She is ROBYN, the most stunning pop star on the planet. She is a pint-sized atom bomb, dosed to the hilt on all things electric and dispensing wisdom in three-minute, modernist pop bulletins about the post-adolescent condition. ROBYN is also a collection of ultra-concise pop moments – it’s that rarest of things – a classic pop album. Robyn is a sad-eyed, super-strong battery of nuclear-powered pop that, along with the artist’s arresting voice, serves as another lethal weapon in her arsenal. Robin was born in Stockholm in 1979. She spent the first seven years of her life touring with her director father and actress mother in their theatre company. At the age of 14, she was discovered in a school workshop by Swedish pop singer Meja while singing a sad, self-written song about her parents’ divorce and was immediately signed to BMG. A debut album of R&B-influenced pop in 1995 saw her paired with future Britney hit wrangler Max Martin and the global success of the sweet, soulful single “Show Me Love” in 1997 cemented Robyn as a bonafide international pop star.

Shellshocked by the lack of artistic control offered by her label at the time, Robyn migrated to a sister company for her third album, but felt disillusioned by their attempt to ship her to America to be shoehorned into the pre-fabricated boy-toy template that was depressingly omnipotent in 2002. “I think the third record I made was a big compromise,” she says. “I felt like it wasn’t fun anymore. Once you make the record and you give it to the record company, it’s not your record anymore! And I hated that situation. I was going backwards. I wasn’t doing what I wanted to.” In 2003, Robyn returned home to Stockholm, defeated. Upon her arrival, she stumbled across a new CD by a mysterious local brother-sister duo. The CD, titled Deep Cuts, was a passionate, hallucinatory reading of pop music carved from geometric blocks of pure texture. Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer called themselves The Knife, and with Deep Cuts they had sketched a blueprint for a kind of abstract future pop. “I was amazed by it,” gasps Robyn. “I thought it was the best thing I’d heard in years – and not only was it good, it was Swedish.”

Energized by the potential atom-splitting that could occur if she harnessed her own piercingly honest pop to The Knife’s uncompromising, peculiarly Swedish energy source, Robyn approached Karin and Olof to work on a potential single. The result was “Who’s That Girl” – unquestionably one of the freshest pop moments of the past five years. Injecting herself into the very heart of The Knife’s towering, architectural synth-pop – a shifting, interlocking grid of color and beats, hard enough to break your fists on – Robyn emptied all of her frustration, insecurity and desperation. In the song, Robyn soars. Her anger is rocket fuel for the titanium-strong music which encases her, projects her and makes her indestructible. Although she had always written songs, “Who’s That Girl” was a stark piece of brutal pop that she considered the first real Robyn song. Unbelievably, her label at the time hated it. “They just thought it was weird,” sighs Robyn. “They just didn’t understand it. I guess they didn’t consider it to be pop music, which I think is crazy. It’s totally pop music! Modern, inventive music – that’s what pop music should try to be.”

Exasperated, Robyn looked to how her new comrades, Karin and Olof, self-financed and released their work. In a completely unprecedented move for a mainstream pop artist, Robyn bought herself off her label. Six months later, Robyn was CEO and founder of Konichiwa Records. In her back pocket she had “Who’s That Girl,” the opening song for a new album that would become her story. She also had a new sidekick, Klas Ahlund – the main man behind Teddybears – Stockholm’s amazing pop group who have variously been fronted by Annie and Neneh Cherry, Iggy Pop and Mad Cobra. “I’d never thought we were gonna work together, ‘cause what Teddybears do is… boy music,” Robyn giggles. Nevertheless, the first thing Klas brought to the Konichiwa table was the basic frame for a song depicting intense, unrequited love that Robyn would color in with every kind of craving. In that song, “Be Mine!,” every word Robyn sings sounds like it’s being crumpled up and clutched to her chest. The song’s sparse production makes its simplicity all the more brutal. Just strings that slice in, all gasps and sighs, and a flutter of drum machine that emulates a racing pulse. “I still wanted to write pop music,” affirms Robyn. “I wanted it to be simple, I wanted it to be sparse, and I wanted it to be hard.”

These days, Robyn may be the coolest label CEO around, but before this album took shape, she was still out on a limb. A lifetime’s earnings had been ploughed into a dream. The conflict of liberation and anxiety about the project, as well as galvanizing Robyn, seemed to polarize her character. One half of Robyn is all hip-thrusting-fun, but in the gentle suite of ballads that wind everything down on the record, there is a smaller, sadder Robyn. “I’m a Gemini – maybe that’s what it is!” she exclaims. “Because I am this very outgoing person, people think that I’m always sure what I’m gonna do, which I’m not! I always question myself!” The perfect example is “Konichiwa Bitches,” Robyn’s signature tune. Over pixilated hip-pop beats, Robyn unloads like Missy Elliott in hyperspace. The song’s biggest inspiration was Bugs Bunny, and the way he’d totally front on Yosemite Sam with big-ass Acme boxing gloves. Robyn describes it as “a concentrate of attitude. It’s like a baby ninja! Like really dangerous but really small and cute! It’s like a child with a huge machine gun.” It kicks your face, and it’s Robyn. What Robyn really represents is the story of one ass-kicking little blonde woman who has blasted through all of the industry bull and made a startling, profound, honest brand of pop music all of her own. Robyn is an album of music with one message: be your own star. Robyn will be released through Konichiwa / Cherrytree / Interscope and available in stores on April 29.