We're highlighting 50 years of queer classics this week, as seen in "Songs in the Key of Pride" in the June/July issue. Here, Michael Martin is bringing it back to 1978 with the B-52s.

Fred Schneider, queer frontman for the B-52s, reflects on the band’s first big single, “Rock Lobster,” a classic, kooky surf-rock ode to manta ray, jellyfish, and boys in bikinis.

“I was at a bar called the 2001 Disco — it was a real cheesy place with a slide show. One shot was plastic lobsters on a grill. I thought, Rock Lobster— that’s a good title! Back then, the band could jam for miles of tape and throw the best parts together. We came up with, like, six minutes and 40 seconds for this. We weren’t big on editing.

Related | 13 Trailblazing Queer Musicians Shaking Up Our Summer

‘Rock Lobster’ got airplay on college and independent radio, but the bigger stations were told not to play us. Nobody was out then. I mean, our friends knew [we were gay], and we weren’t trying to be coy. Once, we were onstage and somebody yelled, ‘Is this a queen band?’ I think they thought Kate [Pierson] and Cindy [Wilson] were drag queens. So I said, ‘Yes, we’re a queen band!’ What really put us over was performing the song on Saturday Night Live in January 1980. After that, our album flew off the charts.” — As told to Michael Martin.

Queer Classic: The Arrival of the Queerest, Weirdest Band of All Time—The B'52s

A high school dropout and former Times Square hustler, David Wojnarowicz went on to become one of the country's most radical — and demonized — artists. Now he's finally getting what he deserves with a retrospective at The Whitney.

Last July, two full blocks in New York City’s Flatiron District were cordoned off after construction workers unearthed a bomb. Vaguely World War II-looking — silver and ovoid, with long fins — it sat in a sunken pit of rubble while the bomb squad was called in. Photographers and news helicopters went nuts.

There was no explosive. The glimmering torpedo was a time capsule, buried in the ’80s by regulars of the iconic club Danceteria, which closed in 1986. It was filled with letters to the future. “They’re probably all rotted away,” shrugged the club’s owner when reporters tracked him down. “You weren’t supposed to find that for 10,000 years.”

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Rediscoveries are slippery things. Associations and interpretations wax and wane. But this summer, the cultural grenade that was David Wojnarowicz, a former Danceteria busboy, will be reactivated in a major way.

In July, the Whitney Museum in New York City will open “History Keeps Me Awake at Night,” the first retrospective of his work since 1999, along with an accompanying book by Yale University Press. It comes six years after Cynthia Carr’s 600-page biography, Fire in the Belly, drew raves.

In photography, videos, collage, painting, sculpture, music, and searing books of essays written as if Kerouac and Jean Genet scribbled away on the West Side piers, Wojnarowicz left behind his own missives to the future. He created two of the most iconic images of the AIDS crisis: his mouth sewn shut with blood seeping down his chin, and his face nearly covered by sand and gravel, as if he was being reclaimed by the earth. He had the courage to raise hell in a world where the bottom was dropping out, and in some of the most eloquent language imaginable.

He also knew how to land a punch: “If I die of AIDS, don’t bother with burial, just dump my body on the steps of the FDA,” he stenciled on the back of a denim jacket he wore to a protest.

But his art isn’t just a time capsule.

“From the very beginning, in the late ’70s, David’s work really had to do with the status of the outsider and American culture,” says Whitney collection director David Breslin. “I think that has particular resonance now, when we’re thinking about intersectionality. A lot of the things that Wojnarowicz was fighting for through his artwork — for the rights of people with AIDS, for the First Amendment, for gay men — could also be seen as analogous to immigrant rights or people we too frequently treat as second-class citizens.”

“David expressed the sense that the majority government in America had turned their backs on people with AIDS because they found them largely undesirable and disposable,” says filmmaker Joshua Sanchez. “He held nothing back, and it made people in power very frightened. Many people today, especially young people, find themselves in a similar situation with the Trump administration. People can relate to his rage and conviction because they are living through the dark times of a government that they feel does not care about them. We can see this with recent protests about gun control, police targeting of people of color, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights — you see people carrying signs with slogans that David used in his own political actions and his art. He’s become a moral authority because his work is so visceral, so direct.”

