Robyn at Brooklyn Paramount
Swedish pop artist & DJ Robyn announced a New Year’s Eve concert that quickly sold out. On Thursday, January 1st, she announced she’d perform another show on the following day on Friday, January 2, 2026. Since I missed out on the New Year’s Eve show, I abandoned my plans to see a movie that night and made my way to Brooklyn Paramount (with a point and shoot camera) instead. This would make my second Brooklyn Paramount show in the same week.
The evening kicked off with DJ sets until Robyn took the stage just before 10PM. When my husband and I arrived to the venue, there was a huge line for coat check and Papi Juice DJed when doors until 8:30, when another act called NEW YORK, were on. Unfortunately, all DJs were set up off stage by a bar, stage left. Since I stood on the other side of the floor, I really couldn’t see any of the DJs during their sets. Perhaps more dancing would have occurred if the audience could actually see the DJs performing on the stage, instead of looking at closed curtains. I wasn’t aware that Papi Juice was on the floor until a friend who went on New Year’s Eve mentioned where the DJs were positioned the other night. I really enjoyed the sets from Papi Juice and Kilopatrah Jones, and felt they were great choices to warm up the audience before the headliner.
Robyn began her set promptly at 9:45 and was backed by a band. She mentioned this was their second time performing together but you couldn’t tell. The first song of the night, “Missing U,” off of Honey was followed by “Call Your Girlfriend,” from Body Talk. The whole set felt extremely joyful. Everyone around us sang and danced along, while Robyn’s vocals sounded lovely and sharp. Robyn brought out NYC’s Maluca, for “Love Is Free,” which she also did during her Barclays Center show back in 2019. When Robyn left the stage, the set felt all too brief. “Life” felt so big and joyful and I could have experienced that for so much longer. But the joy returned for her final three songs of “Indestructible,” a rearrangement of her one of her earliest hits, “Show Me Love,” and an epic closer of “Dancing On My Own,” which ended with her just letting the audience sing the final moments of the song.