(Young)
After 2018’s mellow Honey, the beloved Swede’s heady comeback pairs production worthy of Daft Punk and Moroder with deep romantic realism

At the end of last year, during her triumphant gig at the O2, Charli xcx brought Robyn out onstage. In a sense, it was just the latest in a series of guest appearances on the Brat tour: a string of collaborators from the album and its ensuing remixes – Lorde, Billie Eilish, Troye Sivan and Addison Rae among them – had turned up at different shows to perform their parts live. But as well as contributing her verse to their remix of 360, Robyn also took centre stage, performing her peerless 2010 single Dancing on My Own. Released when at least some of Charli xcx’s audience were still in nappies, it didn’t sound remotely like a throwback even in the context of a gig based around one of 2024’s most acclaimed and agenda-setting pop albums: the star of the show’s willingness to cede the spotlight to her felt like evidence of Robyn’s influence over contemporary pop.

You can see why the Swedish singer-songwriter carries so much clout among pop stars of the mid-2020s. When she opened an album with a track called Don’t Fucking Tell Me What to Do, she wasn’t joking: after launching as a 90s teen-pop star produced by Max Martin, she rejected the usual strictures placed on female pop – walking away from not one but two major label deals due to lack of artistic control – and seemed intent on following a more idiosyncratic, complex, messy path. She never saw being in the centre of mainstream pop as antithetical to making music with depth, or that touched on contentious issues. Despite the worldwide success of her debut, Robyn Is Here, her second album, My Truth, went unreleased outside Sweden because her US-based label baulked at Giving You Back, a song about an abortion she’d had in 1998: when asked to remove the song, Robyn refused.

(Polydor)
It’s a difficult second album for the chart-topping singer, in more ways than one – but her sombre songcraft ends up being spectacular

In theory, the making of Celeste’s second album should have been plain sailing. Boosted by a win in the BBC Sound of 2020 poll, and her single A Little Love appearing on the John Lewis Christmas ad the same year, her debut album Not Your Muse entered the charts at No 1, spawned two big hits – Stop This Flame and Strange – and ultimately went gold. That’s the perfect starting place from which to make a second album: success, acclaim and attention, but not on the kind of overwhelming scale that seems ultimately paralysing, where it’s impossible to work out how you can follow it up.

And yet, the making of Woman of Faces has clearly been attended by some difficulty. Celeste has talked openly about butting heads with its producer, Jeff Bhasker, whose hugely impressive CV includes work with Harry Styles, Taylor Swift and Kanye West: she commissioned string arrangements from British composer and conductor Robert Ames, but Bhasker “didn’t let me use [them]”. Last month, she was on Instagram, protesting that her label was showing “very little support of the album I have made” and had threatened to drop her entirely if she “didn’t put two particular songs” on its track list. This accusation caused a certain degree of eyebrow-raising, not least because Celeste is signed to the same label that singer Raye complained about in 2021, insisting they had refused to allow her to release a debut album: Raye subsequently left the label, released the album herself to vast success and noted that record companies might be better served allowing artists to “always create with a sense of purpose, rather than the means to sell”.