There are lots of misconceptions about my music. People always want to classify what you do. I feel what I’m doing now is a natural continuation of what I’ve been doing in Iceland for the last 10 years. So I would rather everyone just think of this music as "Björk music".
I make Björk music, and Björk music is very flexible, very intense and very rich, but also very whimsical and always changing. I get bored very easily, I think... Yes, I think that is the reason why I do what I do : I get bored very easily.
A good pop song has to have that moment when you’re lost inside it and it grabs you and instantly enters you into the unknown. There’s got to be surprise. Maybe I’m naive but I believe in the same ecstatic state that Michael Jackson gets into ; he believes in the magic.
Je ne me considère toujours pas comme le patron. Je suis seulement celle qui possède la carte et le sextant. Je sais où l’on va et mon but, en tant que navigatrice, c’est d’expliquer le voyage à chacun. On enregistre avec moi, on suit mon itinéraire.
Les disques qui m’ont le plus bouleversée dans ma vie ont toujours été têtus, ne reflétant qu’un seul et unique point de vue. J’aime cette clarté. Mais pour ça, il me fallait apprendre. Et j’apprends lentement, marche par marche. Prudemment, j’ai grimpé l’échelle. D’abord en apprenant à chanter, puis à écrire les paroles, puis à jouer des claviers, puis à arranger les cordes... La seule difficulté est mentale : me convaincre que j’ai le droit à l’égoïsme. Un jour, j’ai eu le courage de dire " Vous avez tort et j’ai raison". C’est dur pour une fille qui, comme moi, est le bébé du punk. Diriger les gens n’est pas dans ma nature. Mais il faut que je m’habitue au fait que c’est ma musique et que je la connais mieux que tout le monde. Ce n’est pas du génie, juste de l’instinct.
La musique était très joyeuse, une pop gentillette. À la fois « bubble gum » et « fofolle ». Il s’agit plutôt de chansons pour enfants, mais aussi d’un titre que j’ai écrit moi-même.
Je n’ai pas de problème avec l’idée du genre, je crois que nous sommes tout à la fois féminin et masculin. Je me suis souvent sentie queer, et on dit que ma musique est queer. Dès les années 1990, je mettais en scène mes séances photo avec humour, pour éviter les clichés de l’image de la femme sexy. L’Islande est un pays froid, donc nous n’exprimons pas notre énergie érotique avec des porte-jarretelles au beau milieu des tempêtes de neige. Il nous faut trouver d’autres moyens d’exprimer notre sensualité [rires] ! J’aime l’idée que la sexualité s’exprime différemment dans le monde. Au Japon, par exemple, l’endroit le plus érotique du corps est la nuque. Les Islandais sont très sexuels, et les femmes peuvent exprimer leur désir, initier le sexe, de manière totalement égalitaire. Je n’ai jamais rejeté le masculin, seulement le patriarcat.
I’d been reading the news a bit too much, and I felt an exhaustion about the sense of self-importance in religious people. I wanted to remind people that there are and always have een other ways. I mean, Christianity may have existed for 2,000 years, but nature never left the building. There’s always been this insane arrogance that we’re not part of nature.
I always find it really exciting, personally — the merging of sequenced, machine-driven things and real acoustic instruments. And what excites me most is that you never know beforehand at what point they will meet. When you start to introduce acoustic instruments, sometimes it’s after you’ve done five percent of it that you get that merged, magical moment, and sometimes it’s not until after 95 percent. Each song has its own needs, so you never really know until it’s done. That’s what I really love about music.
I flirted with acting as a teenager and feel very lucky to have been able to try it. But what I found out is each person should only focus on one job and be completely unconditionally devoted to that job. So I picked singing.
How did being recognised for your role in Dancer In The Dark affect you ? Was it pleasing to be approved by a group of people unrelated to what is, essentially, your day job ? I read that you turned down a role in Michel Gondry’s The Science Of Sleep – was this in order to focus solely on music for the time being, on Volta and all the promo activity around it, or are you finished with acting ?
That is some sort of misunderstanding. There was, in the beginning, a chance I would play the main role in Human Nature, Michel’s first film (released in 2001). Parts of it were related to me – I had been going on about it for years with my visual collaborators, if i could be all hairy, and the whole Isobel story : being born in nature and not fitting at all into urban situations. But it was important for Michel to claim his independence at that time and I fully understood, so we both thought it would be good that he would do something without me. At that point we had done six videos together, but I was really relieved because it would have been hard to turn a friend down. It really isn’t on the top of my list to act – it is kinda at the bottom.
Acupuncture proved to be my saviour. I had a course of treatment that focused on the kidney meridian and that was supplemented by other Chinese medicines that were specially concocted for me. Thankfully, I managed to get over it quite quickly.
Since that experience, I’ve started to make an extra effort to take care of my body. I see my Chinese medicine doctor, Stephan Chmelik, at least once a week, and if I’m really busy or feeling run down, I go every day.
I feel good immediately afterwards, as if my batteries have been recharged, especially if I’ve had acupuncture. I find it amusing that Chinese medicine is called ’alternative’ in the West. After all, it’s been around for thousands of years, and in devoloped countries we’re only just beginning to understand its uses and power. It’s Western medicine which is the more recent treatment - that’s the alternative.
Of all the treatments I’ve tried, acupuncture is my favourite. It works by directing the flow of electromagnetic energy in your body so there’s no block.
The main reason I do it is for my lungs, so to strengthen them I have needles inserted on the area of skin between my thumb and forefinger. Just as a vein can go from your toe to hip, so a nerve can go from one area of the body to a completely different part. And what stimulates that nerve isn’t blood but electricity.
I’ve always felt I was either five or 90. So between 25 and 45 is just not me. I remember watching my mum and thinking that this period is just haywire time. It’s just a lot of hysteria about nothing, running around worrying about the rest of your life.
I’m pretty comfortable with it when it comes to experience, maturity, er, wisdom ; but I’d be lying if I said that it don’t piss me off that I don’t have the same energy I used to have when I was 20.
Where does she stand on the ravages of time ?
Right now, I feel like I look exhausted, because I’m tired. I’m not vain, like : I want to look pretty. That’s never bothered me. But if I see a photograph of me and I look tired, then I’d be more worried than if I looked ugly.
What, if anything, changed for you when you turned 40 ?
I don’t think that many things changed for me, to be honest. Every year brings different things and it has been like that since I’ve turned 40 as well. I think every year brings unknowns that you have to deal with and handle, confront and embrace. If I look back, it’s always been something on the agenda.
When I get drunk, I get drunk, there’s no doubt about it. Vodka by the bottle. That’s the kind of culture I come from. We don’t sip drink, we fucking drink it. You go all the way, otherwise you’re a wimp. It has a lot to do with the weather. You’re always either very sober or very drunk. There’s no room for the in-between stuff.
I used to love drinking during the blizzards in Iceland. You’d dress really well and run between bars getting really pissed on slammers. Slammers are the best drink when there’s blizzards. Then, we’d go out and roll in the snow. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss all that.
When I get drunk I’m usually over-the-top happy, just on a mission. It’s like all or nothing. You can stay at home and be sober, or get completely drunk. I wish I could be all polite and sit and drink two bottles of red wine and make it last for nine hours, but unh-uh. It has to be fucking blitzkrieg.
When you do it rarely and go all the way, it’s better than any fucking psychotherapy. Because your body just screams for these needs and just goes and jumps on a table if your body needs to.
It is hard to put into words. It is very intuitive. You can only take one day at a time, and if it feels right, it is right ; and if it doesn’t feel right, it isn’t right. But I do feel that it has something to do with releasing pressure, to make the same thing outside of yourself as what is inside you. And the more similar it feels, the more pressure it releases. It evens out, like physics ....
I guess I was just always singing. It wasn’t really forced ; it was like, if the school would go on a trip somewhere on a bus, and some people would tell jokes, and some people would go on about sports or something, on long journeys I remember the rest of the trip asking me to sing and they’d fall asleep to it or something. I’d sing in taxis or on buses, or on family trips.
You set up this balance where half the time you’re travelling the world and the other half you’re at home and I really like that balance, it makes you even more patriotic than if you were there all the time. My most patriotic songs were on Homogenic, and I did that in Spain. When you get really really homesick and you’re somewhere else you look back and it inspires you.
The climax for America was the ’50s. They had this outrageous faith in plastic and nylon and shampoo and tablets and Barbie and Ken. And they discovered rock ’n’ roll and they had really big cars. They want to stay there, which is completely natural. That’s when they were at their best. So Americans want to stick to Levis and leather jackets and Elvis and rock ’n’ roll. They want to stay there and I don’t blame them.
North America is like the moon, or China. It’s very exotic. I definitely feel like a vistor here. And I really like it. It’s like if you go to China or something, and you’ve been invited to a fireworks event... you just go for it.
I admire multi-talented acts like Janet Jackson and that lot, but I just don’t see how she’s got time to do all this. It’s the old-style American way, which is definitely a culture that I don’t come from. You can really see it on MTV and all the pop musicians from the U.S.A. They keep dancing in the videos like idiots from beginning to end where in Europe, they don’t. it’s just not in the culture.
I don’t know how they do it, she says, marveling at the contestants’ ability to learn songs quickly. If I didn’t like a song, I couldn’t even open my mouth. But, obviously, [the show] is about being a performer and being able to thrive under ridiculous pressure. I’d be an awful American Idol. I’d totally blow it.
Personally, I think a lot of these animal rights causes smell a bit. Of course people should treat animals with respect. They shouldn’t be used to test cosmetics or used to make music videos. But I don’t get the difference between eating some carrots and eating a rabbit. How much difference is there between cutting down trees to make a book and cooking up a lamb chop ?
Don’t misunderstand - I think groups like Greenpeace have done many brilliant things. But there are also problems with Greenpeace. When the orginization began, many of its members were from Germany. For them to march into Greenland and tell the indigenous people to stop killing seals is completly ridiculous.
What right have these people, from big industrial cities like Frankfurt, which contribute a lot of pollution, to tell people who live in harmony with nature not to eat seals ? What are they supposed to eat ? Snow ?
I love animals ! I really like pandas. I think they’re sexy, to be quite honest. I like so many though. I like fish and I like jellyfish- I think they’re gorgeous. I really like plants a lot too. Do you know who David Attenborough is ? I really love his DVDs. I like to watch those nature documentaries a lot. I really enjoy them.
It’s been an interesting tango in a way, it started with me putting up the website way back, and then all the fans started sending in mixes they’ve done, or cover versions - which is really flatterng because it’s not like you’re asking for anything, and they’re obviously doing it for free in their bedrooms or whatever...
Then for some reason, a lot of them would cover "Army Of Me" - do like some pretty heavy metal versions of the song, and I just thought it was so funny, because it’s probably the sort of last music genre that I’m probably... I’m attached to quite a few but not that one, you know.
So I thought, well that sort of deserves to be put out somehow, you know. Then the idea sort of got shelved and it wasn’t ’til the Tsunami thing happened that I though ’well, if there ever was a time, this is the time’. And then we sort of put it on the website, you know, "please could you send in the mixes again" , because obviously now it’s easier on the internet to send in really high quality sound ones and stuff...
And then 600 people sent in mixes ! In a space of like 3 days, because they couldn’t make new ones, they just had to send their old stuff — so it’s sort of like a tang thing ! In a way, they made me get the idea, because they were the ones who sent it in, and if they would just have been copies of my songs, I never would have thought of it, you know ? But because they took it somewhere else, it becomes its own thing.
I guess I was obviously as well quite chuffed that people bothered to work with my music, which is all a bit of a, quite flattering, you know. And then just to get the accordion version and you put the next one on and it’s a german electro clash one. So it’s just like... it’s kind of fun, and after a while you forget what song it is actually, you know.
