I Never Meant To Let You Go

I’ve been writing this blog for almost two months and it is a sin that I haven’t once written about Röyksopp. The Norwegian duo of Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland has solidified themselves as one of my all-time favorite musicians. They are certainly electronic music producers, but one of the most talented, keyed-in, and likable teams working in music. Like most musicians from Scandinavia, they are only popular among certain subsets of Americans. They have been extremely prolific, both in releasing their own music and producing music for other musicians, and they only work with the best. Their frequent collaborators include Robyn, Susanne Sundfør, and Fever Ray. I can’t believe I haven’t written about Susanne Sundfør or Fever Ray either. 

Röyksopp’s first album, Melody A.M., came out in 2002; I heard it shortly after that and have listened to every one of their albums as they’ve been released. They have 10 studio albums, multiple EPs and mixes, including a five-track EP with Robyn in 2014 that is some of the tightest dance music ever created, and countless production credits. They’ve been a part of my life as long as they’ve been releasing music, and have often provided the soundtrack to my daily life.

I could literally write about them all day. But today, I’ll highlight one thing that sets them apart from most/all other electronic music producers: their willingness and ability to create meaningful music set to a dance beat. I wrote about Charli XCX yesterday, who has the same ability, as do Robyn and Tove Lo, among others, but Röyksopp is one of the leaders of this operation, and they are exceptionally good at it.

I’ll give two songs as examples. Since I’ve been talking about Robyn, I’ll introduce you to “The Girl and the Robot” from their album Junior from 2009. This song is huge. The music gives a sense of grandeur. Robyn sings about sitting at home alone while her partner remains working, and the struggle she goes through waiting for them. It sounds simple, but it’s anything but. It’s deeply emotional, authentic, and a nearly perfect pop song. When Robyn sings the high notes in “Call me back / I’m so alone” I feel it in my bones. It triggers my ASMR response every time. This song was the lead-up to her legendary 2010 album Body Talk and it’s honestly the perfect precursor to it; Röyksopp also produced the song “None of Dem” on Body Talk. The song was remixed endlessly, by deep-cut but highly skilled remixers, including Jean Elan (who was nominated for a Grammy for his remix), Joakim, Kris Menace, Spencer & Hill, and Chateau Marmont, as well as a classical music reinterpretation. But the original is still the best: a booming, moving song with peaks and valleys that carry you with it.

Let’s skip forward to 2014. Röyksopp publicly announced that they were releasing their final studio album, which they called The Inevitable End; this, of course, turned out to be a lie. But the album had the gravitas carried by this lie, and would have been a fitting final studio album. For starters, this album introduced me to Susanne Sundfør, the Norwegian singer-songwriter who released my #1 favorite album, Ten Love Songs, the following year, in 2015. Susanne sang two songs on The Inevitable End: “Save Me” and “Running to the Sea,” the latter of which is such a gorgeous, haunting song that it made me dig deep into a then-unknown-to-me artist. 

But the song I want to highlight tonight is “I Had This Thing,” sung by Jamie Irrepressible, the leader of the band The Irrepressibles. The Irrepressibles release beautiful, but extremely slow and depressing music. “I Had This Thing” keeps the themes, but drastically ups the ante musically. I would listen to the instrumental on this song alone, but Jamie sings this echoing ode to a lost love. “I don’t remember anymore what I used to be / Where is the quiet piece of home where I could breathe? / Just like a razor to my soul when I’m alone / Oh, I had this thing to call my own.” Drop. Dead. Gorgeous. You’ve probably already noticed that I like electronic music that takes advantage of the voices of singers that don’t normally perform electronic music. It almost always results in something great. I’m thinking of “The Spoils” by Massive Attack and Hope Sandoval; “Silence” by Delerium and Sarah McLachlan; and that brilliant Postal Service remix of “Little Boy Blue” by Nina Simone. 

“I Had This Thing” is interesting, because it doesn’t have a typical verse-chorus structure. It’s written more like a poem than a song, but the poem is stretched into an almost-six-minute-long masterpiece of a dance song. 

Canadian singer Kiesza recently released three consecutive EPs titled “Dancing and Crying” parts one, two, and three. Dancing and crying is one of the most cathartic things a person can do. “I Had This Thing”—and several other Röyksopp songs—are the perfect driver for this sacred movement. Jamie Irrepressible’s repetition of the words “I never meant to let you go” brings you into his own pain while simultaneously providing you the outlet to work through the pain. 

The best part is that I know Röyksopp’s discography so well that I have dozens of posts I can (and likely will) write about them. I hope you liked number one.