When Swedish pop musician Robyn came out of her long-term relationship, it felt like she had “been on this long journey into space, far beyond my limits, and I was crashing back into Earth, myself and my body”.

What was waiting for her was something she’d wanted her whole life: motherhood. In 2022, aged 42, she gave birth to her first child via IVF and sperm donation. “Being pregnant is like you’re a spaceship for this other human being that’s about to come alive,” she says.

On her first album in eight years, Sexistential , the artist born Robin Carlsson explores sex, fertility and motherhood in an era where software mediates romance and science can bypass the traditional path to parenthood. It’s the latest act of self-determination from a woman who, alongside producer Klas Ahlund, set the synthesised, high-emotion template for everything from Taylor Swift’s 1989 and Lorde’s Melodrama to the devil-may-care world of Charli XCX’s Brat .…