Just as important to rediscover are the spheres of Wojnarowicz’s work that exist in a world where there is no illness or oppression, or at least where it’s not front of mind. In beautiful prose passages and text-based works, he captured the universal impulses of longing, romance, and straight-up lust, and how they can feel like something close to magic.

Fundamentally, his work tells the story of a guy who always felt like he was from another planet, who voraciously sought love but didn’t really know how to receive it, who struggled for success but didn’t know how to define it or care much for the glimpses of it he saw. He spoke loudly in a world in which isolation and loneliness were skyrocketing, in a world of advances in which everyone was a double-edged sword.

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Wojnarowicz was born in New Jersey in 1954; his father was an alcoholic, his mother diffident and distracted. Dad took off, Wojnarowicz moved with mom to Hell’s Kitchen, and at some point — even the most assiduous researchers can’t agree whether it was age 15, 13, or younger — he became a dropout, hustling in Times Square.

He was a completely self-taught artist. His first piece to make a splash — and it was a wallop — was 1979’s Rimbaud in New York, a black-and-white photo series in which his friends and lovers wore a photocopied mask of the poet Arthur Rimbaud. Publicly, masturbating, wandering Times Square, and cruising around New York City, Wojnarowicz caught the eye of Peter Hujar, whose stark-but-rich monochrome images rank him as one of the greatest portrait photographers of all time. They were romantic for a month and had a mentor/mentee bond until Hujar’s death from AIDS complications in 1987.

Exhibiting in East Village galleries and landing two pieces in the Whitney biennial, Wojnarowicz craved recognition but felt guilty about fame. To get out of his head, he hitchhiked across the country several times, which he used for material in several books, which together were adapted into the film Postcards From America after his death.

In 1991, the year before he died, he published a book of essays titled Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration, in which he struggled to deal with his anger at being marginalized in the Reagan era: “I wake up every morning in this killing machine called America and I’m carrying this rage like a blood-filled egg… as every T-cell disappears from my body, it’s replaced with 10 pounds of rage.”

In the essay “In the Shadow of the American Dream,” he wrote, “These are strange and dangerous times. Some of us are born with the cross hairs of a rifle scope printed on our backs or skulls. Sometimes it’s a matter of thought, sometimes it’s activity, and most times it’s color.”

But there was gobsmacking beauty throughout. In other essays, Wojnarowicz described a hookup that sparked something like a revelation in him:

“In loving him, I saw men encouraging others to lay down their arms… In loving him, I saw great houses being erected that would soon slide into the waiting and stirring seas. I saw him freeing me from the silences of the interior life.”

And then this passage:

”When I put my hands on your body, on your flesh, I feel the history of that body. Not just the beginning of its forming in that distant lake but all the way beyond its ending... I am amazed at how perfectly your body fits to the curves of my hands. If I could attach our blood vessels so we could become each other, I would. If I could attach our blood vessels in order to anchor you to the earth, to this present time, I would. If I could open up your body and slip inside your skin and look out your eyes and forever have my lips fused with yours, I would. It makes me weep to feel the history of your flesh beneath my hands in a time of so much loss… All these memories will be lost in time like tears in the rain.”

“I genuinely find it shocking that David Wojnarowicz is known primarily as a visual artist, because for me, his real genius is in his writings,” says Christopher Bollen, a novelist and editor for Interview magazine. “His journals and essays pierce the brain with incredibly powerful, sincere, poetic, and frank descriptions of what it was like to be a criminal outcast as a gay man in America. Wojnarowicz can describe a hookup in a car parked on the West Side Highway, hustling for money in Times Square, falling in love with the young man lying next to him in bed, the apocalyptic hate-mob mentality of conservatives, or just drifting around the streets of downtown Manhattan in such a way that you feel almost scoured by his sentences.”

“I want people to know how funny he was,” adds Tom Rauffenbart, Wojnarowicz’s last partner. “He was very goofy, and he was not miserable, although God knows he was miserable sometimes.” A fair addendum. There is something hilarious about the idea of a twinky Rimbaud in a sleeveless denim vest, scrounging for dick outside Show Palace.

