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Oct 26, 2018Real emotion never gets old. Honey is moving in more senses than one, a hypnotically groovy dance floor opus, set to the beat of Robyn’s tender heart.
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Oct 25, 2018Whether the album ends up exerting the kind of influence over the Top 40 that her earlier releases did seems questionable--it feels almost too opaque and inward-looking for mass appeal. As evidence of a unique artist pursuing a personal vision in a world filled with the commonplace, however, Honey is perfect.
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Oct 29, 2018Robyn's Honey is the lead contender for best pop album of 2018.
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Oct 29, 2018It’s about clean lines, geometric beauty and clear sincerity. But it also has depth, richness and luxurious colour. It can be taken as superficially perfect pop music, or you can listen a little deeper and hear just how intricately woven her heartbreak anthems really are. She is an artist in the truest sense. And Honey is her latest masterpiece.
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Oct 26, 2018Honey 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. Release through dance has long been a tactic wielded by humankind, but rarely has it felt this inclusive, kind and positively radiant.
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Oct 26, 2018Robyn 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.
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Oct 25, 2018Like a great DJ set, songs morph into one another thematically and structurally, most notably in the album’s central triptych. ... The music works its magic, and like a perfect night a clubbing, the uplift is ultimately irresistible.
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Oct 29, 2018Though the album is less immediate than “Body Talk,” the choruses not as insistent, it exudes a hypnotic pull nonetheless: this is a gentler brand of body music about absence and need.
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Oct 25, 2018Robyn presents them in a way that makes her resolutions feel both instinctive and deeply traveled; melodies and emotions resolve simultaneously, slowly, and imperfectly, without editorialized conclusions.
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Nov 1, 2018Throughout Honey, the pure, raw emotion that has always defined Robyn's music is still there. Now, she's just dancing to a different beat.
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Oct 29, 2018It’s sad and sweet and lovely and brutal.
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Oct 29, 2018At nine lean but often seemingly formless tracks, Honey feels raw and incomplete, like a work in progress--and maybe that’s the point.
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Oct 29, 2018Rather than try to top her peerless pop peaks, Robyn has instead uncovered a new warmth, and the effect, on the lofty, dark techno of Human Being and the trippy tempo dips of Baby Forgive Me--redolent of lost small hours and fleeting epiphanies during dancefloor marathons--is sweet indeed.
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Oct 26, 2018Honey, sparkling yet subtly realized and constantly in motion, follows Robyn from the precipice of heartbreak into the club and onto the beach, and eventually toward something resembling redemption.
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Oct 26, 2018Melancholy remains the primary colour in Robyn’s work, though it continues to sparkle.
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Oct 26, 2018[Missing U's] Thudding kick drum pounds away underneath defiant lyrics of heartache, and it’s as affecting as she’s ever been. It’s the rest of the record, though, that really excels, pointing the way forward for an artist changing her tune.
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Q MagazineOct 25, 2018A deconstruction of heartbreak pulling out all the emotional cogs and catches with the precision of a watchmaker. [Dec 2018, p.110]
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Oct 25, 2018Repeated listens reveal a deeply nuanced record that deals with grief and confusion the only way Robyn knows how--by dancing like nobody's looking.
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Oct 25, 2018Nine songs that glow and pulse with bittersweet sensuality.
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Oct 25, 2018Though the pain she’s exploring here is less immediate and stinging than the thwack of being screwed over, it’s explored just as expertly.
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Oct 25, 2018On 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. Robyn is trusting her instincts; finding care and wonder in the spaces she once went for punishment.
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Oct 25, 2018Honey is a fine record, a consistent record and a thoroughly enjoyable record. But it is not a great record, and in comparison with the standard she has set for herself previously, this is a mild (though fleeting) disappointment. That said, there is still a clear and beating heart here and the sheer humanity of Robyn’s musical soul remains one of the most beautiful things in contemporary music.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 199 out of 227
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Mixed: 20 out of 227
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Negative: 8 out of 227
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Oct 26, 2018
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Oct 31, 2018
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Feb 5, 2019