Dancing on My Own

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Dancing on My Own
Robyn
publication June 1, 2010
length 4:49, 3:37 (Radio Edit)
Genre (s) Dance-Pop , Disco , Torch Song
Author (s) Robyn, Patrik Berger
Producer (s) Patrik Berger
Label Konichiwa Records
album Body Talk Pt. 1 , body talk

Dancing on My Own is a song by Swedish singer Robyn from 2010. The first single from her fifth studio album Body Talk Pt. 1 (which was later combined with Body Talk Pt. 2 and Body Talk Pt. 3 on the album Body Talk ) was written by the interpreter together with Patrik Berger and produced by the latter.

Music and lyrics

Dancing on My Own is a dance-pop song that is dominated by a pounding kick drum and concise synthesizers mixed into the foreground . According to Robyn, he was inspired by "sad, gay disco anthems" written by musicians like Ultravox , Sylvester James and Donna Summer . In terms of content, the song is about a woman who follows her ex-boyfriend to a discotheque to watch him there with her successor after she has learned that he has entered into a new love affair . Away from the action, she watches as the two kiss and complains that her former lover never discovers her. She feels isolated and unnoticed and dances to herself, but euphoric and energetic, "giving everything" while the other two are intimately united. Even when the lights in the disco come on again and the music ends, she goes unnoticed by her ex. She says she only came to say goodbye to him, which she couldn't do.

Music video

The music video for Dancing on My Own shows Robyn in a discotheque that is mostly illuminated in red . All people who are there are accompanied by partners who caress and kiss them deeply, while the singer dances for herself and does not feel anything of this collective togetherness. In between you can see again and again how Robyn performs the song in a rehearsal room and dances to it, whereby her movements are initially calm, but become more and more ecstatic as the clip progresses. There are also shots in which the interpreter hugs herself in a chamber.

criticism

Dancing on My Own received consistently positive reviews and has been featured in leaderboards since its release. Among other things, it listed Village Voice at number 3, Pitchfork at number 4, Laut.de at number 18, Intro at number 22, Rolling Stone at number 26 and NME at number 42 of the best songs of 2010.

Over the course of the decade , its reputation among magazines and critics continued to grow, and in several reviews of the 2010s by various media outlets, Dancing on My Own has garnered even higher positions. Rolling Stone, NME, Stereogum , The Associated Press and Insider each named the title the best of its decade; Pitchfork (3rd place) and USA Today (9th place) put him in the top ten. Time , Elle and Good Housekeeping all listed him as one of the best songs of the 2010s without a fixed placement.

Rolling Stone also named the track the nineteenth best song of the 21st century in 2018 ; In 2014, Musikexpress voted it 171 among the 700 best songs of all time.

Dancing on My Own was universally praised for its mixture of danceable music and sad emotions. On the work on synthetic arpeggios, Robyn would tell a classic pop story with a surprising twist: the protagonist followed her former lover and saw him with his new girlfriend, but it wouldn't ruin their fun evening. The music would be electronic, mechanical, while Robyn's singing would seem all too human. Another contrast would be the collective catharsis of the dance floor and the mediated isolation in which the interpreter feels trapped in her own skin . The emotional gravity of the story was also highlighted, as the main character does not meet her ex by chance, but purposely visits him, fully aware of what to expect. The song combining the themes and sounds all great disco Torch songs and drag them one update without consciously retro to be. The chorus of the song would feel like hearing it for the first time every time. American critics often compared the musician positively with the song about the band ABBA , who had achieved international fame decades earlier with similarly high-quality pop music from Sweden. Dancing on My Own was also said to have an influence on subsequent pop music, which is no longer afraid to offer its heartache to up- tempo music , as would Taylor Swift , St. Vincent or Lorde later.