Another impressive Wojnarowicz production was his ongoing ‘Cock-a-bunnies’ piece, which featured cockroaches captured in his East Village apartment to which he attached tiny fluffy tails and ears. Feeling aggrieved at being left out of one group show, Wojnarowicz showed up to the opening, let the bunnies loose in the gallery, and put it on his résumé.

Rauffenbart, a wiry, snowy-haired 72-year-old, sits in his warm one-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights. A painting of planets, which will be in the Whitney show, and puckish portraits of Wojnarowicz are on the walls. He and Wojnarowicz met in a basement sex club in the East Village, and months of crazy sex led to a seven-year relationship that lasted until Wojnarowicz’s death in 1992. Rauffenbart, a preppy civil servant, wasn’t into art (he says he still isn’t, really); he just felt a powerful connection to this lanky type who was “so ugly he was beautiful.”

Toward the end of his life, Wojnarowicz became something of a right-wing chew toy. In 1990, notorious homophobe Donald Wildmon mailed a pamphlet to members of Congress, criticizing the NEA for funding a show featuring Wojnarowicz’s works. The artist sued. Even decades later, Wojnarowicz has the power to provoke conservatives: In 2010, then-House Speaker John Boehner complained about a Wojnarowicz video displayed in a show at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. It depicted ants crawling over a crucifix. The museum pulled the piece. “It was outrageous the way they buckled,” says Rauffenbart. “I mean, it was really disgusting.”

What would David have thought of same-sex marriage? “I can’t imagine the two of us ever getting married even if we were together. Maybe weirder things have happened, but I don’t think so,” says Rauffenbart. “I think he’d be glad, as much as I am, that those who want to get married can get married. They should have the right to it. I doubt very much if we would get married. Or maybe he’d marry somebody else, you never know. If he was healthy, we might have split, and who knows what the future might have been?”

Rauffenbart says that Wojnarowicz would hate Trump (“Hate him!”) and be just as activated about the plight of the outsider today. “David would always be angry about something,” he says. “Always. It was just part of who he was. He was a warrior.”

Sex was a prime motivation for Wojnarowicz, and the Whitney show will include his rarely seen “Sex Series” (1989), black-and-white depictions of the act of coupling, which he produced in Hujar’s darkroom after his mentor’s death and while he himself was declining.

“This is really a profoundly important work to show both the banality and everyday-ness of sex,” says Breslin. “They’re almost landscape depictions. But they’re also about the real importance of maintaining sexuality at the height of a time when sex was really being denied — a really fervent embrace of sexuality despite everything, or because of everything.”

Wojnarowicz’s life on this plane ended in 1992. In 13 years, he left behind six books, enough work that the Whitney show will stretch to 120 pieces, and, ultimately, a type of playbook for surviving the Trump era.

“To me, David is the classic American hero,” says Sanchez, who has written a screenplay based on Fire in the Belly. “This is a guy that had the most brutal, abusive childhood you could possibly imagine. Somehow this guy took it upon himself to nurture his artistic gifts and harnessed them as a way out of the streets. His life ended tragically, but to me he’s always been a symbol of hope and strength.”

Sanchez continues, “Despite being born into a world that didn’t want him, Wojnarowicz grabbed something inside him that said, ‘Not only am I going to be an artist, but I’m going to be a mirror to how the world treats its outsiders. And you are going to listen.’ ”  

Former Times Square Hustler Turned Radical Artist David Wojnarowicz Gets the Retrospective He Deserves

We're highlighting 50 years of queer classics this week, as seen in "Songs in the Key of Pride" in the June/July issue. Here, we're bringing it back to 1998 with Rufas Wainwright.

In 1998, a wiry 24-year-old newcomer named Rufus Wainwright unveiled his witty, piano-based, self-titled debut album. With its Cole Porter–esque stylings, it was a risk, as was his choice to be out of the closet when he released it, but he ended up with a hit that would launch his career. Twenty years, eight studio albums, and two operas later, he looks back. 

Related | 13 Trailblazing Queer Musicians Shaking Up Our Summer 

What would you tell that kid who set out to record Rufus Wainwright 20 years ago?
I wouldn’t change one aspect. In terms of what I chose to do in the studio and my songwriting, I was spot-on. Except for maybe my visual presentation. I didn’t really start working out until I was 30.