When you’ve got the song finished in the studio and you’re going to perform it in concert, isn’t the idea to approach the studio arrangement as perfectly as you can ? Do you back to square one, when you you wrote the song, and you look at new points of departure from there to preserve the original one ?
That way of thinking came from spending so much time in bands. There are several ways of doing it. A band’s a band of course. A good band is based on good original material, but a band’s song are often more about the material, the foundation and working together than about songwriting. I think in my case anyway, that my songwriting started out being some kind of reaction to spending such a long time in bands. It’s fine, but there are other ways too. Songwriting as a kind of essence that needs to be changed later for performing in concert. The reason I’ve played a lot of instruments and sung myself on studio recordings is often simply for practical reasons. A process that’s taken some time. You can allow yourself the luxury of fiddling around in the studio and piecing the music together. You have the choice and you can create what becomes the basic material of the album. It can take a long time to evolve. It doesnt need to be a band that plays everything at the same time. When the time comes to perform the song in concert you can’t call all these elements together in one place and produce the original components that went into the song, because it took months to produce. It wouldn’t be genuine, you new a new approach. It’s more honest to start from scratch bearing the concert performance in mind.
What I don’t like about the word "art" is the fact that certain people are artists and certain people are not. The minute you think that this energy - like what you say, "innovative" - belongs to certain people and not to others, you’ve got it all wrong. Then you’ve got some sort of VIP or hierarchy of that energy. That energy belongs to everyone. You can be creative just by driving a taxi but you have a great sense of humor - I consider that very creative. I admire different people that can be in that kind of situation and still just come up with something that never existed before. At the end of the day, that’s what creativity is about, coming up with something that never existed before.
Nobody has ever told me how my records should sound. I make them and give them to the record company and that’s it. I know from other musicians how rare this is, and I’m grateful that I’ve been allowed to go through a natural evolution.
I always felt strongly about authority. I don’t like to be told what to do and I don’t like telling other people what to do. I think we work fine without bossing people about.
I used to be in a punk band that was so hardcore that if someone came to us and asked for an autograph, we’d just tell them to fuck off and get a life.
I suggest sending that message out to her fan club.
"Get a life !" She laughs.
Then again, there are strange things which make people happy. Like I get really happy and sentimental if my kid writes something to me, or I like the colour fluffy white. We all got our little soft spots ; why can’t you brush your teeth with your socks on, things like that.
J’ai été élevée dans une famille nombreuse où avoir un enfant n’a jamais été un frein à quoi que ce soit. Alors, ça ne m’a pas fait peur et j’ai continué à faire ce que je faisais avant très naturellement.
Well basically she asked my friend for a song, and my friend asked me to help them. i did it in a way as a favor to him really, you know, no offense to Madonna, but i was more or less doing it as a present to my friend.
A lot of people were surprised when you wrote Bedtime Story for Madonna. What did you think of what she did with that song ?
I don’t know, I sort of did it as a favour to [the producer] Nellee Hooper who is a friend of mine and I think she at first wanted us to write for her together as a team and I just didn’t think that was right. I thought she was a bit of a ’left hemisphere’ kind of person - she’s very run by logic and she’s a bit calculated. But, I thought she could be a bit of a right hemisphere person. So it was kind of interesting and exciting - I thought the most exciting way to approach this thing would be to... say, for example, another singer like Thom Yorke would write a lyric for me and he would almost write the words that I’ve never written but that he thinks I should sing. So the lyric [I wrote] was "Let’s get unconscious, honey" so she was just more... er... and she did her own version and wrote the lyrics wrong. I can’t remember right now, but it was a really interesting mistake. It was something like "Let’s say goodbye to logic and reason" and she got it wrong so that it actually meant the opposite. l’ll have to show you. I was like, "O-kay..."
I was able to make a record already at the age of eleven. It became a
hit, I became a child star and - hated it. The picture on the cover was
of me, but it didn’t feel like it was my album. All I did was to sing on
it and there was only one song I had written myself.
I felt horribly guilty. The papers wanted to do interviews with me, the
kids in school wanted to be friends with me and all of it felt horrible.
Then I was offered to do another album, but I said "fuck off" and
started a punk band with people my own age.
I had orange hair and everybody hated us, which was exactly what we
wanted.
Because I’m a live singer, I’m very aware of the fact that a song is not going to sound the same twice and it shouldn’t. So you just take advantage of what you’re feeling at the moment. It’s even better if you sing a cliched, happy tune when you’re really upset. It brings a lot of edge to it. When I was in the punk band Kukl with Einar though, that was fucking therapy ; every gig was like cutting your chest open and tearing out your heart. It just became ridiculous after a while.
I would be very happy if I could make my music in the same sense as a biologist doing research. Scientists, whatever, or inventors. Something. Probably my favourite people. Not having to explain it because it’s like ridiculous, really.
Because in a way, there’s nothing more to it than the music. That’s where all the magic is and the messages, and all the creation.
In your role producing, what tools, methods, or processes did you learn from your work with electronic producers such as Mark Bell and Graham Massey ? How does that contrast from working with producers who have more experience in non-electronic music ?
What a great question ! I thought i would never be asked that ! It is very different . The word production in electronic music seems to span way too big range . Where in normal bands you have a bass player , a drummer , a guitarist , a keyboardist and perhaps a producer . In electronic music all this would just be called production . There is this mystery still around computers ...
I have learned a lot from these people and perhaps , which a not a lot of people know about , i have been writing beats all the way since Debut . More and more . The majority of the Vespertine beats where by me . Sounds like i’m bragging but i guess with a question like that i’m also just keen on educating people how electronic music is made . It isn’t that simple that one producer walks in a room and presses one buttton and the whole song comes out and then the vocalist sings on top .
I admit it’s simple to be a singer because it’s sort of obvious what your mission is. For a lot of people it’s more abstract what it is they’re best at. Sometimes it’s quite hard to figure out where to channel all that energy. I think sometimes the world is full of race car drivers who want to be dentists and dentists who want to be race car drivers. I want to be a singer and I am a singer. I’m very lucky and that makes me humble.
BJÖRK : You start off with fucking health foods and no alcohol...
POLLY : ...you’re really cleaned out and you’re eating well and doing exercise, swimming every day, and by the end of the tour you’re drinking to calm down instead of meditating or whatever, and eating crap and smoking.
TORI : It’s really great for me to hear this because my tour starts tomorrow.
BJÖRK : And your reading just goes down the toilet. You start off reading highly spiritual, good-for-the-brain things and by the end I’m just reading about fucking and sex orgies.
We live in a time when pop music is very beat-driven and producer-driven. Sometimes the artist gets lost in the production. You are both a producer and artist. Do you see the roles as the same ?
A I have always felt that too many different things in electronic music are called "production." In a rock band you have rhythm, bass line, keyboards, guitar and production. In electronic music all of this is called "production." I have written a lot of songs where someone comes in right at the end when the song is 90 percent ready and adds in a bass line and gets production credit. I feel a lot of it is because computers carry a lot of mystery around them, and it is hard for people to see it for what it is. Also a part of it might be a pinch of sexism. I have seen [this] over and over. ... Obviously creative girl producers like Missy Elliott, Peaches and M.I.A. credited in the press as only singers, and then whatever guy who was in a 5-meter radius when the recording happened gets all the production credit, even though it says on the CD cover credit that they produced it. But I feel it is changing now. Everybody has computers ; everybody is writing music on their computers at home, including girls. So we’ll see.
Juergen Teller : That is pretty incredible. So I was wondering, would you say that you are an exhibitionist ?
Björk : In my most natural state, I’ll be introverted for say, six days in a row, and then on the seventh day I’ll become very extroverted, completely inside-out. Then I’ll have to go back inside myself. Sometimes the change can be quite forceful-it’s something I can’t really control. It’s a bit like the ocean and the tides.
Juergen Teller : Yeah, I know what you mean. Do you ever try to fight it ?
Björk : It’s quite interesting. If you always go by how you feel, life can end up quite a lonely affair. But if you go against that sometimes-say you’re in the middle of an introverted stage and a friend comes for a visit, and you make an effort to get out of yourself, to communicate-I think that’s beautiful thing. It’s a sacrifice of your own emotional state for someone else.
Juergen Teller : Right.
Björk : That was one of the most painful things about doing the film. The cast and crew only saw me when I was being extroverted. We’d film, and then we’d have lunch, where I felt compelled to be outgoing, and then we’d go back to filming, and then I would go to bed, and then I’d wake up the next morning, and I’d have to be extroverted again !
Juergen Teller : For months and months...
Björk : I experienced that time as very violent, because I’m not like that. I’m far more secretive. There are sides of myself that I don’t show to anyone-I’m actually quite a loner. So when I had to be extroverted everyday for the film, the pressure built up like a volcano. I certain people are born to be actors, and they’re naturally extroverted when they wake up every day.
Juergen Teller : That doesn’t apply to you at all.
Björk : But I am quite attracted to people who are like that, because I’m not.
I think that’s more a British than an American thing. Americans tend to like things that are not what they see every day, they’re even a bit addicted to it - their Minnie Mouses, Donald Ducks, "Star Wars". But the British are more conservative. They’ve also got this Imperialist way of thinking. It’s just very hard to explain to a British person, I’ve got a British boyfriend and he kind of almost doesn’t get it when I explain.
It’s like sexism, it’s so deep that you don’t realise it, and the biggest sexists, they are the ones who think they’re not. It’s the same with British people. They’re so sure that they’re much better, they don’t even think about it. They tend to treat other people like rarities, like something you should keep in a box and put in a museum. They don’t deal with them as equals with feelings.
You can see that a lot in their films, how they portray Indians and Chinese people. It’s kind of like something pretty to look at and then throw away. An object, like a rhino’s skull from Africa. That manifests itself in the rock business as well, you know. They take someone like Ofra Haza... I guess I’ve been caught up in that as well.
I think it’s funny and actually I couldn’t be more pleased with the situation. When I was growing up, I always had this feeling that I had been dropped in from somewhere else. That was how I was treated at school in Iceland where the kids used to call me ’China girl’ and everybody thought I was unusual because I looked Chinese. It gave me room to do my own thing. In school, I was mostly on my own, playing happily in my private world making things, composing little songs. If I can get the space I need to do my own thing by being called an alien, an elf, a China girl, or whatever, then that’s great ! I think I’ve only realised in the past few years what a comfortable situation that is.
I sometimes wonder what they would say if I was from Leeds. But my relationship with England is kind of cute, too. When I was developing as a vocalist, little kids here in Reykjavik would throw rocks at me because they thought I was weird, but English music papers like the NME discovered The Sugarcubes and gave me some credit, so I was never offended by them calling me an elf.
Anyway, Britain has druids, and it was an Englishman who wrote The Lord of the Rings. I mean, how many goblins and elves can you put in one story ? Oh, and England is the best place for eccentrics, too. All those totally gorgeous people like Richard James and David Bowie. They couldn’t come from anywhere else.
I get quite defensive when people think I’m really untogether and airy-fairy. They think I’m this sort of elf. A side of me is [innocent], but the other side of me is a single mother who’s had to fight, hardcore.
I’ve been an adult for a long time now, I’m 27 ! I pay bills and drink alcohol like an adult. What more can I do to prove I’m an adult ? I thought I was an adult. I’m just having fun, y’know ?
I’ve lived with the label "different" since I was a kid. I’ve always laughed at it. And I don’t feel bad of people making fun of me. Or... I really like it if I should be honest. Sometimes I take myself too seriously so I need the wallops as medication. But I’ve never told anyone and then people take for granted that I am "oh so sensitive and self-absorbed".
At one point, Antony told me that he wished that people would stop seeing him as odd or eccentric, and realize that he is just writing simple, heartfelt songs. Have you ever felt you were overly classified as being peculiar or idiosyncratic ?
