For a while there, it seemed like St. Vincent would never stop recording different versions of her 2017 track from Masseduction, “Slow Disco.” She offered up an acoustic version, then “Fast Slow Disco” and then “Slow Slow Disco,” all as if to prove that artists are constantly trying to “get it right” even after they’ve released their work into the world. However, to another extent, re-releasing the same song in a new form, especially when it’s many years later, can often mean that it’s taken on a new meaning in the musician’s life.
As is the case for Robyn with “Blow My Mind,” which now amounts to the fourth single from Sexistential, following “Dopamine,” “Talk to Me” and “Sexistential.” Indeed, it’s the latter song that she chose to kick off her new era with via a TV performance of it for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. It was during this performance that she posed in such a way as to harken back to the kind of yoga moves Madonna was doing for “Vogue” during 2004’s Re-Invention Tour. Such moves materializing again in the accompanying lyric video for “Blow My Mind.” A song that first appeared on Robyn’s 2002 album, Don’t Stop the Music.
In its original form, “Blow My Mind” was a slower-sounding track, with dreamier vocals from Robyn throughout. The track was also originally produced by Guy Sigsworth (who came up in the world by 2002 as a result of some co-writing work on Madonna’s Music). In its new form Robyn tapped her longtime producer Klas Åhlund to revamp it into a more robotic-sounding and danceable number (and frankly, with a backbeat that is a lot more reminiscent of LCD Soundsystem’s “Get Innocuous!”). In short, something that fits in nicely with the rest of the sonic landscape on thus far presented on Sexistential. And whoever she might have been directing the song toward in 2002, she’s made no secret of who’s inspiring these words now: her son, Tyko.
As Robyn noted via Instagram, “Messy sensations, contradicting and fighting for attention, CUTE AGGRESSION, total devotion. ‘Blow My Mind’ is another snapshot of my love life. I love this song so much and always wanted to re-record it, this time it’s about my son’s tiny soft hand with nails sharp as knives.” Yet another indication that, with this album, Robyn wants to explore the whole spectrum of love in all it many forms. Not just romantic or sexual, but even platonic and familial. That much is broached in her cover story for The Face, titled “Nothing Compares 2 Robyn” (a nod to her Prince correlations of late), wherein Shaad D’Souza writes, “In the near-decade since making her last album, Honey, she realized that love didn’t have to be tied up with sex. That sex didn’t have to be tied up with ‘babymaking.’ And that she didn’t have to be in love in order to have a kid.”
Elsewhere in the article, Robyn herself can acknowledge, “[I realised] how much I had wished for a certain type of love to happen in this relationship I was in and how hard I was holding onto it… It’s like coming out of a sect, or something, when you let go of the idea that love is gonna always work out. It’s a big thing for me to let that go.” And, in turn, comprehend that there are other ways to “find love.” As was the case with having her son and becoming a mom for the first time (though it doesn’t seem likely that Sexistential will be her “Ray of Light album” in response to that).
So it is that re-recording “Blow My Mind” turned out to be fulfilling and full-circle in many ways in the sense that a lot of the lyrics could now be applied to her son. Including, “Straight up, from the heart/You’re my number one,” “It’s like you’re the cloud underneath my feet,” “You’re the reason that I breathe” and “Your unbearably cute, scrumptious little face/Crushing me every single day.” However, because it is now directed at her son, Robyn perhaps made an error in judgment by changing some of the lyrics in favor of “fresher” ones. And surprisingly, not in a way that makes them sound less lustful.
Case in point, switching the second verse from, “Hey baby, ravish me, love me till it hurts/Don’t you dare to leave, button down my skirt/Kiss me quick, I’m about to burst, patience ain’t my thing/And you’re the reason that I sing” to “Baby, ravish me, tear into my flesh/Button down my shirt, go on, make a mess/Make it quick, I’m about to burst/We’re all skin on skin/Come here/Ain’t you the cutest little thing.”
While that last line sounds more maternal/innocent enough, the first few certainly don’t, all sexual and innuendo-laden as they are. But perhaps mother-son love is expressed differently in Sweden. And yes, there’s definitely something about her “my son is amazing” motif that shares some DNA with one of the moms in “The Baby Shower” episode of Sex and the City randomly telling Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), “Andy’s eleven years old, he is a god and I tell him so every day.” When the mom walks away, Miranda turns to Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and says, “Thirty years from now, what do you think the chances are that some woman’s be able to make Andy happy? I’m gonna go with zero.” This because, yes, some mothers can be, let’s say, too effusive with their sons, thereby “ruining” them in their own subsequent potential romantic relationships.
Of course, the alternative to a mother being “too” effusive can often be worse, breeding women-hating men and serial killers (see: Charles Manson). Besides, the fundamental message of this new version of “Blow My Mind” is that a mind can be blown in so many ways apart from ones related to sex, romance or the more traditional expectations of hetero love. A lesson that has been hard-won for Robyn over the course of the past decade. And one that she wants to share out of the kindness of her heart on “Blow My Mind,” 2026 edition, so that others might perhaps be spared from learning the hard way.
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