Do you wish you were more buff in your videos?
I mean, I was a very attractive young man. If I’d played the game a bit more, I could have really gone with that. But I was so concentrated on the music. It was probably time better spent than going to the gym.

Did you feel pressure from your record company not to come out?
Well, at first they wanted me to pretend I was bisexual, but I just have to be me. I was arguably the first-ever artist out from the get-go who sang about his love affairs with men for a major label, and I got a real push.

Where did you get that courage? Or did you just not care?
It was two sides of the sword. One was extreme confidence, desire, and ambition — the things imbued within me by my mother. But the other was fear of not being sure if I’d survive the AIDS epidemic. I thought, I have to be as real and truthful as possible, because I was faced with such darkness. There was no time to play around.

You were accepted by other musicians immediately: Gwen Stefani was in your first video, for “April Fools.”
After Napster, the industry was no longer designed to support artists, so I think some people tried to give me a hand, because they knew that otherwise I would just get lost.

Don't miss Rufus Wainwright's North American tour to coincide with the 20th anniversary of his debut. "All Of These Poses Anniversary Tour 2018" kicks off in Los Angeles on November 9. Click here for ticket information. 

1998: When Modern-Day Troubadour and Queer Pioneer Rufus Wainwright Emerged

We caught up with the comedian in honor of his new NYC show, What Is This?

A funny thing happened to one of comedy's most incisive depressives, a man so dedicated to inner anomie that toured with a show called Numb: He got happy. British comedian Simon Amstell is a longtime fixture of UK television — via the sitcom Grandma's House and game shows like Never Mind the Buzzcocks— and occasionally graces our shores with hilarious, incisive stand-up shows. In his new show What Is This? and book Help, Amstell talks about how he got over himself and got a boyfriend. The relationship has lasted seven years, and Amstell dives into what made that possible: Basically, get a shaman, tell each other everything and attend the occasional orgy. The message: If he managed to do it, you can too. (Not really. But it's a nice thought, right?)

Some writeups of the show include the sentence, "Simon Amstell drank ayuehasca and it cured his depression." Was that the key?

I went into an ayahuasca ceremony in Peru with that depression, and I came out having gotten to what seemed to be the roots of all my anxiety and depression, and I felt much stronger and somehow reset.  

I think I'm going to try that, because I'm incredibly depressed.

It's quite an extreme thing to do. You really have to feel it calling to you. I kept hearing the word: ayahuasca, ayahuasca. My boyfriend said, "I keep hearing the word 'skiing.'"

Have you done other substances?

I had some magic mushrooms many years ago, and I think after that I became permanently funnier. Which has been an incredibly good for society. So we should look into how we can use these medicines, rather than throwing them all together as "dangerous" or "evil."

So you've been together for almost seven years now. What came first, the depression lifting or the boyfriend?

They happened at about the same time. It's not a controlled experiment. However, my hunch is if I hadn't have gone to Peru, the relationship wouldn't still be a thing that's happening. I think I probably would have made mistakes over and over again. I did meet someone so incredible that he would've been very good about me being deranged, but ultimately it wouldn't have lasted as long as it had.

What's the trick to making it last?

Talking about everything that feels scary to talk about. And we're not lying to each other. There's no deception going on. Everything that needs to be discussed ends up being discussed. It sometimes takes a minute, but eventually the truth comes out.

I loved your bit about attending a hipster sex party in Los Angeles together. It's refreshing to hear about these things, because a lot of couples are struggling with monogamy and sexual boundaries right now.

Yeah, we settled on something that was quite specific to us. I think once you come out, and you've been in a place where it's tricky to come out, that's so subversive in itself that the idea that you would then conform to any other convention expected of you is a little silly to me.

As you say, ultimately we're all perverts.

Right.

What other projects are you working on?

I'm wrapping the edit on a feature film called Benjamin. It's about a young man desperately seeking love from an audience, when what he really needs is to experience the intimacy of a relationship with one person in his life. Wild imagination I've got.

What Is This? runs through June 30 at Theatre 80 in New York City. His new book,Help, is very funny too.

Simon Amstell Got Over Himself, Got a Boyfriend, & Now Has a New Comedy Show

She digs into Trump Voters and tackles her blackness, gayness, and divorce—what more could you ask for? 