Yes. I feel I’m a pretty healthy, normal human being. I haven’t been oppressed by religion or sexism and so on. But people are scared of anyone different, so they point at me.
Do you hate it when people think you’re a bit mad ?
Yeah, very much so. I just think it’s a misunderstanding.
What’s the misunderstanding ?
Well, it’s obvious. Just look. You just have to be an airplane and watch the city from above. Just watch. And this place is alive, and if you’re not going to be alive, and refuse all those things in, you’re fucked.
People have always found me strange and it just makes me laugh. I guess it’s a kind of handicap, for people not to be able to understand you, but I’m not really bothered because I have a good group of friends, and to them I’m the most down-to-earth, common-sense person you could ever find. And I think I am a very no-bull-shit, straighforward kind of person. I guess it’s a compliment to be considered complicated !
I’ve been called weird since I was three or four. I had got used to it by the age of five. I made a decision then : I’d either live my life by what people thought of me and to a set of rules which I didn’t really know or understand which would make me incredibly unhappy, or I could just do what I wanted. And that’s a lot more fun, isn’t it ? Call me a freak for thinking that, but it’s what I do.
I do get hour long interviews in which all the questions are ’why are you so weird ?’, things like that, but I don’t think I’m weird. Everybody sees things from their own viewpoint, and because no two people are the same, that makes everybody weird. It means that what is normal to me is not normal to you, and vice versa, which doesn’t bother me. I’ve got quite comfortable in my own little misunderstood position. I grew up that way, since I was at school, and quickly learnt to turn it to my advantage.
Brrrrrrrr, that’s probably for other people to say [laughing]. When l’m drunk, I think it’s always been quite an Icelandic experience for me. For weeks l’ll work really hard, and l’m not the sort of person who likes to have a glass of wine every night, it sort of spoils it for me. So when I go out. I go out !
And binge ?
[Laughing] Is that what they’re writing about in the British press now ? Binge drinking ? l’m probably a binge drinker then. I tend to go out with a small group of friends usually to a small bar where there are not many people there and I get left alone. Usually the sorts of bars I like to go to, the people there are maybe too cool for school, they don’t bother me. I dance, probably make a fool of myself, and go to bed, wake up the next day hung over and it was a laugh ! I don’t usually get aggressive or stuff, that’s probably because it would be a week or two since I last had alcohol - I think that tends to happen when it’s night after night.
I don’t feel that experimental. I just feel we are living in such conservative times. Nowadays the Beatles would be considered avant-garde. I feel it is only natural to want to grow a little into the unknown on every album. That should not be looked at as so ’out there.
Being famous is like 9 billion volts of electricity going through you. You feel it like that. That’s what it feels like.
There are people who are born to do it - the Lady Dianas and Mother
Theresas of this world - who really have that level of communication,
that talent to communicate 24 hours a day, and let all these people live
through them. And it’s actually a very positive, not a negative, thing -
a self-sacrificial thing they are doing.
I did feel honoured because I’m a foreigner and I was living in England and I was offered the chance to be an A-lister. Normally I spend a lot of my time solitaire. It just felt a bit weird, because I have to be able to write music, and when I walk down the street I have this music going on in my head. That’s my life, and it felt like a thousand people had moved in there and they were leaving their dirty socks around, so I couldn’t write music. I’m a pretty tough cookie you know, and if I could endure that and still write good music, I would have endured it ; but it wasn’t creative, so it had absolutely no interest for me. It was boring.
Iceland is so small that everybody knows each other. Everybody knows me. They buy the record more because someone went to school with someone who knows me. I don’t think they buy it purely for the music, All people who do well abroad, they consider almost national heroes, Like, I was voted Woman Of The Year in a magazine. Not because of me, but because of recognition abroad. It’s that inferiority complex, because it’s such a small country.
On ascale of l-10 how glamourous would you say your life is ?
[Almost spills her tea down her face and giggles] Whoopsie-daisy ! It really depends on whom you compare it to : I do travel a lot, that’s probably quite glamourous. l’ve been doing it for so long, there are certain things that have sheen to them that are actually not glamourous, like lots of cars. That to me says hard work, not glamour. Car insurance : can you imagine how many forms you’d have to fill in ? I have an assistant, but not all the time. I always pay the champagne bill. But I don’t like Cristal - I like Veuve Cliquot. It’s like the same price as a bottle of wine anyway. But that’s my only ’living large’.
Hmm, good question. Do you know things aren’t bad right now, actually, I think it’s pretty abstract because you’ll have periods where five things in your life are going terribly badly and two are amazing. Looking back on periods that were pretty bad, there were maybe two or three diamonds there. But one thing I know : musically I have introvert periods and extrovert periods and maybe now l’m ready for an extrovert period, but I could never feel that way unless I was quite introverted for a few years before. Same when I was doing Debut, I had for a few years before that been in bands that were difficult. So by the time I did Debut it was harvest lime !
You learn, after a while, to turn everything into something that turns you on. It’s like you’ve got this button. You learn to use things. If someone shouts at you, you can use it to make a song better.
I’ve never been into the establishment and the hidden rules that come with that ; you’re supposed to dress a certain way, sing a certain way, be a certain way, cook a certain way. I don’t believe in that. We’re all very different. I don’t think anybody fits. It’s not only me.
I still spend half my time in Iceland, so I’m still very Icelandic, but at the same time I think the world is getting really international - especially with the internet. It’s so fun to explore things from different parts of the world on the web. Like when I was doing this album I got really into different kinds of vocal music and I would go explore around the web for it. It didn’t matter where anybody was, and it’s so lovely that there’s a time in the world for trainspotters. You can just be a trainspotter and you’ll always find somebody on the web internationally who can be your team. The world is getting really international, and that’s a great thing.
I could be more in control but I don’t want to be. I’m in control as much as I want to be. I decide what happens. I’m always so thirsty for this element of surprise that I don’t want to plan more than a few days ahead
Why would anyone want to interview me either ? When I was a teenager I just wanted to read interviews with great scientists and great writers. I’m just a pop star. I do have things to say but 99% of that goes in the songs.
The exciting thing about making music is that it forces you to be adventurous. Whenever I start a new album I never know how it will end up or who I will meet along the way. I just have to follow my instinct and be brave like a warrior.
There’s a new generation of men now who don’t just want to be macho. It’s completely unfashionable to be macho. It’s just out. All the women have to be macho these days. I’ve got a lot of macho in me. People might notice that unless they know me well, but I’ve got a lot of that grrr.. motor in me.
There’s quite a bit of humor in your work. Do you think the public often misinterprets it or worse yet, writes it off as extreme eccentricity ?
Probably, but then again, I’m sort of doing my own thing. I’ve been quite lucky and I’m not trying to please anyone, and yet people are still interested in me. I don’t expect people to get me. That would be quite arrogant. I think there are a lot of people out there in the world that nobody gets. I guess I’m quite used to not being understood rather than being understood. But then again, if I turn on the news and I see a chess player, an athlete or a politician, I don’t really get them [laughs].
In order to get someone you have to read books about them, listen to their albums, spend time with them — it’s a lot of time and effort, and I don’t expect that. I know there are people that have done that with my music and I really appreciate that. But the overall public haven’t done that so, of course, they’re not going to get me. It’s not like I’m bitter about it [laughs]. It’s just like, they don’t know what’s behind the mountain because they haven’t gone there.
Well, it’s a big subject. Two-thirds of the world is ocean. Matthew and I are actually thinking about selling one of our houses in New York to buy a boat. It could be our home and our studio and we could travel around and drop the anchor wherever we found inspiration. I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before.
I guess I’m really organized. But naturally so. A lot of people don’t know that about me, because it’s very hidden ; I guess that comes from being brought up with a lot of hippies, when being organized was almost a fault. So I would hide that very carefully, and sneak off with my rucksack, and get out of town and concentrate on school. But it would be really hidden. Yeah.
So I think my flat is sort of messy, but I know where everything is, if that makes sense to you.
Half of me is a bit of a rebel, thinking that someone my dad used to listen to, stuff like Cream, saying that my stuff is all right must mean I’ve gone wrong somewhere. But half of me is really flattered. If you want the honest truth I’ll be sickly sentimental and say that if my best friend says she likes a song it would affect me a lot more.
It’s hard for me to understand [the teen pregnancy problem] in this country because I come from a really family-oriented place, where young people having children isn’t a big deal. I also had a lot of family members who helped me out with Sindri. Maybe a lot of girls don’t have that, so it’s a tough one for me to answer.
In my group of friends, I’m probably one of the most grounded ones. I’ve got three sisters and three brothers so I’m really responsible. Maybe not what you’d call the sensible one, but I’m definitely the one who’s responsible...a bit too responsible sometimes. My friends say to me "Just chill out for a minute."
I’m self-sufficient. I spend a lot of time on my own and I shut off quite easily. When I communicate, I communicate 900 per cent, then I shut off, which scares people sometimes.
Is she the same person as the 11-year-old Björk or the 21-year-old who recorded Birthday, or has she shed those skins ?
A bit of both. Also, because I’m a singer, from album to album it’s always the same voice. If I was an instrumental musician it might be different ; I might cling more to my noises. But you’re always going to be able to tell I’m a female from Iceland and that English is my second language and maybe guess my age ; there’s already so much luggage there. Maybe that makes me a bit - not braver, but making it a necessity to change.
I’ve always got the same voice, I’m always from Iceland, every year I age one year, but people always say to me, God, you’ve changed everything again. But I haven’t. Maybe 40% is changed, but the rest is me. Like on Volta, I have a continuity song like Pneumonia that has a relative on Medulla and Vespertine – it doesn’t matter what album is happening at the moment, certain feelings are just going to come.
Maybe people think I change a lot because I always have these clashes within me all the time, and those change in importance. For instance, Iceland will always be my emotional home, but I love cities. I’m a rural person but I always like to go back to these noise. These priorities change around, and they do because I’m human, you know ? So these differences for me are part of being the same.
You have this image of being a small, vulnerable, pixie-like person. You have played up that image, haven’t you ?
Yeah, but I don’t know how many times I’ve had this conversation with people where, they’ve met me four or five times, got to know me a bit, they say, You know, I thought you were this sort of pixie-type person, but you’re actually one of the toughest people I’ve ever met and I’m yawning at that point. It’s not like playing innocent, it’s just the way I am. It seems to be that when people know me for a while, they realise I’m very tough. But not in a sort of bollocks way, breaking things and shouting. In a more quiet way. My older friends in Iceland, they complain that I’m too hard, too tough. Working hard, dealing with things. And they’re always telling me to relax.
Can a grown woman be driven to fits by the constant use of the word pixie ?
It’s other people’s problems if they see me that way, not mine. I don’t think there should be any standard of what a girl my age should look like. I think a lot of people look at me and say that I’m weird. But what I’ve noticed - and thise used to worry me alot when I was little - is that I don’t know one normal person. I’ve never met one, actually. We all have our special, odd little things, and we should be proud of that.
Do you think that being partners with another artist [Björk is in a relationship with Matthew Barney] influences you in a way ? When you’re writing lyrics, do you ever think, “Wow, maybe I shouldn’t say that ?“ because it’s, like, a secret ?
Yeah, well, I use all sorts of tricks, both consciously and unconsciously. I’ll write a song, and a few days later I figure, “Oh, it says ‘she’ all the time.“ Then you’ve worked out that you’ve just hidden it. You don’t want anybody to know that it was a “he.“
Good hiding, when you can’t recognize it yourself ! [both laugh]
Also, because I’ve been doing it for a long time, you kind of know who is going to get hurt and that sort of thing. Overall I’m careful, but since I was a teenager, a lot of the times I’ve been with artists. And that’s probably affected me in all sorts of ways. I don’t know if it’s because I’m more of a grown-up now, but the biggest influence is just the mutual respect and the support.
