The previous year she had released her third album, Don't Stop the Music, but felt disillusioned by the label's attempt to market her as the next Christina Aguilera in the United States.

[3] That same year, Robyn returned home to Sweden and discovered the electronic music brother-and-sister duo The Knife while browsing through a record store.

[3] The songs "Handle Me" and "Crash and Burn Girl" were released as radio-only promotional singles in Sweden and were accompanied by music videos that featured Robyn dancing in a nightclub.

The album's lead single in the United Kingdom, "Konichiwa Bitches", received positive reviews from critics due to its "hip-hop sensibilities" and ability to illustrate "the zeal [Robyn] takes in making music".

[13] "Dream On" was released on 17 November 2008 as the lead single from the special edition of the Robyn album, peaking at number twenty-nine.

[16] "Cobrastyle", a cover of Teddybears 2004 song, was released as a double A-side single alongside "Konichiwa Bitches" in Australia in September 2007,[18] and peaked at number 17 in Sweden.

[23] Barry Walters of Spin stated that Robyn "flashes lyrical smarts that veer between wisecracking sass and heartbroken eloquence", and that the album "achieves the sort of pure pop perfection that her more mainstream records never did.

"[30] Rolling Stone's Will Hermes concluded, "Sexy without being pandering, arty without being pretentious, Robyn is a public service: a record that can make indie-minded geeks dance without shame.

"[26] Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani expressed that the album is "definitely a slow-burner [...], but it's also everything pop music should be: provocative, poignant, inventive, and fun.

"[32] In a review for the Manchester Evening News, Paul Taylor described the album as "undeniably sexy" and dubbed Robyn "a mini-Madonna in the making".

[34] In his consumer guide for MSN Music, critic Robert Christgau commented that he was "[initially] disoriented by the hype for 'With Every Heartbeat' [...] But without that add-on, which does grow on you the way pop breakthroughs will sometimes, this 2005 EU release might never have materialized here to prepare the way for Robyn 2010".

[25] James Hunter of The Village Voice complimented its "fast electro arrangements tending toward the geometric" and found that "[Robyn's] appeal is questionable when she tries to sound like an American rapper, but on tracks where she just sings [...] she gives Europop a swift Swedish energy and presence".

[38] Entertainment Weekly ranked it at number four on its list of the 10 Best CDs of 2008, praising Robyn as "an autonomous, thrillingly eccentric dance diva capable of both wrenching techno ballads [...] and saucy, whip-smart kiss-offs".

[40] Pitchfork also included it at number sixty-eight on its list of The Top 200 Albums of the 2000s and stated that "[n]obody [...] made a more lovable pop album this decade than Robyn", describing it as "an indie-as-fuck fairytale: Freed from proto-Mouseketeer teen-pop servitude and inspired by the Knife, Robyn experiments across genres, emotes from the heart, and gradually amasses a netroots fanbase.

[44] The album spent thirty-six weeks altogether on the chart,[44] and was certified platinum on 6 April 2006 for shipments in excess of 40,000 copies in Sweden.

[50] On 14 December 2007, Robyn was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI),[51] having sold 242,000 copies in the UK as of June 2010.