Prediction: Sam Jay will go down in stand-up history alongside Margaret Cho, Wanda Sykes, and Joan Rivers. Like those trailblazers, Jay is as profane as she is wise, digging into the psychology of Nazis, ass-eaters, and Trump voters while tackling her blackness, gayness, and divorce. After a season at SNL (she co-wrote “Black Jeopardy”), she’s just released her album Donna’s Daughter and appears on the Netflix special The Comedy Lineup. 

Related | Hannah Gadsby's Nanette Is a Sea Change for LGBT Comedy

I loved your bit on sex acts that are a little too gay for you — like scissoring.
I’m not trying to speak as a gay woman— just as a person who’s feeling things.

In a bit about your divorce, you state that maybe gay people shouldn’t be married because it’s part of a straight institution.
We used to define our unions for ourselves. Now we’re defining them according to straight standards. We just wanted the right to be seen with the people we love. And get the tax break!

Do you worry about being misconstrued?
I get more shit when I do gay venues than when I do “for everyone” shows. I think as gay people we are so worried about our image that we’re not chilling. We’re not free to just kid.

You psychologize old, white, male Trump voters perfectly: They just want to feel they’ve contributed something.
No one wants to feel like what they’ve brought to the table was bad. There’s got to be a middle. We’ve all got to live here. You can’t have progress and leave people behind.

Today, a Joan Rivers might be Twitter-mobbed out of the industry. Can you help restore the appetite for improper humor?
As a society we feel like we can’t have two separate emotions about one thing. But you can laugh at this stuff, and laughing at it doesn’t negate its seriousness.

Sam Jay Is Ready to Bring Back Comedy's Edge

From Muriel’s Wedding to Hearts Beat Loud, this Aussie star is thankful for the music.

Toni Collette has held a firm place in our hearts — and given us karaoke goals — since her  debut as gawky ABBA fangirl Muriel in 1994’s Muriel’s Wedding. This summer, The Aussie actress returned to horror (The Sixth Sense, anyone?) with Hereditaryand got tuneful again in the queer-themed indie Hearts Beat Loud. Here, Collette dishes on music, her homeland, and Muriel’s lasting appeal.

Related | Hearts Beat Loud is the Year's Wokest Feel-Good Fairy Tale

What are your thoughts on 1994’s Australian film explosion, with Muriel’s Wedding and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert?
Those two films and Strictly Ballroom came flying out of the country in a very short period of time. It was exciting. I think those things are determined by the filmmakers. That’s what creates the wave. I don’t know if it’s happened since.

What do you remember about the reception of Muriel’s Wedding in America, and the splash you made as an actress?
I felt so alive and appreciative. It was such a surprise when people embraced that character. The movie was life-changing — it helped me embark on a career I never could have dreamed of.

Do you think the success of Muriel and Priscilla made it easier for American filmmakers to do more queer-targeted films?
Priscilla certainly did. It was so fun, but not without depth and poignancy. I don’t know if it opened doors for other films, but when something like that is available to people, it must.

In Hearts Beat Loud, the two romances involve a middle-aged straight couple and queer teen girls. It’s rare to see screen romances that aren’t straight people in their 20s.
I loved that there was no fuss made about that. And the daughter is black and no fuss was made. It’s just people living their lives. None of those questions were ever important, and that’s the way life should be.

And you get to sing karaoke in the film!
Yes! I started acting through singing. As a teenager, I did musicals. But the last musical I did was The Wild Party on Broadway in 2000. I’d like to do more of it, but I’ve been pretty busy with my day job!

Any future music plans?
I’m always singing. You can’t shut me up. My husband’s a musician and we talk about doing something again — we put out an album 12 years ago. And I write things, but only for myself. I can’t imagine life without music.

Finally, what is a must-do in Australia for anyone reading this?
I would do the Bondi-to-Bronte walk along the cliffs in Sydney. And jump in the ocean whenever possible.

Why We'll Always Be Head Over Heels for Toni Collette

Loss, depression, and a lack of fan-worthy material kept Robyn hidden from the spotlight for eight years. Now, the seasoned alt-hitmaker is back with Honey, a record her diverse diehards can't wait to embrace.

