Robyn is still dancing on her own. At least, she did so for nearly two hours Saturday night at the United Center. With a backing band of synth-pop wizards perched on a platform behind her, the Swedish pop star was out in the open on a center thrust stage, doing her trademark shimmy and singing to the rafters on numbers like her 2010 megahit.
All these years later, the song still remains the collective breakup song of millennials. In Chicago, they even earned Robyn’s personal round of applause and the “loudest so far of the tour” honor for singing the chorus with gusto during an a capella break at the top of the track.
But something feels different about how Robyn moves to it now. Sixteen years and some substantial life changes later, “dancing on my own” feels like an act of defiance. Like she purposefully chooses it.
“You know, I used to feel really embarrassed because all I seem to know how to do is to write really, really sad love songs,” Robyn opened up while briefly transitioning the show into stripped-back piano spirituals of “Be Mine!” and “Show Me Love.”
“When I was working on the ‘Honey’ album [in 2018], I was like, just get over it. Get a life. Grow up. … Because life is really, really embarrassing. It never turns out the way you thought it would. And then you die,” she abruptly added, voicing her internal concerns about how she had come to a crossroads in her career and personal life upon that album’s release and subsequently took nearly a decade away to figure out her next steps.
But there was a silver lining, Robyn said, sharing her journey to becoming a single mother after having her son Tyko via IVF in 2023. “But then I had a baby. I had a child. And I leaned into it, as they say. I don’t know if it makes sense. But what I’m really trying to say is thank you all for listening throughout all these years.”
Naturally, the speech was met with a huge swell of applause from the sold-out crowd, many of whom have been by Robyn’s side for 30 years and all her eras. From her tender “Show Me Love” R&B breakout in 1997 to the bold alt-pop career resurgence of “Dancing On My Own” to now finding Robyn in her “Sexistential” phase of reclaiming life on her terms, the pop queen has always met her audience where they’re at. And she’s also stayed relevant by gathering new followers along the way who are hungry for a voice that soothes their ennui.
When Gracie Abrams brought out Robyn as the guest star of her Lollapalooza set in 2025, the massive response was a cross-generational awakening. It spilled over recently when fellow Swede Zara Larsson cross-collaborated with Robyn on remixes of each other’s songs, “Puss Puss” and “Talk to Me.” Because, as even Larsson knows, across the Swedish pop continuum, all eyes are on Robyn to see her next trend-making move, even if she takes her time doing it.
“Sexistential” is Robyn’s first album in eight years, and the tour is her first since 2019 where she’s been playing some of the biggest stages of her career and teaming up with a hand-picked opener in each city.
Chicago was lucky enough to get feminist icon Peaches, who set a tone of bravado for the rest of the night. Putting the “sex” in “Sexistential,” the always-outrageous performer staged a show that rivaled GWAR’s penchant for fake appendages and varying levels of nudity, all astutely camouflaged with some very strategic placement of tape and strobe light effects. Over 30 short minutes, Peaches dove into her electro-rap classics like “F— Your Face” (“with consent,” she clarified), the anti-establishment protest song “Flip This” and the queer anthem “Boys Wanna Be Her,” with all of the numbers espousing the liberation that Robyn preaches on her new album.
“Sexistential” is rampant with messages about desire and sensuality, womanhood and single motherhood, and ultimately finding yourself again through the things you love about life. Robyn performed most of the songs from the album, earning high points for the pop thunder of “Really Real” and the more downtempo “Dopamine,” which she performed lying down on a rotating part of the stage that twirled her like a carousel to match the dizzying thoughts of her own emotions.
The stage set, too, was meant to evoke the album’s confessional nature. There were no distracting videos or props to take away focus and no compartmentalized acts to take away the flow. The only add-on was a large pair of flowing white curtains that moved when a breeze hit, giving the feeling of looking through an open window and seeing Robyn in her bedroom as she processed her innermost thoughts. She often changed stage outfits in this open environment too, another gateway to finding the singer at her most vulnerable.
All of it was setting up for the final moments of the show where Robyn wrapped with “Dancing on My Own” and a shower of glitter rained down on her. It was the final act of redemption and of finding her sparkle again.
Robyn set list for Sept. 12, 2026 show at United Center in Chicago
Blow My Mind
Fembot
Talk to Me
Hang With Me (Paola cover)
Ever Again
Dopamine
Honey
Life (song with Jamie xx)
Don’t F—– Tell Me What to Do
Sexistential
Really Real
Love Kills
Be Mine!
Show Me Love
Light Up
Sucker for Love
Indestructible
With Every Heartbeat
Encore
Missing U
Call Your Girlfriend
Dancing On My Own