(She left a major-label deal after they disagreed with the edgier direction she wished to take.)
She achieved these things not just through the song itself, but because she released it on her own label, on her own terms. Artists such as Charli XCX have acknowledged their debt to her too, saying: “Robyn has definitely been part of paving the way for pop stars who fall a little to the left of the Top 40 norm.” Meanwhile, pop in general became a more mournful and introspective place with the likes of Drake and Frank Ocean moving towards minimal, emotional work. Beyoncé’s music became more experimental after the release of ‘Dancing On My Own’ (Photo: Getty) The decade saw the behemoths of straight-ahead pop – Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Katy Perry – become more experimental, with Beyoncé, Joanne, Anti and Witness. More subtly, if any pop star was worried about baring their soul and admitting that not everything was perfect, Robyn made it possible. “Dancing On My Own” heralded the end of “The Club” era of songwriting – ironically, just as brainless EDM started taking off in the US. There is even a Spotify playlist called “Sad Bops”: “For all of us dancing on our own”.īut it had a wider influence, too. More recently, the likes of Muna and Shura have taken Robyn’s sad-lyrics-to-a-banging-electro template and run with it. Lorde is one of the many female songwriters influenced by Robyn (Photo: Getty)
Tegan and Sara changed from indie to electro pop, with the flawless 2013 album Heartthrob and 2016’s brilliant Love You to Death. Over the last 10 years, Carly Rae Jepsen progressed from the candyfloss pop of “Call Me Maybe” to the nuanced synth pop of 2015’s Emotion. Lorde, who released her debut album Pure Heroine in 2013, wrote that “it’s happy and sad, fiery and independent but vulnerable and small, joyous even when a heart is breaking”. The hit was a direct influence on many – female songwriters in particular. That’s certainly the case some of the time, but less often acknowledged in song are the times when, a few drinks in, you encounter that ex, or finally make that move on a long-term crush which is rejected, and your whole world falls apart to the soundtrack of throbbing beats, anguish compounded by the fact that everyone else is having the time of their lives.īy virtue of its devastating lyrics, perfectly complemented by its relentless, pounding electronic production, “Dancing On My Own” would have been an incredible song whenever it was released, but it set the template for so much of what was to follow in the rest of the decade, both musically and artistically.
Clubs are places of shared euphoria, fantasy lands where dreams come true – or so we are told. “Dancing On My Own” took us to The Club and it was startlingly familiar: that brutal feeling when a night out goes wrong. Co-written with Patrik Berger, it reached number 8 in the charts, which is arguably the perfect position: high enough to acknowledge its excellence, yet not too high that it was overplayed.