Photo: Harry Wad, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Swedish artist Robyn turned her BBC Live Lounge appearance into a mashup, pairing Tinashe's "Popstar" with the Teddybears track "Punkrocker" in a single performance with her band, according to The World Insiders' entertainment report.
The arrangement began with "Punkrocker," but Robyn replaced the word "punkrocker" with "popstar," according to the report. The performance then moved into Tinashe's song, including its warning against falling in love with a popstar, rather than presenting the tracks as separate covers.
The pairing is a neat piece of musical joinery. "Popstar" shares its name with Tinashe's new album, while "Punkrocker," released in 2007, was a collaboration between Iggy Pop and Swedish dance-rock group Teddybears that experienced a viral resurgence after appearing in James Gunn's film Superman, according to the report. Robyn also has a direct connection to Teddybears through previous collaborations: the group's Klas Åhlund has produced her music for decades.
Robyn is promoting Sexistential, her 2026 album, according to the report, and has released numerous remixes alongside the Live Lounge appearance. The Live Lounge format, a long-running BBC Radio 1 feature, regularly asks artists to perform one of their own songs and one cover; Robyn's decision to fuse two songs into one performance goes a step beyond the usual brief.
What happens next for Robyn is continued promotion of Sexistential, with the Live Lounge clip likely to circulate widely among fans of all three acts. For Tinashe, the mashup is timely exposure for a new album; for Teddybears, it is another revival for a song that has already enjoyed an unlikely second life through film.
The performance is a reminder of how the Live Lounge rewards imagination: the most memorable sessions are rarely the straightest covers, and Robyn's word-swap bridge between two songs from different eras is exactly the kind of detail that travels.