It’s true. You don’t have to explain why you’re going to be all night in a studio.
Yeah, totally. The support makes you strong—you’re being loved, so then you can be stronger when you go and do your work. I think that’s more how the relationship is an influence than “Oh, he’s doing pink this year, so I’m doing pink, too.“ Or something superficial like that.
Do you feel as if you stayed young for as long as you wanted or that you grew up – grew too mature – for your youth ?
Bit of both. Because I had to be self-sufficient from early age, I sort of peaked at age seven. And the balance I found then has sort of stayed with me. I’m half child half ancient.
Question : What’s your favorite venue and country to perform at ?
Björk : Hmmm... it’s really hard to pick ! It really depends on the show. I’ve done marvelous shows in great places, and then later done not-so-great shows in the same place. There are some gorgeous places around the world, both outside and inside. There’s one place that’s in a cave in the Canary Islands that I hope to play one day.
The first time I went to London, I’d walk for three or four hours and couldn’t find a way out of the city. Only now have I begun to enjoy the strain of a city. Cities are bad for you, and I kind of like that. It compresses you and can be very stimulating.
When I was young, I was surrounded by friends who were always having these drunken passionate arguments all around me. I sometimes feel as if I read a lot of important books just by listening to their arguments.
I’m terrified of getting bored. I always make sure that I’ve got nine things, at least, to do. I panic if I think I’m going to have to twiddle my thumbs. I’ve tried lying around the house doing nothing but I hate it. It’s my worst point but it’s a good point as well ’cause you get a lot of things done. I like action.
I just wasn’t interested in boys until a few years ago. I thought they were shit. You can’t talk to them, especially as a teenager. You could play with them in a band but as people they were so limited. You can’t get properly drunk with them, like, all-the-way drunk.
When I was 14 I thought boys were only good for being in bands with. I thought one of the most horrible things that could happen to me would be to get a boyfriend, as all my girlfriends had just lost the plot when they got one. Then I met Thor (Eldon, a budding guitarist) when I was 16 and it was love at first sight. I moved into his house the same evening.
The majority of my best friends are boys, especially when I go out and get drunk, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to get involved. I tend to find out about five years later that the guy fancied me, and I’m like, ’What ?’. Like I didn’t know that was going on.
Have you ever had that problem where you just can’t make someone see the obvious because of their sex ? Where you think, "I know he can’t understand this, and I can’t explain it clearly because he’s male and I’m not." Have you had that with men ?
I don’t think so, because I’ve always been a bit of a tomboy, I started in bands when I was 11 , and I couldn’t stand boys, because they were just stupid, At that age, they’re not as emotionally developed. So I just thought, well, boys are not good for anything except to get them to play drums, or do bass lines, or have sex with occasionally, but otherwise they’re not very interesting creatures, But what’s most important for me is working relationships, I’ve always had at least one intimate working relationship. And when you have one it’s so precious, almost more than a friendship. And the sex thing doesn’t matter, You end up finding boys making the most feminine drumbeats there are, and being very emotional and delicate when they create, although they’re bastards in real life. And when that happens, it’s really warm, the most satisfying thing in the world, and it’s beyond sexuality or gender. So I think I trained myself to ignore it since I was 11, because the most important thing for me was to make the best song in the world.
I remember the taste of coconut bread and an island with lizards that were the size of cats, she says, referring to an island in Angra dos Reis where she went after her Free Jazz dates in 1996.
I had a Brazilian musical phase, in between 94 and 95, trying to understand how a country from the second world, besides Iceland, dealt with the tradition of German and French string orchestration. Nowadays I am listening lots of Erich Korngold (classic Czech musician, that has also written lots of soundtracks for Hollywood).
It’s interesting. I was in Brazil this summer for the festival. People spend all year making their costumes, then in March they get post-carnival depression so everyone goes to the psychiatrist. We get it after Christmas ! All their costumes are torn, lying on their bed. I really recommend this carnival. I went to this town called Salvador. It’s not so commercial, more like voodoo. In Rio De Janeiro, it’s more like Ricky Martin, drag queen sort of thing. In Salvador you get these 70 year old black women with outfits made of tinfoil, who go into a trance with all this drumming. I’d love to go again. But it’s too hot for Icelandic people.
I feel weird because I’ve been doing interviews for 20 years and this is the first time I’ve talked about stuff like politics. I would prefer music to be abstract rather than standing on a podium pointing a finger at what’s wrong with the world. I always said that I would never get involved in politics, but then situations can become too much. You reach a moment when even someone like me has to stand up and say ’wait a minute’.
Maybe we can’t do anything about Bush and bin Laden. Those guys are going to play their games whatever happens. But I thought : ’Here’s something where we can have a say.’ I wanted to be part of it.
Politics is so black and white and what’s great about music is that it’s above and beyond that. Music is so complex and it has all these organic mechanisms and life forces growing inside it. It belittles it to say that music is left or right, or pro-this or anti-that.
Not to be cruel, but I don’t see the point in BritPop. I mean, it’s kind of been done, you know ? Either improve it or do something that hasn’t been done before.
I’ve been reading about reincarnation, and the Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists.
But this innovation business is expensive, isn’t it ? There must be times when her label, One Little Indian, baulks at her production budgets ?
I can honestly say I’ve never had that from [One Little Indian MD] Derek Birkett. In fact he’s more likely to ring me up and say, ‘Okay, send me your dream list of dream directors.’
I hate when it limits people. I went to the USSR when it existed and bureaucracy kept everything down. I don’t like filling in forms. A friend of mine went to Canada once and on the form you fill in as you enter the country it asked if he had committed a crime in Canada, and he put, ’Not yet’. And they threw him in jail.
You know you can buy an island there (in Tunisia) for 50 grand ? I’m going to buy one, with a house and everyting - it’s cheaper than a flat in London. I don’t know wheather I want one with villages and shops and people to talk to, or one with nothing. Then I’ll come to London for little trips and go completely bonkers.
I looked at it (a Scottish island) and I guess I found out that I wasn’t ready yet — I’ve still got things to do.
I always wanted an island since I was a child. And I guess once in awhile I look, but I think I’ll probably settle when I’m about 40 or 50 with a pipe organ that I can play at midnight. And I’m going to be this granny and they’re going to send the children to me and they think I’m a bit mad, but they know ’She means well.’ And the kids have a good time with me — they’re not scared of me. And I’ll play them the pipe organ.
I am !" she shouts, belting me in the chest with excitement,
"in Tunisia ! You know you can buy an island for 50 grand ? I’m going to buy one, with a house and everything - cheaper than a flat in London," she points out, belting me again. "I’m doing that next summer, that’ll be my base. I started thinking about it two years ago and when I decide something, that’s it : that’s a decision [reconsiders] . Actually, I decided when I was a kid I was going to move to an island - the ocean makes my head function better. I’ll be going there on my own but you know what it’s going to be like, don’t you ? A fucking health farm for all my friends. They’ll come to me just before they have that nervous breakdown. I’m thinking about this one tiny island with one gorgeous building, a Greek chateau building from the 13th century. That one’s 40 grand. I don’t know whether I want one with a little village with shops and people to talk to or one with nothing at all. Then I’ll come to London for little trips and go completely bonkers and then go back home.
I just really wanted to go to Canada. I’ve been listening to quite a lot of music. You seem to have quite a good scene of young kids doing techno music in Toronto now. I guess my favorite was a compilation CD called Northern Circuits.
I don’t want to be rude or anything. I understand they come to the show and they want to keep a memory. I appreciate that.
But after two or three songs I just have to say ’Listen, if you want me to be here in the moment with you, then you’ve got to be too’.
It sounds weird but I really have to feel that we’re doing it together. A live concert is all about being there in the moment. You just have to let go.
What bothers me about it [is] you prepare yourself psychologically before a show and you go on stage and you open up and you want to be open.
It’s a bit like going out to dinner with your friend. You’ve decided you want to trust them with something really important and the minute you start talking he picks up his mobile phone and starts texting and you think, ’What ? wait a minute ! Are you listening to me, do you care ?’ It’s like, ’Look me in the eye’.
I’ve never been out to shock. I know that might sound like a surprise to some people, but that’s actually not where I’m coming from. Like, throwing up onstage just for the heck of it. I dont beleive in that , really. My target is not to challenge people or challenge my friends. It’s more just to exercise freedom and just say ; ’I’m not going to be tied down.’ Also, I dont want to push the ’no-no’ button because you shouldnt push it. I dont beleive in stuff like that. For me , I’m more driven by passion or by something I’m turned on by, and later I’ll meet the system and end up having to justify what I did. But the place it’s really coming from is just longing. Hand on my heart, I’m not here to shock.
This may sound like a contradiction, but I like that in some ways some things will always be the same. We’ll always put on a raincoat when it rains and a bathing suit when we go to the beach. And there will always be pop music. At the end of the day, people want to sit down and write about what’s happening and what they’re hoping for. It’s so natural.
I want to work on my character. I think it’s in there, a good person. I don’t believe in just doing good things, I want to feed my demon as well. One should learn to live both the demon and the angel, you know ? But I have a way to go. People excite me, they turn me on. A new person can trigger things in you that you didn’t even know you had. If it’s musical that’s even better The unknown turns me on.
I always feel a bit funny about it because I don’t know where the money’s going and the people come and I don’t know them ... and [you hear] scandal stories about charities where most of the money pays for champagne to help with celebrities.
What’s the cheesiest, most mainstream, embarrassing record in your collection ?
(Thinks for ages looking up at the ceiling) I got tons of those, I don’t know which to pick. I love pop, when you’re having that Friday night moment with a few glasses of champagne. You just want to hear pop, you know ? I’m not even ashamed of it. I DJ Usher and tons of tracks. I used to DJ Foreigner’s Cold as Ice. I think it’s the works. I’ve always loved Pop. I’m Michael Jackson’s biggest fan.
Going to my conservative family and being the really freaky hippie, with the long hair and barefoot, and I go back to my hippie people and say, ’listen, actually you’re supposed to sleep once a day, you’re supposed to eat bread’, and being really down-to-earth practical, conservative, being the little kid to say, ’listen, I want food now, mum ! Dinner, no, stop it, comb your hair, now’, sort of thing.
I know we’ve talked about China...but Shanghai is an amazing place. I mean, they are interesting times to be there. Because Shanghai is three times New York, like New York in the 1970s, or even the 1930s. They’re like in 2020s there, building skyscrapers with 90 floors. It’s very exciting in a way, you can feel it in the air – I mean, you don’t need to have a cappuccino to wake you up because the energy there’s just crazy. But obviously that kind of future of sorts comes with other things, and the human rights issues out there I have said enough about, I think. How they’re going to react to the Western World’s interest in them... I don’t know what will happen. But I think having the opportunity to see the East, like Korea too, is very important for political understanding. In some ways, they were trying to be so ahead of anything else.
Chinese medicine is preventive - you treat a disease that hasn’t happened yet. Western medicine is the opposite - you wait until you’re ill and then you’re treated.
Chinese medicine doctors look to the future for weaknesses and excesses that could cause problems if they are not dealt with - balancing out the yin and the yang, which is something that acupuncture and many other alternative remedies do.
It’s always difficult to gather together songs that make a complete whole when you’re doing an album. I think in the end you don’t always pick the best songs, but you pick songs that complete the jigsaw puzzle.
I’ve played keyboards since I was a kid and with the Sugarcubes. Those sort of chord structures and strings in "Joga" (from Homogenic) are my chord sounds.
