Robin Miriam Carlsson was born in Sweden in 1979. She released her debut album Robyn Is Here at the age of 16, and received the first of five Grammy nominations for her 2005 album, Robyn. In 2010 she released the three-part Body Talk series, which was followed by an eight-year period of smaller collaborative projects. In 2018 she released her eighth studio album, Honey, to critical acclaim. Later this year she plays the Wilderness festival (1-4 August) in Charlbury, west Oxfordshire.
1. Podcast
This is a place where I find a lot of really interesting information. Sam Harris is a neuroscientist but also a meditator, someone who’s quite open-minded. He’s tried to make sure it’s an environment where people can trust him, where he can have sometimes uncomfortable conversations – in some episodes he talks to people he really disagrees with, other times people he loves. He has interviewed Yuval Noah Harari a few times, and it’s always amazing to hear Harari speak about his books with someone who is as factual and as penetrating as Sam Harris.
2. Art
Grace Wales Bonner at Serpentine Sackler Gallery
I went to this exhibition a while ago, and I really appreciated the theme she had chosen – it was about finding peace. It can be called self-love, but it’s also about finding a way to enjoy life and build on the energy you have in your life, how you take care of that, which is something I’m interested in at the moment. She talks about it in relation to her race and [Jamaican and English] cultural heritage. The whole exhibition was beautiful. We went there in the evening, and there was a dancer doing a performance which was lovely and very generous.
3. Book
The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis
I haven’t read this yet, but I’m really curious because I read Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow – he and another scientist called Amos Tversky won the Nobel prize for economics for their work in psychological science. I’ve always thought theirs must have been an amazing friendship, though there were some things about it that were not totally straightforward. Michael Lewis has a way of talking about things like economics and baseball statistics and making them interesting to a mass audience. The Big Short, based on his book, is one of the best movies I’ve seen in the last decade.
4. Music
Planningtorock is a British musician, but I’ve found that most of my British friends don’t know this artist, which is crazy because they’re one of my favourite musicians at the moment. To me they are part of a British tradition of vocalists, like Kate Bush or Robert Plant or Freddie Mercury. They did more progressive rock when they started out and now it’s more electronic – you can definitely hear that they’ve lived in Berlin. It’s very unusual for electronic music, and the songwriting is beautiful. Their new album Powerhouse is wonderful.
5. Place
Drottningholms Slottsteater, Sweden
This is a castle and theatre in Stockholm: it’s like the Swedish version of Versailles, which means they tried to make it really pompous and royal, but it still looks like a simpler version of a French place – it’s very beautiful but more minimalistic. The theatre is right next to the castle, and is the only place in the world where the mechanical engine underneath the stage is still regularly used. It’s all done by hand, so when they change the set they do it with these ropes and big wheels made out of wood – it almost looks like a ship.
6. Club
This is a legendary place in Ibiza that I’ve gone back to for several years. Founder Tony Pikes, who sadly passed away just a few months ago, decided to open a hotel there in the 1970s. Then it became this place where Grace Jones and Elton John and George Michael – everyone – went to party in the 1980s. It has a really welcoming vibe and there is always good music: one of my favourite DJs, DJ Harvey, has a residency there. So there’s a history of hedonism there, and it’s still run by people who really care about the place.
