Robyn

Swedish pop superstar Robyn began her career long before she could legally do most grown-up stuff — she got her break on the TV show Lilla Sportspegeln in 1991, age 13 — so some kind of calamitous burn-out, or at least a slow fade into obscurity, seemed inevitable. The girl, however, has defied those kinds of expectations. After the success of her international spotlight-magnet "Show Me Love" in 1997, she suffered from record-company wrangles over the course of two albums, then took the bold step of buying out her contract and setting up her own label, Konichiwa. The result was Robyn, shrewdly produced in collaboration with electronic groundbreakers the Knife (among others) and featuring the stunners "With Every Heartbeat" and the Teddybears cover "Cobrastyle." The three-album Body Talk series followed in 2010, a prolific year studded with standouts like "Dancing On My Own" and "Fembot."