I love Christmas," she says. "The presents, everything about it. Me and Sindri always get a really tall Christmas tree and decorate it ourselves. One time we had one four metres tall and Sindri decorated it so all the baubles were at his eye-level. I was `Do you mind if I put some above ?’ and he was really hurt - `Mum ! Don’t you like the way I’ve decorated ?’ `Yes but I’m looking at green !’ The snow’s incredible there - two, three metres high and you have to walk through little tunnels with lighters and scarves. You go into shops and they give you hot chocolate with cognac in it - it’s the best. Everyone wears those overalls, really thick, woolly inside, like the ones people wear to fix the road. With bikinis inside. Hehheh.
And did you know that Iceland did the world record in fireworks on New Year’s ? It’s not like in England where special people have to do it : in Iceland everybody just goes to the shop, buys a big plastic bag - I think the average is 60 quid - and that includes infants and old people. You get them out and go `Psheu ! Sheu. All the houses are lit up and on New Year’s they’re all open. You just go in any of them, there’s no real robberies or anything, the whole city is just like `Yeaaaaaah !!
We’ve got 13 Santa Clauses ! They start coming to town, one by one, 13 days before Christmas. One slams doors, one is a peek-a-boo — a bit of a pervert, really. One of the Santas steals your food. They basically all do different things, and they’re all naughty. We just laugh at the idea that Santa is this big cuddly, friendly chap. It’s like, uh-uh, don’t trust him. They’re all pretty mean, but they’ve got a sense of humour. They’re not vicious.
And Santa’s mum, she’s called Gryla and she’s basically a witch. She really wants you to misbehave, and she does a lot of things to tempt you. And there’s a big black cat, the same size as human beings, and he eats you if you don’t get anything new for Christmas. You have to have at least one pair of mittens or new shoes...
Isn’t that a bit scary if you’re a poor kid ?
I think it’s kind of good, ’cos in the old days when everyone was really poor, it meant that at least you knew you were going to get one new thing for Christmas, even if it was woollen socks or whatever.
And obviously, it’s 24 hour darkness for Christmas in Iceland and you’ve got northern lights and snow. It’s very Christmassy — you can’t really get any more Christmassy.
Björk : I went to music school for ten years, but I rebelled against it. I felt the school was too controlling, and I didn’t understand what a ten-year-old Icelandic girl had to do with all these three-hundred-year-old German guys. Quite a few times the schoolmaster called me to his office, where we would have these three-hour debates where we’d both cry, because I didn’t agree with the direction the school was taking. I thought we should talk more about this century, and more about composers that were closer to us. I ended up playing stuff by twentieth-century Finnish composers, for instance.
Juergen Teller : I think he’s excellent, Neil Young. So when you left school, did you sort of turn your back on all the classical stuff ?
Björk : Actually, back in the early days, I toured with a string octet, eight kids who’d gone to that same school in Iceland. Since I could have gone the classical path too, it was very interesting to work together. We toured for one-and-a-half years, and we’d get drunk in all the cities and have long, healthy debates about music. And luckily enough, We all had different points of view.
Juergen Teller : That sounds really good.
Björk : But afterwards, I basically ignored that side of me until 1996, When I made Homogenic. I decided I had to confront it. I also worked through a lot of craftsmanship issues by doing the soundtrack to Dancer In The Dark-all that orchestral stuff. I caught up with myself, but it took three albums.
I never thought my albums were for clubs. I think it’s more maybe the remixes and they were not really done for clubs, either. I think my music has always been for headphones and people listen to it in private. I was really flattered when people called me dance diva and all that. But no, I go to clubs, but I guess I’ve got quite picky. Living in London where there’s so many clubs, you’re spoilt rotten. I have to know there’s a good DJ before I’ll get off my arse and go. But the whole Squarepusher and Mike Paradinas and Aphex - any of those lot will get me out of my chair. Metalheadz and the whole Anokha thing.
Back in 1988, I started going to hip-hop clubs where a lot of things were happening, to find records you can’t exactly pick from your collection and play. You might have to go to 50 clubs and then, at number 51, at six o’clock in the morning, there comes the most brilliant half an hour you’ve heard in your life, when the DJ stops worrying about pleasing people and just pleases himself.
I just love doing music with people ; it’s the biggest kick ever. But what I need is patience to make the song finish in my head because now in my head I’ve got a lyric, a string arrangement, a bass line, the sounds, what instruments I want to use, I’ve got the rhythm, but if I would have met a person that I would have musically fallen in love with, say, in June, that probably meant that I would have only written the melody and the bass line by then, so he would have written the rest. But if I wait, I end up finishing the song myself.
...surely a Björk record is only as good as its producers.
But I always collaborate, she fumes, and it always says in big letters on the record that these are Nellee Hooper’s beats, or this is a song written and produced by Björk and Tricky.
So far, so good, then.
I could just rent a programmer and say, Copy this. Not in a million years would I ever dream of that.
Indeed, why do that when you can pick up instant cred points simply by having Tricky or Graham Massey on your album ? Björk has no time for such silly talk.
It happens to be that a lot of boys do beats, and a lot of girls tend to be more Iyrical. If a boy does a record with beats, say someone like Tricky or Goldie, and they have several singers on it, that’s cool, but if a singer does a record and gets several people to do beats, they’re stealing.
Well, this is very important : People have said that I do a bit of this and a bit of that, but that’s never been the case. I never wanted a style simply for style’s sake. Music is a very personal and human thing, so if I go and do a song with, say, Tricky, I don’t give a shit where he comes from. His race is bollocks. And when I’m talking with you, I’m not looking for your passport and wondering where you’re from or what you brought here, like the hippies do : "I wonder what star sign he is." No luggage, please ! When I work with someone, it’s down to two characters. Björk Goes Latin, that wouldn’t be honest.
I think it’s like this : If you are in complete demand about what you do, then you most often have good relationships with other people. You are always best at communicating with other people when you don’t really need them. It’s like that ! On the other hand, when you are sad and alone and really need other people, then they most often run away from you ! *laughs*
I started to play in bands when I was 12 years old.
Most of the times I was the only girl but what’s most important is to make a good song. So if you want something like this you have to very quickly ignore things like the food-taste of the other person. If he likes sausages and you don’t you can’t let that stand in your way. And very quickly it goes on like the clothes the person wears doesn’t matter, the sex doesn’t matter, the race doesn’t matter, the age doesn’t matter.
I became completely like "I don’t want to know". I just want to work with this person so that 1+1 becomes 1. If you’re lucky then it will continue all the way until what’s more impossible happens. 1+1 is 3. Then you have a song.
So every time as a teenager when I played in bands and I was the only girl, then I could always hear someone say "Oh, but she’s a girl". Then I knew I just could smell trouble. It doesn’t stand in the way. You’re just working with people, not with sex, age or race.
So one of the misconceptions people have about me is when they see me and sees a woman. "She can do this and she’s a woman" or "She can’t do this ’cause she’s a woman".
I just work with them for one or two days then they’re forgotten. It’s just the beginning-stage, you know.
Everyone will take this the wrong way, especially the Daily Star, but for me to work with people musically is just as important as a love affair. That’s why I get rarely involved with them.
With every collaborator, there is a completely different method. It is probably part of my philosophy, a little romantic, I know, that one of the main targets is to communicate, to merge. Then magic happens — when one plus one becomes three. It is easy to do solo albums where you play absolutely every noise, but merging is tricky. It takes courage to let go like that.
Sometimes it’s good with collaborations not to bring any luggage, especially brain luggage. With my favourite collaborations I didn’t know anything. It was pure and I believed that some merge would happen. I think it’s better that way, otherwise it’s too calculated.
As a solo artist, one minute you are working with someone, then you
turn around and work with someone else, and every collaboration is
intense and completely full-on.
I know the way you (Björk) have been working in the past has included many collaborations... Opiate, Mark Bell, Matmos,Graham Massey.... and some of their style has remained clear on your work, for example the beat from Cocoon sounds very similar to Opiate’s remix of a song by Tied and Tickled Trio, "t&tt meets opiate downtown ,remix by Opiate", with this i’m pointing out that Opiate can’t help being Tomas no matter who he works with. There are a lot of direct influeces on your work, a lot of songs sound very "Matmosy", or very "808-esque" etc...
So how do you rate that in a Copying scale ?
I take it more as a collaboration "you the collaborator and we’ll see what comes out" , but some friends of mine whom i’ve been discussing this topic thouroughly think you are directly ripping off some other artists style to sound more "unique" and "breakthrough" so it seems that what you are complaining about, is someone elses complain about your music... I find this very funny , sometimes it seems that being breakthrough and pretty much unknown is the only way to be respected by certain groups who consider them as "elite" in good music, once you get involved with someone more "known by the public" you are no longer valid as an artist.... nonsense.
Take care
Ps : again this is not dissing or being rude at all.
i have thought a lot about the fine line between the two in the past and i want to be respectful . i have 3 options as a "solo artist" .
1 : play everything myself ! which happens a lot anyway , because i write most off my stuff on my own , especially the melodies and the lyrics . so I have many months of working like that . but then i always arrive to a point where it seems too indulgent and lonely and the heart of music is about communicating anyway and i get overexcited about someone I find brilliant and I want to write with her/him . which brings us to ;
2 : if I like something to get a techincian to copy it and put it in my song which i have NEVER DONE and felt was totally IMMORAL . like for example when I fell for thomas knak , the idea of his music is incredibly distinctive of him and so so so him but it is actually quite easy to make ( which is kinda the genious of it ) and I could have so easily just copied it but never never never . I contacted him and asked him to be him and it says on the cd "thomas knak" so his work has his signature .
3 : do what I do . write on my own my stuff and if I want to work with someone ask them and if they don’t want to they can say no . but most of the time it is done with mutual respect and a lot of enthusiasm and we meet like equals , the unfortunate thing is that because i am quite well known people don’t see it as that ...
believe me , i don’t ask those people because i want a "breakthrough" , i know what you mean though , I don’t mean to ridicule you but if I worked that calculated I would be doing things differently . I ask them simply because I get very easily over excited about music and I want to play !!"
When it happens, it usually doesnt happen for long. But when it does, we are united and healty. You can teach each other a lot of stuff . Then you go your separate ways - which is fair enough.
It’s difficult for people to work with me, because I know exactly what I want. I’m grateful that those people are ready to go off their missions, their own careers, to go on these side roads of mine.
You’ve done a lot of collaborations at this point, and they’ve always been fairly eyebrow-raising (in a good way). I wonder if you ever consider doing more cross-medium collaborations, like you did with Matthew Barney .
Don’t know ; these things are usually not planned far ahead, more improvised and fuelled by whatever I’m going through at each given moment. So it is hard to say. But more and more, the better I get in the studio, I’m becoming quite self-sufficient, and 90% of my record-making is spent in front of a computer editing, so there is so much solitude there already (which I love !). Collaborations are always like the sweet reward at the end of the people. If you’re good with yourself you get to merge with others.
What do collaborators bring out in you — guys like Mark Bell, Thom Yorke, Timbaland, Antony ? Is it the physical combat, competition or the spiritual union ?
I don’t feed so much off competition. Union is definitely more interesting to me. No two people are ever going to be the same but I am curious about which aspects of two characters overlap… where the merge occurs. Sometimes physical, sometimes musical, sometimes ideological, sometimes spiritual ; sometimes a mix of all of the above. Every collaboration I’ve taken part in has felt quite different. Also, there’s very different work ethics at hand. I enjoy playing a different role each time ; sometimes the organized one, sometimes the innocent one, sometimes the impulsive one, sometimes the anarchic one, sometimes the nurturing one ; whatever the merge craves.
The only thing I would watch when I lived in London was Steve Coogan and Have I Got News For You. And now my mates send me Ali G and League Of Gentlemen. I’m so happy they exist. I show it to some of my American mates and they don’t get it. You have to live there for a bit to get it. That’s the cream of the British. Comedy, right ? You can’t top English comedy.