Dancing on My Own was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording in 2011 .

success

Dancing on My Own was a huge commercial success in several countries. In Robyn's homeland, Sweden , the title became a number one hit and the sixth most successful song of 2010, while it is in the top ten in Denmark (No. 2), Norway (No. 6) and the United Kingdom (No. 8) could. In Germany the song reached number 67, in Austria and Switzerland it could not prove itself in the charts. Although the song could not place in the US charts, it was awarded a platinum record there. It received the same distinction in Denmark while it was crowned gold in the United Kingdom.

Ballad version and its cover version

In the year of its release, Robyn also presented the song in the form of a ballad, in which she is accompanied exclusively by a piano . In contrast to the original, which contrasted the topic of loneliness with danceable rhythms, the sadness of the text comes to the fore here. Although Robyn never officially published this version, there were regular artists in the coming years who covered exactly this version.

In 2011 Kato Callebaut presented the song in the fourth season of the Belgian casting show Idool ( Idool 2011 ). The song was subsequently released on their debut album "Flamingo". The corresponding single was awarded gold status in Belgium, but has no response outside the country.

For the third episode of Smash , which aired in 2013 , the song was sung by Megan Hilty .

In 2015, Calum Scott performed the song on the ninth season of Britain's Got Talent, where Simon Cowell promoted him directly to the semifinals with a golden buzzer. In the spring of 2016 he released the song as a single, but this was initially only perceived in the UK. It was not until the second half of the year that the song established itself outside the country's borders and was a great commercial success in several countries. The song reached number 2 in the charts in the United Kingdom and Australia , and top ten positions were also achieved in Sweden (number 4), New Zealand (number 5), the Netherlands (number 7) and Denmark (number 8) . In Austria the song climbed to number 32 in the charts, in Germany to number 61, in Switzerland to number 81 and in the USA to number 93. In Australia it was most successful; it was awarded eight times platinum there.

Trivia

Calum Scott changed the pronouns of the first-person narrator in his version , but not those of the ex's new partner - in the chorus he sings "guy" instead of "girl" in relation to himself, but his successor is still explicitly a woman . Scott stated that his version was sung from the perspective of a homosexual man.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Album credits. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Spex article. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Lyrics. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  4. ↑ music video. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Acclaimed Music entry with Village Voice placement. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  6. ^ Pitchfork's "The Top 100 Tracks of 2010". Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Laut.de's "Best of 2010: The Songs of the Year". Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Intro Annual Charts 2010. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  9. ^ Rolling Stone's "The 50 Best Songs of 2010". Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  10. ↑ NME's "The 50 Best Tracks of 2010". Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  11. ^ Rolling Stone's "The 100 Best Songs of the 2010s". Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  12. ↑ NME's "The Best Songs of the Decade: the 2010s". Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  13. ^ Stereogum's "The Best Tracks of the 2010s". Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  14. ^ "AP's top songs of the decade". Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Insider's "The 113 best songs of the past decade, ranked". Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  16. ^ Pitchfork's "The 200 Best Songs of the 2010s". Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  17. ↑ USA Today's "The 10 Best Songs of the 2010s". Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  18. ↑ Time's "The 10 Best Songs of the 2010s". Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  19. ↑ Elle's "The 52 Best Songs That Defined The 2010s". Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  20. ^ Good Housekeeping's "The 28 Top Songs of the 2010s, for Better or Worse". Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  21. ^ Rolling Stone's "The 100 Greatest Songs of the Century - So Far". Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  22. ↑ Acclaimed Music entry with Musikexpress placement. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  23. ↑ Robyn at the Grammys. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  24. ↑ Charts. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  25. ^ Swedish annual charts 2010. Retrieved January 25, 2020 (se).
  26. ↑ UK charts. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  27. ↑ US awards. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  28. ↑ Danish awards. Retrieved January 25, 2020 (dk).
  29. ↑ UK awards. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  30. ^ Robyn in Studio Brussels. October 3, 2010, accessed February 27, 2020 .
  31. ↑ Charts. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  32. ↑ UK charts. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  33. ↑ US charts. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  34. ↑ Australian Awards. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  35. ↑ Lyrics. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .
  36. ↑ Huffington Post article. Retrieved January 25, 2020 .