her musical evolution

Well, because I was always singing as a child, my parents sent me to a classical music school in
Iceland, which I was in from age 5 to 15. When I was 11, I did an album of pop songs, which was an extraordinary experience because I was introduced to the studio. But I was not so excited about it because I just wrote one song and I wanted to write all the songs. So after that experience I wanted to be in a band with kids the same age as me, where people would all write together, like on an equal basis.

I started being in bands when I was 12, and probably was in two or three bands at the same time, changing all the time, through all my teen-age years, which was very exciting. Iceland is a very happening place like that. Probably the band that actually ended up making records was a band I was in when I was 15 called Tappi Tikkarrass. It was sort of a happy punk band.

When I was 18, I was in another band called KUKL, which was sort of a more experimental, cathartic experience. And then when I was 20 the leftovers of the band and some poets from a surrealist movement in Iceland got together and formed a band, The Sugarcubes.

When I was 27 I got quite restless and felt that after 16 years of working with bands I’d done my bit and I wanted to get selfish again. When you’re a teen-ager you crave to change your hometown, but this time around my mission was above and beyond that. It was purely about music, musical aesthetics, and nothing to do with nationality. I was lucky because I went abroad and ended up meeting people that are today probably all my best friends and will probably be my friends for life.

www.cnn.com, Sunday, October 20, 2002