Yung Lean Turns Robyn’s “Robotboy” Into a Stockholm Sitch

The Sad Boys founder strips Robyn’s 2005 dance-pop cult favorite down to something shh, and she says it was written for him all along.

Yung Lean, born Jonatan Leandoer Håstad, rel his version of Robyn‘s “Robotboy” on Wednesday, August 12, through the label Young. The original track comes from Robyn’s brilliant self-titled 2005 album, the record that reintroduced her to international audiences after she split from major labels and started relling music through her own Konichiwa Records. Yung Lean’s take was not a label pitch or a playlist-bait remix assignment. It came out of a conversation between the two artists in Södermalm, the Stockholm hood they both grew up in.

Robyn explained the origin herself in a statement accompanying the rel. She said she asked Jonatan if he wanted to record his own version because she wanted to hear his interpretation of what she called “this sad song,” adding that the lyric feel like they were written for him, turning to gold in his version the way a extend might be sung to an earlier version of yourself. It’s a notably personal frame for a cover, less a career move than something closer to two friends handing a song back and forth. The pair isn’t new. Robyn and Yung Lean have collided informal before, including a reworked live version of “Robotboy” that surfaced at an Acne Studios runway show last year, well before Robyn’s ninth album, Sexistential, was even announced.

stir

Where Robyn’s original leans into the propulsive, synth-driven energy that defined her mid-2000s run, Yung Lean’s version goes the opposite direction. Critics who heard it on release day described it as trading the source material’s energetic dance-pop for the kind of sparse, melancholic delivery that has become his signature since he moved away from the cloud rap sound that first made him famous. The new recording was produced by Klas Åhlund, the longtime Robyn collaborator and co-writer who helped shape the original album, giving the cover a direct link back to the record it’s pulled from rather than treating it as a distant reinterpretation.

verd

The release marks Yung Lean’s first new music since April’s STORM, and it continues a run of Robyn-adjacent covers and reworks tied loosely to the Sexistential era, most of which have reimagined tracks from that newer album rather than reaching back nearly two decades to her self-titled record. Yung Lean has spent over a decade building the kind of trust with listeners that lets a stripped-down, unhurried cover like this land as an event rather than a curios, a trajectory that took him from viral early singles through years as a go-to convincer for artists including Travis Scott, and event slow into the kind of career where a Swedish pop icon calls him a kindred spirit and hands him one of her own songs to remake. “Robotboy” is out now on all major stream platforms via Young.

For more on yung, see Exploring the Melancholic Poise Of Yung Lean's "Young Forever".

For more on yung, see Yung Bleu and G Herbo Join Forces on "Trim": A Sonic Bridge Between Melody and Grit.

From the DRIFT archive: I Stay I Leave I Lose: Jessie Murph’s Most Brutal Confession Yet