For anyone to communicate, you have to make an effort. Whether you’re born in Idaho with American TV or in Guatemala, you’ll always have to fight certain barriers to communicate. For the first few years I sang, I used no words. Then very Slowly I started throwing one or two Icelandic words in there. When I was eighteen I did my first tour abroad, and I would translate one or two words into English, sing the rest in Icelandic, and do noises as well. Communication is about energy. That’s how we are, and the language Sometimes doesn’t matter all that much.
People keep telling me that technology is cold, that computers are the
death of feeling in music and that it’s only music if it has guitars or
violins. But how can you blame a computer for that ? Who is
supposed to put the soul in the music ? I mean, you don’t look at a
guitar and expect it to jump up and write a tune for you.
A computer is just a tool. Every decision is made by the artist using
that tool.
I guess I was lucky in that I became a public property in Iceland when I was 11, so I had 15 years of hardcore rehearsals before all this hullabaloo. I guess at the end of the day what you realise is that this hullabaloo is not about you, it’s about that person you’ve created. It sounds cold and horrible but you feel very lucky that the person that you are - the relationship you’ve got between you and yourself - is different than with some person who’s never met you. It’s good to have that distance, because when you get Brit Awards and front covers, it’s not about you, it’s a symbol for what you do. And when it comes to what I do, it’s got so little to do with myself. I’m writing songs about other people, my favourite things, whatever, and it’s the most unselfish thing you can imagine.
i saw in the last issue of iceland’s newspaper in english : “grapevine“ , that valgeir sigurðsson was credited for having written all the instrumentals for my album vespertine . could i please offer a correction :
i have noticed last 7 years that mr. sigurðsson has often been credited for either writing or producing that album . i’d like to say that he didn’t write it or produce . he was a computer programmer for a third of it and a recording engineer for a third . The other two thirds were done by other engineers and programmers .
here is the creditlist to show you the correct crediting of vespertine .
i don’t understand where that misunderstanding has come from
could be one of four options :
1 :the pop critics of this world have not totally yet worked out the difference between engineering , programming , writing and producing electronic music . visually this appears very similar . a man/woman sitting in front of a computer . not as different as for example a drummer , a brass arranger and an engineer . but these are 3 completely different jobs which journalists must start to see the difference
2 : it could be that this is some degree of sexism . m.i.a. had to deal with this with the respected website pitchfork.com where they assumed that diplo had produced all of her kala album without reading any credit list or nothing , it just had to be , it couldn’t have been m.i.a. herself ! it feel like still today after all these years people cannot imagine that woman can write , arrange or produce electronic music . i have had this experience many many times that the work i do on the computer gets credited to whatever male was in 10 meter radius during the job . people seem to accept that women can sing and play whatever instrument they are seen playing .but they cannot program , arrange , produce , edit or write electronic music .
3 : i’ll admit that one thing could confuse things : people have to use their ears and actually read the creditlist to get this information . all the music i have made : like for example string arrangements , synthbasslines or programming of electronic patterns , i never play myself live because i want to give 100% of myself into the singing i either ask the computers to play it or i get other musicians to play it . this could confuse things .
4 : one thing that could have kept this misunderstanding alive is that neither me nor valgeir sigurðsson have bothered to correct it
but i am doing it now
i hope this correction will be a positive input into more discussion about this
warmth
björk.
p.s. just read that pitchfork.com credited nico muhly for the choir arrangement of “hidden place“ from vespertine . also that he has done string arrangements for me . this is not true . journalists : please read the creditlist before you write your articles
I read about cybersex a few years ago and got completely into it, but my problem with it would be that I could only have it with certain people that I already know, so that kind of misses the point.
It irritates me when people try to separate the two : dance music has to be brainless and simple while, ’serious’ pop music has to be difficult and lyrically oriented. I’ve always felt, even before I made my own music, that everything should be possible, all combinations. I want to be everything at once : clever, dumb, angry, sweet, ancient and childish, naive, experienced happy and melancholic.
This is where I put my little ideas - I’ve had it for two years. It’s digital and stereo, much better than a Dictaphone. I speak into it all the time - you have to do that in my job ; you don’t just sit down and the idea comes, it comes anytime - there’s no such thing as social life, work, split into tidy categories, it’s all just life. The last idea was something I wrote in Greece - wrote a lyric over a Metallica sample. I get ideas all the time, very much. Half of it is I’m just like that and half of it is I’m ordered to do it by my brain, which can be annoying. I’m out dancing for two hours and then suddenly think, ’I can use that for a chorus !
The Danish treated us very badly for the six or seven hundred years we were their Colony. For example, the church banned musical dancing. So storytelling became the thing that thrived with us. Storytelling is us.
Mes parents écoutaient Jimi Hendrix et Janis Joplin en pensant que le reste, c’était de la merde. À l’école de musique, on me disait que le classique, c’était génial et que le reste, c’était de la merde. Quant à mes grands-parents, ils n’écoutaient que du jazz parce que le reste, ce n’était vraiment que de la merde. Et moi je m’amusais à jouer les trublions en passant Hendrix à mes grands-parents ou en chantant comme Ella Fitzgerald à l’école de musique.
Usually I just remember them. It’s when you are really busy doing other stupid stuff that you need to use a Dictaphone, but I feel like it pollutes the idea somehow. If I use a Dictaphone I end up just using what’s on the tape directly onto the album.
I used to think, especially after being brought up by hippies and later becoming a punk, that discipline was my biggest enemy. But then you realize very quickly especially when you start recording that you want to do a good song and record it and you want to do it in a very spontaneous way.
The whole punk-scene was about gathering everyone in a studio and just doing one take. Rehearsals didn’t exist because life isn’t that way. You can’t rehear for something, you just have to do it once. But you realize very quickly that freedom and discipline is the same thing. It’s just two sides of the same coin. The more discipline you have, the more freedom you have. That is if you have the right kind of discipline.
So the trick is very much to know what to have discipline about and when to be open. So you go to the studio and you make decisions on half of the things but not the other half. Cause it’s very important to have the courage to not make decisions on the other half.
To trust other people ?
Yes. And to trust the day. That you will think of something when it happens. You have to relax and let go, you know.
Because I’ve been doing this for so long, I know if I start teasing people it would be suicide. It doesn’t work that way. So it’s kind of more that I have to please myself. I guess I go through some sort of unconscious process where I edit stuff out that I think is self-indulgent and people won’t enjoy, so what ends up being on the album is something that I’m more ready to share.
It’s difficult not to repeat yourself, but for me it’s about meeting new people who have very creative minds and seeing what we can get from the collaboration in terms of stimulation. It’s not about me looking great in a performance video, changing my clothes 20 times in the space of three minutes.
I’m not gonna do the same stuff again, because if I did I’d be bored shitless. I’m only halfway through. I try and talk myself into it sometimes, and the most sensible thing would be to do more of this again because I know I’d do it better because I wasn’t doing it for the first time and people get it now. I can hold my breath and do that for a couple of days and then I go : “Fuck that shit“. It would just feel like cheating. My attention span is rubbish, so I get bored very easily and it just isn’t any good because my heart isn’t in it.
There are things that happened when you were a kid you’ll never forget. When I was about five years old and I played with some kids in my neighborhood... I can’t remember what it was but we were all doing something together and we had such a great time and then all the other kids suddenly said "we can’t do this". And I was like "why ?" and they said "you’re not supposed to". And I said "but we won’t hurt anyone" - and I just realized — it was such a great feeling — doing what you’re supposed to do was like over here (she points to the left) and doing what I wanted to do in my intuition was over here (she points to the right) and there was a greeeeeeeeat canyon between them.
And it was like a cross-road. And I went over here (she points to the right) and I’ve never regretted it. All I have is intuition. People don’t understand me. They’re from over there (she points to the left) and they don’t get it. I still meet many of my old friends from school back on Iceland and they go like "noooooow I understand you" and I’m like "okay...".
But it can be dangerous cause I remember when I was on television when I was very pregnant. I was 19 with my stomach sticking out. And the Icelandic television had never got so many complains. People called, wrote letters and were angry and one woman got a heart-attack. So it can be dangerous to do what you want.
People thought cinemas would close down when people bought video machines. It just becomes this different medium. People need music and it’s not going to change.
I don’t like drinking with food, I think Iceland people are a bit old-school like that - we think if you drink with food then you’re an alcoholic ... but if you drink lots, on a Friday night ...
Then you’re fine ?
Yes. I think it’s called "binge drinking". I don’t see the point of drinking unless you end up dancing and letting go. I actually read somewhere that, if you look over a 40-year period, it’s better for your body because then you get rid of so much stress. Two glasses of wine, good for your heart ? Yeah, whatever. I just wake up next day and I’m a bit like, black and white, not in colour. But lots of drink, bit of dancing, bit of slapstick... is good ! Thing is, you can’t do that, that often. Twice a month would be good... but I can’t wait, I think, fuck it !
BJÖRK : Drugs ? What are you talking about ? (Laughter)
POLLY : You mean drugs as a tool to help write ? Only really alcohol and then not much.
BJÖRK : I sing best without anything. I know this sounds really hippy, but being on top of a mountain in the middle of the day would be best for me. But to be able to socialise with all these people, because I’m quite an introverted sort of person, I’ll have a cognac before I go on stage. But even that’s more of a ritual than anything. And maybe a bottle of wine afterwards to chill down.
Different things suit different people. I personally can’t deal with hash. I’m claustrophobic and I’m obsessed with oxygen. I can’t deal with smoke or pollution of any kind. I’m not very big into drugs. I like my drinking too much.
A lot of your work seems quite trippy, almost hallucinogenic. Have you ever been into acid or other such things ?
I once tried half an acid and I decided never again. I’m such an introverted character, it really takes a lot for me to be extrovert, like when I do interviews I have to drink five kilos of coffee and talk and talk and talk. It [acid] just totally isolated me and I was not in touch with anyone in the room and I couldn’t speak to anyone and I was in another galaxy. That’s why I prefer champagne - you just go bubbly and dance on the table. Those kinds of drugs are more for... I’m introverted enough as it is : I’d be a rubbish pot smoker [laughing]. I can’t even inhale because I’m so paranoid [of my voice] being a singer.
The Chemical brothers are hard rock ! Americans are so dumb ! The one band they pick as electronic, and it’s a rock band. It’s like MTV did a show with Wu-Tang Clan and called it a rockumentary. It’s rap ! If it’s not four white guys holding a beer, then they don’t know what to do with it !
It’s just so beautiful that 100,000 people would die in an earthquake. It’s something, maybe because I’m distant, but I wouldn’t mind dying in an earthquake, it’s just so ...
I would like to be eaten by tigers. Something like that...
A few days before flying into cyclone-torn Brisbane, she’d been in Los Angeles - just in time for the big quake.
It was brilliant, she says, jumping up from her seat.
I always thought it would be a really nervous thing ! But it was this really deep, big bass in your guts. I thought : `Yes ! This is what I’ve wanted to feel ever since I was born !’ It’s funny, it’s like your body is thirsty for it and it satisfies you in a strange way.
Björk is in L.A. to play a one-off concert. The last time she was here the earthquake struck. She was staying at the Sunset Marquis Hotel. When the quake started she rode her bed like a bumper car around the room, screaming, "Yes ! Yes !" It was such a great feeling. The quake made such a wonderful noise.
It was the deepest bass sound. It was like you’ve waited for this all your life.
The only sour note came when she went outside afterward. The Black Crowes were there with an acoustic guitar, singing "It’s the End of the World as We Know It."
Electricity is not just a phenomenon of the 20th Century. Its been around before us, it’s like thunder and lightning. There is electricity inside us. With acupuncture you’re putting a needle on the electrical current that travels in your nerves. Or you walk on a nylon carpet and it pops when you touch the wall. It’s just in this century that they made that into audio. Now you can hear it. It’s part of our lives.
