Robyn

The marketing is just as important as the music, almost.

I think I'm always adopting a persona. That's how I look at pop music. I don't feel like I have to be myself. I feel like I have to be true to myself, but I don't have to show an exact picture of who I am.

The music industry used to be able to control a single dance on the very smallest level of when people are supposed to hear it, and when they're supposed to start liking it, and when they're supposed to start buying it. And that's trashed, you know, that big machine that takes control and works albums for a long period.

Everyone's talking about how no one is buying records any more, but to me it's quite logical. In the 1990s, music was so hardcore-marketed to a certain group of people that I think a lot of kids felt taken advantage of.

Being onstage and communicating with an audience was part of my life since I was very little, but I was never pushed into singing. My parents were so uninterested in me making music.

When you're 17 and you have an idea, people don't really listen to you. I came out of an environment where my parents were always pushing me to do what I wanted and be creative, and I was not used to the industry's way of thinking.

Sure the Internet is the future, but what we do on the Internet is still very primal.

It wasn't easy for me to socialize with other kids when I got back from touring. I felt different. Like we all do, but I didn't feel like I got all the codes. I was a little awkward.

Everyone deals with sadness and lack of love when they're kids, and all this abandonment. Most people do. Hopefully you want to learn something new, and you want to move on to this other place, and I think, for me, it was like, I really didn't know how to calm myself down.

When you're listening to club music, there's no reward. The reward isn't, 'Oh, here's the chorus, here's the lyric that makes sense.' You have to enjoy what it is. You have to enjoy that there's no conclusion.

I seriously feel like Bowie was an astronaut who went into space and experienced things and brought back these... treasures.

Club music taught me so much about myself: having patience or appreciating a different type of way of taking in life. That, to me, is like what 'Off the Wall' is. Or 'I Feel Love' or 'Rock Your Baby' with George McCrae.