And I Don't Mean Rebecca

Did I think it coincidence when, after posting about Robin Sparkles yesterday on Facebook, I found sneak previews of the last Robin Sparkles debut video for the February 4 How I Met Your Mother episode? A little. I’d not given the pop singer a lot of credit (maybe through the haze of other fad pop singers…sorry) lately.
I suddenly feel inspired to change that.

The Under the Tunes episodes begin in the season two episode Slap Bet, where Robin confesses her fear of malls—but never explains why. As it turns out, her Canadian alter ego attributed her first song to malls: Let’s Go to the Mall.

Lamenting travelling cross-country as a sixteen-year-old pop star from the 90’s, Robin suffered from her mall PTSD in silence.

Barney uncovered her secret then, and he uncovered her other “secrets” since. He discovered two more appearances by the then-famed Robin Sparkles, Superstar. Her sequential, though not as successful, music video Sandcastles in the Sand featured her ex-boyfriend and a handful of other close acquaintances. This akin to her next job, guest-starring on a famed Canadian kid’s show called Space Teens with her childhood friend, Jessica Glitter. The two used math to solve space-issue problems and save the day!

Alternating seasons for the delayed discoveries—seasons two, four, and six—it’s fitting for the span of time that, now, Barney Stinson is so determined to find the last remaining Robin Sparkles episode.
Best get all those skeletons out of the closet before tying the knot. Certainly, if Robin trusted Barney as her fiancé, she wouldn’t be as bothered by his goal. Or would she?

Looking at the sneak image myself, I see a mockery of the stereotypical pop star “fall” on the horizon. The age when every childhood actress develops into adulthood and goes through changes that, for good or for ill, changes them.
Seeing as Robin is currently short a singing career, I’m assuming hers was “ill.”