“If you would’ve asked me, ‘Will you make another album?’, I don’t think I would have been able to answer,” says Robyn, discussing the eight-year gap between her latest LPs. “Everything was kind of disintegrating for me.” The Swedish mononym, a.k.a. Robin Miriam Carlsson, purveyor of some of the catchiest and most emotionally cathartic dance songs possible, essentially dropped out of sight after the release of her 2010 album, which contained one of her biggest hits, “Call Your Girlfriend.” And in the intervening years she became one of the most sought-after fugitives from the beat.

Related | Gallery: Every Breathtaking Image From Our Robyn Cover Shoot

Why? None of the usual reasons for such a vanishing applied: It wasn’t record-company problems, rehab, or post-megahit pressure. Instead, even for a genre that prizes its divas’ capacity to perform suffering in public, Robyn was really going through it. “I was dealing with a life crisis,” she says. “I was in therapy and a friend of mine had passed away. I was not in a stable part of my life at all. I was very raw and unable to keep myself composed.”

That a sprightly pop hitmaker might be debilitated by depression shouldn’t be surprising today: Who among us hasn’t melted down a few times in the last few years? But something was always up with Robyn. Ever since her debut in 1995, she broke the mold: She was spunky, blonde, and elfin, but seemed world-weary and sometimes literally fatigued, while her smash stompers “Dancing on My Own” and “Call Your Girlfriend” contained lyrics that were unusually spiky, if not a bit scandalous. The premise of “Dancing on My Own” was the very fear that keeps many of us at home on Saturday night — the terror that, in the words of Morrissey, you’ll go out to a bar and “stand on your own, and leave on your own, and go home and you[’ll] cry and you[’ll] want to die.” And yet, Robyn’s track made a jubilant celebration of that scenario. “Girlfriend” presented a whole different narrative — it was the rare dance hit sung from the perspective of the other woman, goading her new love into breaking up with his ball-and-chain...until you in fact rooted for the mistress.

There was serious thematic alchemy there — a wit, edge, and emotional intelligence that brought Robyn closer to the 1985 Smiths than 2008 Kylie, but over a grid of sugary beats. It was as if ABBA’s entire career had been “The Visitors” — catchy as fuck but, on reflection, a very dark and rich dessert.

And it was a clear deviation from her early days: Two tracks from her debut album Robyn Is Here hit Billboard’s Top 10 in the vast pop wasteland of 1997, both of them masterminded by super-producer Max Martin. Eight years later, determined to be more Swizz Beatz than Britney, Robyn extricated herself from both producer and label, founding her own imprint, Konichiwa Records. That setup enabled her masterpiece, Body Talk (compiled from three EPs) to ignite the world in 2010 — the year Robyn packed up her ThreeAsFour purse with dance chart hits, Pitchfork raves, and Saturday Night Live performances and ran away with them.

Unfortunately, the years around Body Talk’s release were tough ones for the commercial dance diva, a period that saw not one, but three Great Blonde Hopes of dance run aground for reasons beyond their exceptional work. In addition to Robyn, Norway’s Annie, the indie princess and DJ who emerged out of mixtape culture, exploded out of the gate but saw her excellent second album neutralized by record-company indifference. And the U.K.’s Roísín Murphy, a sleek and lovely fashion plate who effortlessly toggled between ice queen and best mate, also fell victim to label hassles and spent her own years in the wilderness. In a perfect world, all three would have scored Madonna-level promotion and popularity, and of the three, only Robyn came close to meeting commercial expectations (literally somersaulting across the stage as a musical guest on SNL— a gig that requires a serious element of pop heft). Annie was fun, Roísín was fun and dazzling, Robyn was fun and the musical equivalent of a best friend’s shoulder for tear absorption — a snaggletooth with a bowl cut who actually sold records. All of this rendered her disappearance especially surprising.

“I never felt there was a point when I decided to quit music,” says Robyn, now 39. “I knew I wanted to make another album. But because it was such a searching process for me, and I was kind of showing everyone everything up-in-the-air, I became friendly with the idea that I couldn’t control that process, either.”