When I first moved to NY in 2000, there was this place called Passerby which would only play that type of music. It’s fun to go out get drunk and dance to, but to go in the studio and make stuff like that for me isn’t creative, it’s very retro. But then again, I think something always comes out of it, right ? Like Peaches. She’s the best. I remember when the dance thing was happening first and there would be house versions of old songs always on the radio and now you are getting electroclash versions of Whitney Houston. It feels like it’s about to become something else. It’s fun.
It has a lot of raw energy. The music it’s referring to was totally underestimated by people of my generation. Human League, you just can’t top them, right ? It’s Good Friday so it’s illegal here to play music after midnight tonight. We could do some acapella electroclash instead.
I don’t get it. Why don’t people get into it ? I was born in 1965, and if you were born around that time and listening to all these noises in your life, you get into electronic music because there’s the most freedom there and it’s the most experimental. It’s nourishing, it’s where the risks are being taken, it’s happy, it’s life, it’s fucking living. I just think it’s gorgeous.
All music has different branches. People say electronic music is cold, but for me, it often has lots of heart. It’s another branch, and there’s just as much passion and coldness in it as the rock branch. I think people realise it lot more in Europe with dance music and stamping their feet. It still seems to be stuck in the US. There’s still this rock critic, stuck-in-the-70s attitude about electronic music being cold over there.
But, slowly, it’s changing. People like Animal Collective, who I really, really like, are changing that idea. You know, people who are dealing with electronic in very soulful, human way. In Europe we have bands like Modeselektor to look to, bands who don’t copy Aphex Twin or LFO but make music with warmth, humour and emotional scale. It’s exciting. To me, that emotional scale is very important to everything, really, it’s what makes the music work. And making it work is always possible. Because, at the end of the day, it’s not the tool, but what you do with it.
You know, electricity and electronics should be electronic, they shouldn’t try to be like Japanese flute or violin. They should be proud of what they are. Almost like sincere and honest techno noises, ’cause often people use them as cold and nasty. I think technology is very warm and sentimental, as well. It can be very mushy and emotional.
The only thing that hints at the weirdness widely attributed to her is this : Bjork believes in elves. Fairies too.
We think nature is a lot stronger than man, she explains, sipping a cappuccino at Vid Fjorubordid, a restaurant on the ocean that is virtually the only commercial enterprise in Stokkseyri, Iceland, a town so small that the road entering it has a sign of geometric symbols with a line through them, meaning "no town here." The road also has a waterfall with a rainbow over it and graffiti mowed into the hills, so you can see where the elf thing came from.
My family hunts half the food we eat. A relationship with things spiritual hasn’t gone away, Bjork says, in defense of elf-faith. In a lot of Western cities, they lost that and had to buy it again with meditation courses.
In fairness, despite the fact that Icelanders have a 99.9% literacy rate, most believe in elves. In fact, the government had to reroute a planned highway because it would have passed over elf territory. It appears that elves, while remaining hidden, somehow manage to hand out their maps.
Ray Cokes : Iceland’s supposed to be the homeland of elves and trolls. Have you ever seen one ?
No not not personally, no.
Ray Cokes : Do you know someone who’s seen one ?
Yeah
Ray Cokes : Do you believe in them ?
Yeah, but we have to be careful not to change them into a Ghosbusters thing, you know. I think it’s more metaphysical, that it’s about just believing that there’s something bigger there than you.
Emotions weren’t created to just lie around. You should experience things to the full. I’ve got a sense of the clock ticking. We have to feel all those things to the maximum. Like, I don’t eat a lot but I really love eating. And I like being precise and particular. There is a certain respect in that. If you can do your day depending on how you feel, and enjoy things as well.
I’m lucky because I have a lot of friends from my teens with whom I can make emotional stunts. I through myself out and they catch me. But when I’m with strangers I hide my feelings. But that counts for all people no matter what job they have, doesn’t it ? In your place of work you’re never really yourself are you ? Only popstars are expected to be themselves at work.
In my position, it’s my job to be emotional. Doctors cure diseases and shoemakers make shoes. It’s my job to go through emotions and describe them to other people.
But the bad thing is that every emotion I experience is public property. It’s good in a lot of ways, and in music, it’s great, but with love affairs, it becomes really tricky, because the nature of love affairs is very private.
I guess because the core of my work is emotional I have used my emotions as a structure to build the rest on. Basically my songs are a collection of emotional peaks, even if they are gorgeous peaks or painful ones. I guess that is the nature of my work - by being the sort of person that preached about emotions and emotional rules. Being emotional doesn’t mean that you are stupid, like you could still go haywire and arrange and orchestrate things, things that are usually considered quite academic or clever. Just as long as you use emotion as the structure, as long as there is a heart to it, it is okay. So because of that, most of my songs are very precious to me. And if that means you only get a record every three years – they are the ten peaks in those three years. So you are getting on average three or four friendships and some personal victories, which I guess is a pretty average thing for a person to have. Kinda like, every three years, you have ten or eleven subjects or riddles you are trying to solve, or friendships that have this incredible fertile spark to them or friendships that are difficult and you try to get an angle on them. I guess every one of my songs have this thing to them.
I have noticed though that a lot of the people that listen to my songs think they are love songs, it’s like a romantic boy/girl thing, which I am actually quite pleased to hear. Even though like half of them or not even that friendships or even my relationship with my work or a country or a hobby - whatever. I always seem to pull it back to that one on one love thing, when I describe it in a song, even though I am describing a mountain or something.
Here were people my age writing a film about young people in England today and I was shouting ’Hip, hip, hooray’. It’s really difficult for me to say because you live here, but having moved from Iceland and now trying to get into the English vibe, I found everybody in England hooked on Victorian times. It’s like English people are ashamed of England today. They are upset that it’s not 1901 and all the films they make are about these times. There’s a lot of turn-of-the-century imagery in the pop videos.
I really respect England, it has a lot of good qualities, yet so much about it is the opposite to what I am. And I’m just basically a proud bastard. I can work a lot here and all my dreams can come true and I’m grateful for that. But I’m just a visitor. After all this has finished I’ll go back to Iceland.
There are a lot of really good things going on in England. Especially the generation of 18-to 23-year-olds. They’re very enthusiastic, very positive - musically, and attitude-wise as well. It’s not muso.
Before me were the Woodstock generation. Their roots were in rhythm and blues. My generation have our roots in jazz. Not that we’re actually playing jazz, but it’s just kind of Lego - building blocks we get to make things out of. Like, chord-wise, musically, that’s definitely where I come from. There are a lot of people of my generation making jazzy-house, jazzy-punk, jazzy-techno, whatever. A lot of these jazzy, funky sort of people are playing in London, like, really live.
A lot of people who were playing when I was brought up were misunderstanding jazz, in an academic way. They just thought jazz was like a formula, which is rubbish. Young people now are playing jazz when they don’t even know a note, ’cos they like the sounds, ’cos it’s in their blood.
The English are very easily embarrassed, and anything that’s not exactly like them is alien and weird and strange. I can’t help myself teasing the English - especially when people stare at you, waiting for antennae to pop out of your forehead.
I love England. It’s no coincidence it’s the first place I moved to for a more cosmopolitan life, which is the only thing Iceland lacks. You can be a very critical, unforgiving people, you knock people down when you should be cheering. But criticism can be good. And this is a country that loves comedy. I saw a poll this week of top BBC moments, and the first five were all from comedies like The Office and Monty Python. You are very good at skimming corruption off the top and revealing the integrity inside. In Britain things have to be pure - you just don’t get away with bullshitting.
It would be too easy to walk away and say, ‘Oh, I’m just going to do these ornate objects that only a few people, blah blah blah.’ That’s just pretentious and snobbish. I believe in that place where you plug into the zeitgeist, the collective consciousness or whatever. It’s very folk. Soulful. Not materialistic. I believe in being a fighter for that soulful place.
If two people start going out, and it doesn’t work, you’re still going to meet that person every other day in the supermarket because it is so small. That seems to be a big taboo in Britain. If you split with someone, you never see them again.
Do you use musicians as bait for computers, like experimental mice ?
Me including. I know what I want to do, and I only have a limited space for people I work with. For example, on Vespertine, boys from Matmos arrived only at the very end of the recording session, because I needed them to interfere with the beats, the percussions. I passed 3 years alone on rhythms before, so they understood what I was expecting from them.
For Medúlla, Mark Bell arrived when the songs were finished : He only took a couple of hours at home to set some details. I didn’t want to work like that again, I wanted someone to make me change my habits, take me out of my comfort. For exemple we didn’t have anything prepared before I met Timbaland in the studio. Three hours later we had four songs. Which took me a year to triturate.
Your songs seem to mix small themes with big themes, is that how you like to write ?
It’s more like the songs just happen, and then I sit in an interview like this and I try to explain it afterwards. [laughs] But I don’t mind that. I mean, maybe because I’ve been doing this for a long time, slowly my body’s adapted to it. I happen to do my albums with the right hemisphere, and once I’ve given the tapes away to the record company and I know I can’t even fiddle with it, I do interviews and switch over to the left hemisphere and explain what it is from the outside. But I think that it’s healthy too, to have to sometimes explain. I mean, up to a certain degree, of course. And it also leaves me less isolated, because I think isolation can be a bad thing. It’s good to get questions, especially the ones that I never even thought of.
Erm. Hmmm. I mean, there’s been many different periods in my life ... there’s definitely been places where I fell really easily in love. And, erm, all the different colours ... I think I’m the sort of person who - I wouldn’t play it safe. Again, if you have the ticky boxes in front of you, and you have all the different emotional feelings, to do with love ... then I think I wanted to taste all of them, at least once. I also wanted to taste rejection, I wanted to taste being heartbroken, being obsessed, I wanted to feel being superior, I wanted to feel being equal, I wanted to, erm, experience, being ecstatic, the joy, the freedom, the recklessness, the conservative side ... the domestic life ...
And has she experienced all these things ?
All of these colours ! Yeah !
She seems fearless, romantically. Is she scared of anything ?
Yeah ! Tons ! Tons of stuff, but that’s part of the fun, though, isn’t it ? And it’s not like I said : OK, I decide, 17 March, I will be heartbroken ... it’s not like that. And I look at my friends, and there are some people who play it safe, and they don’t want to take risks.
I’m one of those, I tell her.
But that’s not bad, either ! It is also brave to keep things together. That takes guts too.
Fame has never really been my thing. I have always been a bit bothered by it. In Iceland when I was 11, I did a record and people started recognising me in the street and kids in school started talking about me, in a nice way, but I just couldn’t deal with the attention. It was a platinum seller in Iceland and they wanted me to do another one and I said ’no’.
Half of me is completely fine and very very happy about it, flabbergasted, you know ? But the other half of me is : ’Alright, is it over now, then ?’ Because, in Iceland, I guess it’s so easy to be famous.
In a weird way it’s pleasantly familiar, because it’s very similar to what I am in Iceland, what I am now in England. People talk to you in the shops, and old people sort of pat you on the head, and kissing you, and everybody are sort of sweet, and they get that grin on their face when they see me.
People automatically think that I am more important than other people which of course is rubbish, but it’s been like that since I was 11 and I guess if you experience things early it’s like little kids who can learn languages very quickly and very well. People come to you and you know exactly what they’re after ; if they want to give you something or take something away or ae simply curious. It’s often a good reason, it’s not like everybody is evil or anything, you know ?
I don’t analyse it much. Then I start worrying about it and I’ll go mad and they’ll have to lock me in an asylum. It’s a lot to do with the fact that I’m a singer and the fact that I’m a girl. I never set out to be famous. I look at the mission I’m on in the sort of range of Aphex Twin or Black Dog rather than the other front-cover people.
