Dwell music whips up one in every of life’s extra scrumptious neurochemical cocktails. Components embrace endorphin-fueled euphoria, serotonin’s position in temper regulation, arguably the perfect oxytocin you will get whereas preserving your garments on, and naturally the fan-favorite feel-good chemical: dopamine. Huge fan of that entire state of affairs. In my thoughts, then, to be blessed with a live performance to ring in a New Yr is the perfect present one might be given on December thirty first.
What a deal with for these fortunate sufficient to step foot within the Brooklyn Paramount final evening to spend the hours between 1 a.m. and simply earlier than 3—on the technical first day of a brand new yr—with the girl who makes not giving a fuck an aspirational state of being: Robyn. We heard “Dopamine” and the unreleased “Sexistential” stay for the primary time, belted “Dancing On My Personal” like an enraptured liturgical choir, and collectively stopped respiratory when she carried out “Present Me Love” for the primary time since 2013.
The pop royalty hadn’t performed New York since 2019—March at Madison Sq. Backyard and July at Brooklyn’s Barclays Heart, to be precise. For context, these venues every maintain about 19,000 folks. Brooklyn Paramount homes a cute 2,700.
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The French Baroque Revival theater opened as a film palace in 1928. Duke Ellington performed it in 1931, Lengthy Island College turned it right into a basketball court docket within the ’60s, and after a $50-million, five-year renovation, its doorways reopened because the Brooklyn Paramount in 2024. The New Yr’s Eve present was billed as “Robyn and Pals,” and her buddies took over the entire palace, turning the evening into extra of a bop-around, mini-festival expertise. The grand foyer’s restored rococo ceilings, unique columns, and marble flooring created a type of time warp—like being teleported from Flatbush Avenue right into a Parisian opera home constructed particularly for the ladies, gays, and membership youngsters.
Downstairs, native DJ and producer Dee Diggs helmed the “Home Celebration” within the basement, remixing favorites like “Fever,” “Ready for Tonight,” and “Un-Break My Coronary heart” and making a scene that, as a standalone, would’ve made for an unbelievable New Yr’s Eve. However upstairs in the primary corridor, anticipation rose. After New York dance legend Danny Krivit left the decks round 11, The Knife co-founder Olof Dreijer carried the room to midnight and past. Robyn joined him for the countdown and a large confetti bathe, ushering in a second that felt much less like a calendar flip than a symbolic crossing—the final pores and skin loosening from the Wooden Snake earlier than the approaching Yr of the Fireplace Horse.
Picture by Amanda Koellner
Robyn’s set started at 1 a.m. however shortly halted resulting from a 10-minute fire-alarm mishap—a collective giggle, a reset. From the second she returned to the stage, the room shifted. The set unfolded much less like a live performance than a collective exhale: sweat and screams in equal measure. Her new single “Dopamine” landed with explicit weight and acknowledged the second’s pleasure as each organic and transcendent. “I do know you got here to see us,” she informed the group, smiling. “However I really feel like we got here to see you. I hope you’ve a superb first day of the yr.”
Within the press launch for “Dopamine,” the singer described the tune’s emotional doubleness: “Having an emotion that’s tremendous actual, tremendous sturdy, intense, fulfilling or painful, and on the similar time figuring out that that is only a organic course of in my physique—after which not to decide on faith or science. To only settle for that they’re there collectively and to have the ability to go in between.”
Dopamine’s by no means been cheaper: Instagram likes, infinite TikTok scrolls, DraftKings bets—no matter your drug of selection, fashionable life presents it in droves. As Seinfeld’s Kramer as soon as mentioned, “Why go to the park and fly a kite when you’ll be able to pop a capsule?” The old school form, the type that lingers, nonetheless requires extra effort than tapping on our black packing containers. Experiencing stay music is a privilege, and even when you’ll be able to afford it, it’s more and more troublesome to acquire in at the moment’s abysmal ticketing panorama. However the rapture, the catharsis, the sensation of a room shifting collectively nicely previous midnight … that’s the place you don’t have to decide on faith or science. That’s the place the honey is sweeter.
Setlist:
Lacking U
Name Your Girlfriend
Be Mine!
Cobrastyle (Teddybears cowl)
Blow My Thoughts
Ever Once more
Dopamine
Honey
Discuss To Me (Debut)
Between the Strains
Love Is Free (Robyn & La Bagatelle Magique tune, with Maluca)
Don’t Fucking Inform Me What to Do (The Mekanism Remix)
Sexistential (Debut)
Monument (Röyksopp & Robyn tune)
Life (Jamie xx cowl)
Encore:
Indestructible
Present Me Love (First efficiency since 2013)
Dancing on My Personal
Picture by Amanda Koellner
