Honey
Details
LP / Format
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CRITIC REVIEWS
100
Across 10 tracks of ultra-modern dance music, she takes listeners on a journey from vulnerable heartbreak to love reborn, beautifully reminding us that flesh-and-blood-emotion is the essential ingredient of great pop.
100
By manipulating the modern pop palette to craft a complex heartbreak album, Robyn shows her imitators how it’s done.
100
An album like this – sparse, relatively brief and yet brimming with so much unresolved emotional turmoil – was realistically the last thing any of us expected.
90
Honey is a near-flawless dance pop album. It doesn’t need political or cultural commentary to assert relevancy; in Robyn’s deep understanding of human emotion and what moves us, Honey feels dire all the same.
90
The eight years between Body Talk and this album would be a lifetime for almost any artist, and several lifetimes for a female pop star, whose career longevity isn't usually measured in decades. However, Robyn continues to make the trends instead of following them, and with Honey, she enters her forties with some of her most emotionally satisfying and musically innovative music.
90
On her first album in eight years, taking a more active hand on the production side after what seems to have been a period of painful personal change, Robyn relaxes the tempos and lets the healing ecstasy of club grooves take over.
90
There is nothing left to be said: Robyn's Honey is the lead contender for best pop album of 2018.
90
Honey is heart-on-sleeve, open-book emotional without being draining, like a Disintegration or a Blackstar: it’s heavy on the mind but light on the ears. It seems perfectly handmade for each listener, but never makes you feel isolated. It’s like your pass into a world of shining surfaces, neon lights and heartbreak.
90
On, Honey she has again trusted herself in a challenging time and made a beautifully paced and stunning return. Honey is full of surprises and perfectly encapsulates what makes Robyn such an exceptional artist.
85
Robyn presents her first solo album in eight years subtly, with slight builds and light hands. But her masterful command of emotions on the dancefloor slowly reveals itself across another enthralling record.
85
Though she’s less sonically distinct these days, Robyn’s music is powerfully emotional and slow-burns its excitement.
84
Throughout Honey, the pure, raw emotion that has always defined Robyn's music is still there. Now, she's just dancing to a different beat.
83
No, it’s not a driving album, but it sure as hell is an album for walking around your city alone with headphones on or for cooking dinner and suddenly realizing you’ve got goosebumps and your fingers are trembling.
80
By filtering her innate melodic nous through the prism of club music, Robyn pushes the dance-pop hybrid into exciting new territory.
80
Though led by the glistening rush of single Missing U ... the Swedish electropop empress’s eighth album is less a refinement of her pristine sound, more a deep odyssey into the clubby tendencies she explored so well with Röyksopp on Do It Again and The Girl and the Robot.
80
The singer delivers a series of hard truths with a voice that sifts over the synths like icing sugar.
80
Melancholy remains the primary colour in Robyn’s work, though it continues to sparkle.
80
At nine lean but often seemingly formless tracks, Honey feels raw and incomplete, like a work in progress—and maybe that’s the point.
80
As always, the club remains an inspiration, but here the focus is to soundtrack the night's comedown, not its ecstatic peak. The grooves are a bit deeper, the emotions remain true and, as the title suggests, the tracks are sticky as hell, stuck rattling around in your head for days.
80
It’s a different Robyn we’re faced with on ‘Honey’, but one we can learn just as much from.
80
From an artist who conjures up so many lofty titles – pop genius being one of them – this is a record that takes an altogether different tack to cut through to the raw, complex tangle of emotion.
75
On first listen, the absence of a nihilistic mantra to grasp onto may disappoint fans, but the deceptively simple pleasures of Honey open up with each listen.
70
Whilst these songs are far from her finest work, the consistency of the record helps to secure their roots and stand them out more prominently. Honey is a fine record, a consistent record and a thoroughly enjoyable record.
I do smell the album of the year here.
It's easy to listen, there is space in this music, it's so chilled out. It sounds as brand new and at the same time it somehow brings me back to childhood and gives me a sense of nostalgia. This is how you make pop, kids.
I am delighted with this album. There is so much to love, but my favorite part is the sense of movement towards something new and exciting. Where 'Missing U' sounded a like a continuation of Body Talk, the last three songs in particular sound very fresh to me. 'Between the Lines' has just a wink of Kaytranada in it, and I am feeling that. 'Beach 2k20' is the kind of subtle earworm that will be stuck in my head until 2k20, and 'Ever Again' is just sonic candy.
In short, it is playful and ... read more
Robyn's deepest, grooviest, most cohesive and most personally revealing album. In fact, I will go ahead and say its her best. "Dancing On My Own" is pretty much the song of the decade, and there's no one song on this album that's quite in that 11-out-of-10 stratosphere, but as a whole, this is so much more detailed, engrossing, and luxuriant than any previous Robyn LP. There's so much emotional and sonic texture to these songs, many of which recall ambient techno or house a la The ... read more
song ratings
missing u - 100
human being - 85
because it's in the music - 100
baby forgive me - 100
send to robin immediately - 90
honey - 100
between the lines - 100
beach 2k20 - 93
ever again - 100
overall score: 96
Contributions By
patton, thisisabtlgrnd, philthy, Chris Coltrane, Edgeworth, domvic, kingsolomonf, Rob, TsareenaBecome a Donor
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Track List
| 1 | Missing U 4:57 | 91 |
| 2 | Human Being 3:46 feat. Zhala | 84 |
| 3 | Because It's In The Music 4:34 | 88 |
| 4 | Baby Forgive Me 4:16 | 85 |
| 5 | Send To Robin Immediately 3:59 | 86 |
| 6 | Honey 4:54 | 93 |
| 7 | Between the Lines 4:05 | 85 |
| 8 | Beach2k20 5:29 | 75 |
| 9 | Ever Again 4:24 | 91 |
Total Length: 40 minutes
Year End Lists
| #1 | / | Slant Magazine |
| #2 | / | Dazed |
| #2 | / | musicOMH |
| #2 | / | NOW Magazine |
| #2 | / | Pretty Much Amazing |
| #2 | / | The Guardian |
| #3 | / | The Interns |
| #4 | / | Gaffa (Sweden) |
| #4 | / | Pitchfork |
| #4 | / | Q Magazine |
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2mo
User score is fine, not user must year yet but 78 is a perfectly good score
And I can see why a lot of people wouldn't find much from this album cause I used to be one of those people as well
And I can see why a lot of people wouldn't find much from this album cause I used to be one of those people as well
Added on: September 19, 2018