Oh, Baby – I Like it Raw

It’s hard to imagine today but there was a time when Swedish pop phenomenon Robyn wasn’t an independent record boss that dictated her own agenda.

Back in 1999, when Robyn was about to release her second album “My Truth” in Sweden, a late follow up to her debut “Robyn Is Here” from 1995, she was at BMG. We all know that big record companies can do awful thing to promising artists early in their career but sometimes they actually hit the bulls eye.

During the time there was a big wave of New York-house and disco in Sweden. The biggest music magazine Pop published a 17 pages long story about the scene, national radio played garage at prime time and every hipp guy dreamed about being gay in the 70s and cleaning up the dishes for Larry Levan at Paradise Garage.

NY-veterans Louie Vega and Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez aka the Masters at Work where bigger than Diplo, Switch and Justice together. So they definitely have to be on Robyn’s album.

The story I’ve been told, I don’t know how truthful it is (correct me if I’m wrong), is that some A&R from Robyn’s record company walked into Snickars Records in Stockholm and asked Mika Snickars if he had any suggestions for songs that might suit the Robyn and Masters at Work collaboration. Off course everyone who familiar Mika Snickars and Snickars Records knows that he have a whole store filled with them.

I could imagine Mika walking around in the store, quiet as usual, and then very polite and almost as he apologize for being to pushy.

- This might work?

The song they ended up with was a midtempo garage/disco-anthem on the classic label Easy Street from 1986. Shot’s “Main Thing” is pretty well known in the house and disco world but I can’t imagine that anyone who bought Robyn’s album recognized it as a cover when they heard it. And it doesn’t say anything about it in the booklet.

I’ll guess you could have different opinions about the result of the colab. Off course it sounds fantastic, Robyn sings as beautiful as ever and Masters at Works production, as almost all of their productions at the time, sounds exactly as if could have been done in the early 80s which probably were exactly what they aiming for.

But when you hear Shot’s original version it’s pretty easy to question the reason of doing a cover because… well, it’s pretty hard to spot the differences between them. Shot singer Kim Marsh and Robyn even have similar voices.

Both versions are pure killers but I guess I’ll stick to the original, as long as Robyn doesn’t propose to me or something.

Shot - “Main Thing”

Robyn & Masters at Work - “Main Thing”