Stay music whips up one in all life’s extra scrumptious neurochemical cocktails. Substances embrace endorphin-fueled euphoria, serotonin’s function in temper regulation, arguably the most effective oxytocin you will get whereas protecting your garments on, and naturally the fan-favorite feel-good chemical: dopamine. Massive fan of that entire state of affairs. In my thoughts, then, to be blessed with a live performance to ring in a New 12 months is the most effective present one may be given on December thirty first.
What a deal with for these fortunate sufficient to step foot within the Brooklyn Paramount final night time to spend the hours between 1 a.m. and simply earlier than 3—on the technical first day of a brand new 12 months—with the lady who makes not giving a fuck an aspirational state of being: Robyn. We heard “Dopamine” and the unreleased “Sexistential” dwell for the primary time, belted “Dancing On My Personal” like an enraptured liturgical choir, and collectively stopped respiration 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 Middle, to be precise. For context, these venues every maintain about 19,000 individuals. 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 12 months’s Eve present was billed as “Robyn and Pals,” and her friends took over the entire palace, turning the night time 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 Occasion” 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 unimaginable New 12 months’s Eve. However upstairs in the principle 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 12 months of the Fireplace Horse.
Picture by Amanda Koellner
Robyn’s set started at 1 a.m. however rapidly halted as a consequence of a 10-minute fire-alarm mishap—a collective snort, 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 instructed the gang, smiling. “However I really feel like we got here to see you. I hope you will have first day of the 12 months.”
Within the press launch for “Dopamine,” the singer described the music’s emotional doubleness: “Having an emotion that’s tremendous actual, tremendous robust, intense, fulfilling or painful, and on the identical time understanding that that is only a organic course of in my physique—after which not to decide on faith or science. To simply 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, limitless TikTok scrolls, DraftKings bets—no matter your drug of alternative, trendy life provides it in droves. As Seinfeld’s Kramer as soon as stated, “Why go to the park and fly a kite when you’ll be able to pop a tablet?” The old style sort, the type that lingers, nonetheless requires extra effort than tapping on our black bins. Experiencing dwell music is a privilege, and even when you’ll be able to afford it, it’s more and more tough to acquire in right this moment’s abysmal ticketing panorama. However the rapture, the catharsis, the sensation of a room shifting collectively effectively 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 music, with Maluca)
Don’t Fucking Inform Me What to Do (The Mekanism Remix)
Sexistential (Debut)
Monument (Röyksopp & Robyn music)
Life (Jamie xx cowl)
Encore:
Indestructible
Present Me Love (First efficiency since 2013)
Dancing on My Personal
Picture by Amanda Koellner