What emerged from her exile couldn’t sound more polished: Honey, her new album, looks set to save us from the diminishing returns of the dance-pop world’s Ariana Grandes. The tracks that a reporter has been allowed to preview are roundly excellent — euphoric stompers and satiny mid-tempo chill-outs, each one pure hooky satisfaction from the first chorus, thoroughly belying a production period of internal drama. “I think I pulled it off,” Robyn says. “I made a very personal album that comes from a very honest place. And it’s not just like ‘Oh, I’m being honest about how I feel.’ It’s more like an honest emotion. I wanted it to be unfiltered.”

In late July, Robyn announced one of the new tracks, “Missing U,” with a “message to my fans,” a documentary video on YouTube. Set in a spin class populated with very ordinary, non-model-esque types, the video begins with a young guy talking about what happened when he heard Robyn’s 2014 collaboration with Röyksopp during a recent workout: “The last time I took this class, he played ‘Monument,’ and halfway through, I just started to cry because it’s inspirational and beautiful but also just so sad,” he says. “And it doesn’t matter where you’re at in your life — you could have just bought a house, or your girlfriend could have just broken up with you or something, and there’s still an emotion there, in that song, that you can touch.”

As revealed in the video, the young man turns out to be a DJ who hosts a Robyn-themed party in Brooklyn called The Party Is Killing You: A Night of All Robyn Everything, which is regularly packed to capacity. On camera, he and his partners attempt to lure Robyn for a guest appearance by asking partygoers — queer and non-queer alike — to record messages for her about what her music means to them: Some are joyous, and many tearful, as they talk about isolation and coming to terms with their otherness, from size to sexual orientation. (Spoiler: Robyn shows up for the party in the video and stage-dives into what becomes a gigantic hug.)

Of the track itself, Robyn says in the clip, “‘Missing U’ is about the trippy thing that happens when people disappear. They become even more clear.”

Scanning through the video’s 500-plus comments, it’s clear that Robyn’s fan base feels a devotion to her that is almost Garland-esque — that she understands their pain and enables them to work it out on the dance floor. While your average page of comments on a Beyoncé video is an unbroken string of variations on the sentiments “Yassss” and “Slay,” the feedback on a Robyn video reads like a diary.

“The moment that guy started talking about ‘Monument,’ I teared up — that’s exactly how i feel listening to that song,” said one commenter.

“Going through the hardest breakup of my life and finding out I was replaced soon after, during the time ‘Dancing on My Own’ came out, helped me overcome things and made me realize that life goes on, and we have to keep dancing on our own through the heartache until it’s gone,” wrote another. “From that moment, Robyn’s music became the soundtrack of my life, because it’s so real and relatable.”

“Your music has comforted me when I was hidden in the closet and when I came out, when I fell in love and when I was heartbroken,” says another. “Thank you for making me feel comfortable about embracing my sadness.”

Some might be a little too hopeful. “Our queen has risen again to save the world of pop music,” wrote another commenter. “She’s gonna kill Trump. I feel it.”

For her part, Robyn believed that she could ultimately write herself out of her existential funk, but first she had to be sure she had something to say to the people who have come to hang on her every word. “I knew what kind of album I wanted to make, but I didn’t know how to be good,” she says with a laugh. “It was not a time where I was able to just be this secure person. I really didn’t feel like I knew what I wanted to say. And I didn’t feel like I necessarily should say anything at that point.”

All recording artists might do well to be wary of wasting their followers’ time. “I think taking up space in people’s lives really requires you to think about what it is you want to say,” the artist continues. “If you’re going to take on that task, you better have something good to contribute to people. That was a big part of why it took so long. I didn’t want to make something that felt unclear or didn’t feel like it came from the right place. I also needed to just really dig deep into myself. That took time.”

Determined to stretch, Robyn wrote more of the album than she had in the past and taught herself to program beats, shutting herself in her home studio for more than a year. “I just spent time listening to music that I love, dancing, and feeling things out,” she says, adding that she jammed to her all-time favorites: Prince, “Spring Affair” by Donna Summer, and “Rock Your Baby” by George McCrae, not to mention copious helpings of Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. Also, “I read lot of books that inspired me and informed my writing — books about psychology and human behavior, science and the science of human history,” she says.

