music videos) and really liked it. I mean, I was admittedly a music snob back in high school, with music snob friends, so for me to admit this was pretty difficult to do. I think that I had earlier admitted that I did, in fact, like Duran Duran - and this was a breakthrough that allowed me to publicly approve of Robyn in the summer of 1997. I liked Robyn so much, in fact, that I purchased the CD-single of the song, "Do You Know"...perhaps it was because I thought it was funny, perhaps it was because I really liked songs with parentheticals, or perhaps I really did enjoy the new sounding pop of this Robyn with a 'y'. Either way, I was pretty happy with my purchase (and now-defunct Tower Records was happy for me to have their overpriced CD).

Fast forward to 1999. I'm living in San Jose, CA now, working at Warehouse Music and am introduced to a new pop-princess, American style: Britney Spears. I'm sure we don't need to go over this, but, Britney Spears was the high school girl that couldn't really sing but looked great in her 'not-yet-barely-legal' Catholic schoolgirl uniform dance video that took over pop music for a few years (500,000 copies sold of her debut single in one day) because she preyed on statutory rape fantasies and the dispensable income of young people aged 13-21 (these two phenomena are not related).


"These are the furry epaulets that will change music...forever!" - Britney Spears

As you recall, her debut single, "...Baby One More Time", was a monster. The video was everywhere, it was played all the time, and the whole country now had a female analogue to their fascination with the Backstreet Boys and N*Sync. Perfect.

I heard "...Baby One More Time", but I wasn't struck with Britney's bad singing, I was struck by the overwhelming similarity to a one-named Swede who was pretty much forgotten by now: Robyn.

Listen to the two side by side, and you've got pretty much the same song. All the way down to the vocal stylings of Ms. Carlsson (who can sort of sing) and the vocal impressions of Britney Spears (who cannot), the two songs are strikingly similar (to use copyright infringement parlance) to me. Maybe not the same exact melody or chord progression, but the style is certainly the same, right on down to those eighth-note synth parts and the ultra-clean harmonies (well balanced, to boot).

Compare for yourself (we can wait 9 minutes):

Baby One More Time.mp3

01 Do You Know (What It Takes).mp3

I was upset by this. No one remembered poor Robyn, with her bleached blonde anime bangs from 1997; everyone wanted Britney Spears to save pop music, to bring back its youthful glee (largely absent since the over-exposure of David Cassidy, et al.), and to rake in millions of dollars. All Britney did was steal Robyn's style and put a youthful face on it. No justice.

So this leads me to the first prong of my thesis: Robyn was a musical visionary, and Britney Spears is akin to Elvis Presley.

That sounds incendiary, I know, to equate Louisana/Mickey Mouse Club trash with Mississippi/Memphis/gospel music trash 'The King', but think about how similar the situation is: Robyn puts out her album in the US, it does ok (maybe that's an understatement, it did go platinum), but she is largely forgotten. Britney comes along 2 years later, does pretty much the same thing but puts her plaid skirt and pigtails on it and it's a sensation (like, 14 times platinum). Just like Elvis stealing rock n' roll (whether he stole that from Little Richard is for another time). Right place, right time. Sorry Robyn.


The possibility of an NSFW up-skirt shot surely contributed to at least 1 million of those sales.

Well, it turns out that Robyn and Britney's striking similarities may not have been due to musical prolepsis/Britney Spears-being-like-Elvis after all. I did a little research on the matter (not that you're surprised by this), and found that the link between Robyn and Brit-Brit is actually this man:


Max Martin - a Swedish musical badass that is always getting chased by sharks.

Max Martin is a Swedish music producer/writer that has pretty much written most of the popular songs from the end of the 90s and on into today (a quick resume? "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)"; "Since U Been Gone"; "California Gurls" to name a few). I mean, really, you look at the guys resume and you can't really believe he was involved in so many hits! He's like Lionel Richie, but Swedish! He did a lot of work with American pop acts (Britney, Backstreet Boys, and Kelly Clarkson, to name a few), but he started with hometown artists like Robyn. That's right...this guy wrote "Do You Know (What It Takes)" a couple years before he wrote it again for Britney, this time as "...Baby One More Time". Lightning strikes twice, I guess.

As a side note, although Martin did write many of Britney's best songs ("...Baby One More Time", "If You Seek Amy", and "3" *a fantastically underrated song, I might add*), he did not write her best work, which is obviously (and undisputed-ly) "Toxic".


Thanks to two ridiculously-named producers (Bloodshy and Avant) we have this masterpiece of synth-pop and surf guitar.

Britney Spears - Toxic.mp3


With the first prong of my thesis so thoroughly disproved, we'll put that aside and continue forward into the second part of this post and prong two of thesis:

Robyn must be from the future.


With our limited research, we believe this to be the most likely means of travel for Robyn.

...to be continued in Part 2!