In the four months since Sexistential was released, Robyn has been unstoppable. A tour de force. Creating such pop cultural moments as revealing that “Blow My Mind” was the theme song for Margo’s Got Money Troubles, showing up as a feature on Zara Larsson’s Midnight Sun: Girls Trip (specifically, for the final track, “Puss Puss”) and embarking on her third headlining tour, called, naturally, The Sexistential Tour. And on said tour, it didn’t take long for Larsson to make a cameo, showing up at the July 14th date in Copenhagen (yes, it was surprising she wouldn’t wait until Robyn’s Stockholm date in October to do so, but maybe that would have been too predictable).
After all, their cachet as two blonde Swedes ruling the pop game is undeniable at this moment in time (and yes, while Robyn is the OG of course, Larsson has been slogging it out for a long time, with five studio albums to her name now—and it took the fifth, Midnight Sun, to really put her on the mainstream map). So how could Larsson not appear onstage with Robyn? Not only that, but also perform “Puss Puss” and their unreleased-at-the-time rendition of “Talk to Me,” titled “Talk to Me, Zara” (a high form of praise indeed for Larsson to even have her name as part of this version’s title—sort of like Madonna titling her 2022 “Hung Up” remix with Tokischa as “Hung Up on Tokischa”).
And talk to Robyn Zara does, immediately getting her own verse in after Robyn delivers her usual “over the phone”-sounding dialogue, “Hey, so this is a little awkward, but…” Larsson then gets rid of any awkwardness with her unmitigated directness, singing, “The way you move your lips communicate with my body/Hiding my senses, come finish what you started/‘Cause the more that you use your tongue, the more you raise my heartbeat/So say what you say what you want/And talk to me until I—ahh!” No one can claim that the Swedes don’t know how to be sex positive (something that Tove Lo also proves repeatedly…as she did with a recent single featuring Stromae, “Des Fleurs”). In fact, this song was already plenty phone sex positive even before Larsson came along to make it even more salacious.
And she doesn’t stop there either, continuing with, “Oh, baby, be my audience (yeah)/That’s when I’m in my element (yeah)/When I hear that you’re lovin’ it (oh, don’t stop).” So yes, she really does take Robyn’s previous motif of “auditory voyeurism,” if you will, and goes one step further with making it sound extra kinky. This further accentuated by the music gradually cresting in the background until it bursts out again (you know, as if mimicking an orgasm) when Robyn returns to say, “I’m coming fast [again, very double entendre-y, innuendo-laden], so guide me in,” to which Larsson adds, “Just hit me up and talk to me, work up a vibe”—a lyric that would have been reserved solely for Robyn in the original version.
So it is that Larsson not only gets to offer her vocal take on the song with a new verse, but also on the original ones as well, which isn’t always the case for a chanteuse that jumps onto a remix (often limited to just adding a verse or two). The differentiation between “Talk to Me” and “Talk to Me, Zara” continues when, on the latter, at around the one-minute-fifty-eight-second mark, there’s a noticeable musical difference, with a breakdown that has an ethereal tone to it before Robyn continues to insist, “I’m not as good by myself, so baby, will you talk me through it?” with Larsson incorporating her own “belting it out” vocals on the “will you talk me through it?” line. However, more than “harmonizing,” the pattern of the song is for Robyn to say her usual lyrics and for Larsson to repeat them with even more earnestness and urgency (chalk it up to the fact that the younger person in a permutation always “can’t help” but be more eager).
As for their visual chemistry together, that comes across plenty too, thanks to the accompanying “video” for the remix being edited and stylized footage of the pair performing at Robyn’s Copenhagen date for The Sexistential Tour. Larsson, dressed in her usual “Midnight Sun-inspired aesthetic” (which meant, in this case, shimmering, bejeweled jean shorts, a purplish-pink or pinkish-purple [call it fuchsia] “top” [of sorts…there’s lots of skin exposed through the, let’s say, pieces of fabric] with matching boots and teal fingerless gloves), contrasts nicely with Robyn’s modern update to something of an “Elvis in ‘66” style—which is to say, leather-clad. And as the two dance with/around each other onstage, their moves, though not always in sync/on the same wavelength, still amount to giving them the kind of rapport that one would expect of two such Swedish superpowers in pop music. And the result is also plenty electric/sexually charged in the sound (a.k.a. the vibe worked up) of this new iteration of “Talk to Me.”
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