But the resulting tracks are no academic exercise. Like a sequel to “Girlfriend,” “Honey” finds Robyn cooing, “You’re not going to get what you need / baby, I have what you want,” over a mesmerizing 3 a.m. keyboard line, to a suitor who probably shouldn’t be listening. “Suck it up like a treasure...let it go like a debt...I got your honey, baby.” (An early version of the song played on HBO’s “Girls” last year, but as we speak, Robyn is still reworking the mix.) “Ever Again” is as clean and lean a mid-tempo jam as there ever was, before it explodes a silvery keyboard Easter egg.

And for all its symbolic and thematic import as a song about the friend whose passing caused Robyn to collapse into herself, “Missing U” shimmers on irresistible neon-icicle beats that evoke the entrance music to Oz, over lyrics that capture the global aftershocks of heartbreak, turning enervating grief into dancehall euphoria.

Robyn calls the album “sensual,” although she refers less to carnality than being fully present in the moment (helpful when creating a product meant to be consumed on a dance floor). “I liked that honey is a word people use all the time for their loved ones: It means so much and nothing at the same time,” she says. “Also, the substance is amazing and sweet and tasty and also kind of weird: It’s something animals make that we eat, and it’s a mythological substance that has been used in a lot of different religions. So it felt both mysterious and everyday for me. I just kept thinking about that word and how I was trying to find this sweet spot where I felt comfortable, able to enjoy being in my own body and finding a place of pleasure again for myself. I felt very sensual, very uplifted.”

Honey is slated for release before the end of the year, and Robyn is planning to support it with a big, international tour in 2019. But for her the project has been simultaneously smaller and more epic. “I have learned how many emotions you can have in a day and how to navigate them and be in touch with them without letting them control or ruin anything for you,” she says of the album’s creation. “It’s about being OK with things being very unstable and undefinable sometimes. It’s very mysterious. We think we’re in control, but really we aren’t. Nobody really knows anything about why we’re here. That was the big new perspective for me, and that’s just the way it is to be a human being.”

Photography by Fredrik Altinell. Styling by Denise Ostholm. Makeup by Linda Ohrstrom. Photography Assistant, Magnus Petersson.

The group is here with their new album, Life.

In 1984, Boy George was a true sensation: With a face slashed with mascara, neon eyeshadow, and somehow even brighter lipstick, he brought gender fluidity to MTV and the Billboard charts a decade before the term even existed. As the leader of Culture Club, he essayed universal yearning and pop perfection with “Karma Chameleon” and “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” Nearly 20 years after they disbanded, the group is back with their new album, Life, which brings messages of love and a warning about resting bitch face.

What did you want to accomplish with this album?
New music! That was the bottom line. I didn’t want to be out there doing nostalgia. I mean, nostalgia is a beautiful thing; it’s given us all so much. But as a band, if you’re not creating, you just kind of feel redundant. I feel like I have very much to say. Artistically, I get my pleasure from writing and reporting.

Who do you like in pop acts now?
I am deeply shallow when it comes to my pop music. I like my artists to be interesting, quirky. You look at someone and you think, “Do I believe you were born to do this, or are you just a complete poseur?”

With the new album, you’re advocating talking about the things you love instead of the things you hate. What are the three things that you love most right now?
I love that I’m able to get up every day and pursue a creative existence. I love the fact that there’s an audience out there that gives a shit. And I love the fact that the Internet is a wonderful way that you can just communicate with everybody, everywhere.

What was the inspiration for the song “Resting Bitch Face”?
Well, you can have resting bitch face, and you could also have resting butch face. There are two options. [Laughs.] It’s really just about how we want to control other people in relationships. In my life, I’ve been one of those people who’s tried to change other people. The things that attract us to other people, we try to kind of destroy once we get to that person. Sometimes it’s about accepting people as they are, letting people express themselves.

The song “Let Somebody Love You” — have you had difficulty doing that, or is it about people you loved who couldn’t do that?
I still have difficulty doing that, because it’s hard to define what love is. To me, that’s the thing about love and God — the power of those things is the unknowingness. Somebody can tell you they love you, but you don’t really know that they do. You have to have a lot of faith. A lot of my love songs are about the fact that to love is to risk getting hurt. But you still have to do it, because you never know what somebody might bring to your life.

So, are you in love right now, or are you looking?
I’m always in love!