Live music whips up one of life’s more delicious neurochemical cocktails. Ingredients include endorphin-fueled euphoria, serotonin’s role in mood regulation, arguably the best oxytocin you can get while keeping your clothes on, and of course the fan-favorite feel-good chemical: dopamine. Big fan of that whole situation. In my mind, then, to be blessed with a concert to ring in a New Year is the best gift one can be given on December 31st.
What a treat for those lucky enough to step foot in the Brooklyn Paramount last night to spend the hours between 1 a.m. and just before 3—on the technical first day of a new year—with the woman who makes not giving a fuck an aspirational state of being: Robyn. We heard “Dopamine” and the unreleased “Sexistential” live for the first time, belted “Dancing On My Own” like an enraptured liturgical choir, and collectively stopped breathing when she performed “Show Me Love” for the first time since 2013.
The pop royalty hadn’t played New York since 2019—March at Madison Square Garden and July at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, to be exact. For context, those venues each hold about 19,000 people. Brooklyn Paramount houses a cute 2,700.
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The French Baroque Revival theater opened as a movie palace in 1928. Duke Ellington played it in 1931, Long Island University turned it into a basketball court in the ’60s, and after a $50-million, five-year renovation, its doors reopened as the Brooklyn Paramount in 2024. The New Year’s Eve show was billed as “Robyn and Friends,” and her pals took over the whole palace, turning the night into more of a bop-around, mini-festival experience. The grand lobby’s restored rococo ceilings, original columns, and marble floors created a kind of time warp—like being teleported from Flatbush Avenue into a Parisian opera house built specifically for the girls, gays, and club kids.
Downstairs, local DJ and producer Dee Diggs helmed the “House Party” in the basement, remixing favorites like “Fever,” “Waiting for Tonight,” and “Un-Break My Heart” and creating a scene that, as a standalone, would’ve made for an incredible New Year’s Eve. But upstairs in the main hall, anticipation rose. After New York dance legend Danny Krivit left the decks around 11, The Knife co-founder Olof Dreijer carried the room to midnight and beyond. Robyn joined him for the countdown and a massive confetti shower, ushering in a moment that felt less like a calendar flip than a symbolic crossing—the last skin loosening from the Wood Snake before the coming Year of the Fire Horse.
Photo by Amanda Koellner
Robyn’s set began at 1 a.m. but quickly halted due to a 10-minute fire-alarm mishap—a collective laugh, a reset. From the moment she returned to the stage, the room shifted. The set unfolded less like a concert than a collective exhale: sweat and screams in equal measure. Her new single “Dopamine” landed with particular weight and acknowledged the moment’s pleasure as both biological and transcendent. “I know you came to see us,” she told the crowd, smiling. “But I feel like we came to see you. I hope you have a good first day of the year.”
In the press release for “Dopamine,” the singer described the song’s emotional doubleness: “Having an emotion that is super real, super strong, intense, enjoyable or painful, and at the same time knowing that this is just a biological process in my body—and then not to choose religion or science. To just accept that they’re there together and to be able to go in between.”
Dopamine’s never been cheaper: Instagram likes, endless TikTok scrolls, DraftKings bets—whatever your drug of choice, modern life offers it in droves. As Seinfeld’s Kramer once said, “Why go to the park and fly a kite when you can pop a pill?” The old-fashioned kind, the kind that lingers, still requires more effort than tapping on our black boxes. Experiencing live music is a privilege, and even when you can afford it, it’s increasingly difficult to obtain in today’s abysmal ticketing landscape. But the rapture, the catharsis, the feeling of a room moving together well past midnight … that’s where you don’t have to choose religion or science. That’s where the honey is sweeter.
Setlist:
Missing U
Call Your Girlfriend
Be Mine!
Cobrastyle (Teddybears cover)
Blow My Mind
Ever Again
Dopamine
Honey
Talk To Me (Debut)
Between the Lines
Love Is Free (Robyn & La Bagatelle Magique song, with Maluca)
Don’t Fucking Tell Me What to Do (The Mekanism Remix)
Sexistential (Debut)
Monument (Röyksopp & Robyn song)
Life (Jamie xx cover)
Encore:
Indestructible
Show Me Love (First performance since 2013)
Dancing on My Own
Photo by Amanda Koellner
