Songfacts®:

• Grabbing the baton from Ace Of Base, Robyn emerged from Sweden in 1997 with two brightly colored pop hits in America: "Do You Know (What It Takes)" and "Show Me Love." Both songs first appeared on her debut album, Robyn Is Here, released in 1995. She first made an impact in her home country, then slowly in Europe. "Do You Know (What It Takes)," her first American single, was big in the summer of 1997.
  
  Robyn landed about a dozen more hits, just not in America, where for some reason she fell off the radar after her first album. Across Europe, songs like "With Every Heartbeat" and "Dancing On My Own" were big hits.
• "Do You Know (What It Takes)" was an early Max Martin production; he helmed it with his associate Denniz Pop, and wrote it with Robyn and another Swedish songwriter, Herbie Crichlow. Typical of Martin's work, the track is loaded with hooks and the lyric uses simple words to describe a matter of the heart. The song finds Robyn looking for someone who knows what it takes to treat her right.
  
  Denniz Pop was one of the masterminds behind Ace Of Base and worked with Martin on early Backstreet Boys songs, including "We've Got It Goin' On" and "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)." He died of cancer in 1998.
• Two different videos were made for the song. The first, by an unknown director, shows Robyn driving in a van, sitting in an egg-shaped chair, and doing an impromptu performance on the street. When the song was released in America, it was with a different video directed by Kevin Bray showing Robyn in silk pajamas directing herself in a video.