I don’t have to say this, but if I wanted to be famous I would make completely different music. When I brought my demos of Icelandic brass players doing The Anchor Song to my record company, the boss said it was only going to sell a third of The Sugarcubes. It sounds naff to say these things, but it’s just a happy accident that people liked it. Debut was meant to be very low-budget, it’s just kind of me being selfish really.
There came a moment when I thought, this is not good for me, and it’s
not good for my son. I think the culture of fame is very
frightening, ultimately, because it seems to suggest to some people that
they have every right to invade your life. Just because you make art,
that does not mean that you are public property. I began to find being
famous very, very strange.
How difficult is it, now, balancing your career with your family life ? With Volta looking likely to rekindle many critic’s love affair with Björk, are you bracing yourself for a full year of interviews ? Do you worry, ever, that paparazzi interest in your personal/social life could escalate to how it was in the ‘90s ?
I don’t think so. I made very specific choices to get away from that, and i think it works. It is a choice. There are celebrities that want the whole world to know about every move they make, and there are celebrities that don’t. I think in the world of reality TV and the internet, and Paris Hilton et al, people that happen to have a public job are allowed to be varied. Ten or twenty years ago it was more presumed that if you went on stage you were up for being available to strangers 24/7. Not anymore – now you have all kinds of celebrities, on all different levels of interest from the paparazzi. They leave the ones who don’t want it alone. (It takes two to tango ?)
You can’t write a song if everybody knows what colour socks you wear. I think I would probably have started to write songs about how difficult it is being famous, which I think is the grossest kind of music you ever hear - because it isn’t. I think people in Vietnam and, you know, people who are really suffering should feel sorry for themselves, but celebrities feeling sorry for themselves, being victims...that’s just crap. Because they should be responsible for their lives, and they have a choice, which a lot of people don’t have.I have a choice, whether to be a celebrity or not, and I choose not to. So to stay leading a life like that, and then write songs about how terrible it is - it’s pathetic. I’m too proud. And I’m too much of a music lover : I’ve bought too many records that are about that and cringed. You know, Get a life !
Those three years in London, where I got to feel like an A-list celebrity - that was a very tongue-in-cheek experience. Of course you would want to try fame if you got the chance, but not for long. It was an exciting time to be here for the music, but, when it stopped being about the music and was about being a socialite, I wasn’t interested.
Björk launched herself as a solo artist with the critically acclaimed dance album Debut, in 1993, aged 27. At which point, she became truly famous, on a grander scale. How was it that time around ?
Well, it was fun to try it. If you had a paper in front of you, and like, you could pick things, before birth, that you would like to try, before you fall down and die ; and that was one of the bubbles : A-list celebrity, try that out for a couple of months ... you’d probably go : yes. Tick it. Just for the experience. And to be honest, I didn’t really like it. It’s pretty rubbish. It feels like a service job, a bit like washing toilets or something. It feels like you are somebody else’s servant. But I can tick that one off, and move to, to ... to Spain, for a few months, and they forgot about me !
Really ? It was that easy to duck out ?
Yep !’ she says, with absolute satisfaction. For me anyway !
It’s different, because family is so important. For me to have a baby at 20 and then be single, there is no problem because I was brought up in a massive family. Everyone just takes care of everyone. I think one reason why divorce is so common in Iceland is marriage is not taken so seriously. You love a person ; if you don’t love that person anymore, you don’t live with them because, why suffer ? All my ex-lovers, I haven’t got tons or anything, but they’re all mates of mine.
They divorced when I was 1 and my dad started a quite conservative family and a home that was full of people because he had another wife and, like, three kids. And my mom just invited all these friends to live with her so I kept being the hippie amongst the conservatives or the conservative amongst the hippies. And I quite liked that, I was kinda the outsider always going "Hmmm, but why can’t we have one meal a day please ?" and "Why does everything have to be purple ?"
I was always really clear about that in my mind, that it just wasn’t my field. I’m not meant to read fan mail. Because... It seems really arrogant but it isn’t. If I read the fan mail I would accept that I’m God. And I’m not. And also, I’ve hardly got time - I forget my grandmothers’ birthdays, and I forget to call my dad, so why should I read letters from strangers ?
I come from a family full of electricians and bricklayers and hard-working people and I look at my job like that. And all I can give to a stranger is a song, and actually I’m giving them all I’ve got - and sometimes more than I’ve got. And communicating with them in another way, it’s an illusion that it would add to things. And when they write ’I love you’ it makes me sick. They don’t know me ! I’m a difficult bastard in real life !
I never read my fan mail. I’m a lazy git and I don’t think it’s right. I think I should play music and make songs and that’s it. It’s what’s correct and what’s not correct. It’s terrible to say it, but the best thing I could do was to write more songs.
I think that most people with a microphone get people that identify with them and tell them personal things just because they’ve got some freedom of speech. At the end of the day it’s got nothing to do with me, ’cos this is the job I’ve got,
I think it’s crap. I never had an idol. I respect people completely and I’m so happy that they exist and they’re making all these great things for us, but I never felt like that. It’s like a sado-maso thing, innit ? You wanna like humiliate yourself and that’s the aspect of it when people come to me, like fans and stuff that I don’t like. It’s not that I’m too arrogant, more the fact that people are humiliating themselves in front of me and that is embarrassing. I feel like talking to them like my kid ; like stop it, stand up. You have to believe in some sort of human-ness, everybody’s fucking equal. Let’s communicate on that level, please.
It turns out that the Bjork clones she inspired - those British girls with their hair so randomly bunched and braided that in comparison Princess Leia looked as if she was having a good hair day - alarmed her more than they flattered her.
I always felt strongly about authority. I don’t like to be told what to do and I don’t like telling other people what to do. I think we work fine without bossing people about.
And fashion is a kind of bossing ?
For sure. If you don’t wear these labels and spend that amount of money you are committing the worst crime possible, which is to be distasteful. If you are not fashionable you are criminal. That is outrageous. It is like slavery.
What, then, about that extraordinary, fashion-victim costume she wore for the Oscars : half-dress, half-swan ?
But, if anything, that was meant to say people should wear whatever they want to wear.
Luckily I’m so stupid that I don’t realise why. The only way I can explain it is that I was in the right place at the right time, I’ve been wearing these types of clothes since I was 14, it’s just that someone has now decided they are in fashion. It’s a nice compliment...
I like fashion when it’s a creative thing, and it’s about expression. When it’s about waking up in the morning and feeling a certain way, and putting clothes on that will support you as an individual.
I guess what I don’t like about fashion is when people turn it into sort of a power or control thing, where it’s about how much money you have, showing off your position or class. Millions of people are told that if they don’t wear something, they can’t get love and they’ll be lonely.
And also, I guess because I sort of became a little bit famous, I believe in individuality and dressing a certain way. All this copying stuff, I’m really against it. A lot of people have picked from the designers I’ve worn. But there’s not one designer whose entire body of work I like. It’s sort of a Monty Python joke : ’You’re all individuals.’
I guess it’s always been important to me to express myself.
I always thought that most fashion is not about that.
It’s sort of about that fashion suppresses your own expression, that she forces you to a certain style and labels. That it manipulates and that if you don’t take part of certain trends you commited the worst crime possible. Fashion should be more like listening to music, doing a hobby or eating. You take what you really like, what pleases you and in that sense I think that fashion is a great way of expressing yourself.
And in that sense I always liked music and clothes and supported people who make clothes who are thinking that way, that it’s not about power or status, that it’s about freedom of expression.
If you don’t wear these labels and spend that amount of money you are committing the worst crime possible, which is to be distasteful. If you are not fashionable you are criminal. That is outrageous. It is like slavery.
If anything, [the swan dress] was meant to say people should wear whatever they want to wear.
I try to wear a garment that will assist me in looking like my songs. Hopefully I succeed in helping people sympathise with their emotions, and if my dress helps people understand what I’m on about, then that’s good. I’m like a nurse in that sense.
I like the creative angle. Where people express them-self. But I don’t like it when it’s too much of people being told what to do, and too much like ... fascism, of magazines telling women to starve them-self, and they obey ! Or they’re like "out of fashion", which is the worst crime you could ever commit ! So they get executed for it, publicly ! It makes women very unhappy.
What influences your unique fashion style and who has been your favorite music video director ?
That’s quite a big question. ... If I have to pick one thing, then I have to say that freedom influences my fashion style. If another, then fun. And if another, comfort. But there is absolutely no way I can pick one favorite music video director. They were all fun in their own way.
What I most admire is when the film and the score are seamless, and one plus one makes five. Alfred Hitchcock’s stuff with Bernard Herrmann is a good example. Although I’m not fan of Hitchcock or thrillers particularly, the relationship between the music and the visuals in "The Ghost" and "Mrs Muir" is almost perfect. You can’t imagine one without the other. It’s the same with Stanley Kubrick. He had a really sensitive, deep understanding of using music in film, even although a lot of the music he used wasn’t composed specifically for him. Something like "2001 : A Space Odyssey" is a good example, but just generally speaking, it’s the music that drives his films forward.
Occasionally when I’m feeling sentimental. The interesting thing about compiling the Family Tree box set was that it made me realise just how much material I’d produced over the last decade and a half. Some of it sounds a little old and musky now, but most of it still sounds quite fresh and exciting. Like others artists, I sometimes fall into the trap of doing what I think I should be doing rather than what I want to be doing and listening to my back catalogue reminded me I should just follow my heart and be spontaneous.
I’ve never been into all-women things. We musn’t ignore the fact that our mothers and our grandmothers and our greatgrandmothers fought for women’s rights. And I think by saying there’s still a problem there, we are dissing all our mothers’ work. It’s like the cage has been opened and it’s our time to walk out of it. Not scream, ’I’m in a cage ! I’m in a cage ! I’m in a cage ! I’m in a cage !’ Just get out of there and make some music and mingle with the other inhabitants of the planet because we’ve been isolated so long.
I think Lilith Fair’s making more isolation. It’s a step backwards.
It’s interesting for me to bring up a girl. You go to the toy store and the female characters there - Cinderella, the lady in Beauty and the Beast - their major task is to find Prince Charming. And I’m like, wait a minute - it’s 2005 ! We’ve fought so hard to have a say, and not just live through our partners, and yet you’re still seeing two-year-old girls with this message pushed at them that the only important thing is to find this amazing dress so that the guy will want you. It’s something my mum pointed out to me when I was little - so much that I almost threw up - but she’s right.
It’s incredible how nature sets females up to take care of people, and yet it is tricky for them to take care of themselves. Slightly to my astonishment I am becoming interested in women’s rights. Because of my mother’s own militancy - she wouldn’t enter the kitchen, I mean come on - I reacted the other way, adoring housework, knitting and sewing.
But recently I have been noticing how much harder it is for me and my girlfriends to juggle things than it is for men. In the 1990s, there was a lot of optimism : we thought we’d finally sorted out equal rights for men and women ... and then suddenly it just crashed. I think this is my first time in all the hundreds of interviews I’ve done, that I’ve actually jumped on the feminist bandwagon. In the past I always wanted to change the subject. But I think now it’s time to bring up all these issues. I wish it wasn’t, but I’ll do it, I’m up for doing the dirty work !
[Music about feminism] It’s definitely brewing inside me. Maybe if Medulla was my personal, idiosyncratic statement about politics, whatever I do next is going to be my eccentric view of feminism. It’s like any major upheaval, whether it’s the revolution in France or punk for me in the 1970s, you break up all the corruption and indeed up all the bad things, so you can start really fresh. But it’s the law of nature that it all settles again, so you have to keep checking yourself. You can’t ever say, "OK, we sorted out corruption and everyone is equal." So I might become a feminist in my old age !
It was always a taboo subject. I thought, "We’ve done that. My mum did that and her mum did that and it’s time to move on." But it turns out that the battles haven’t been won at all.
I have labelled myself as an anti-feminist feminist, and I think it suits me well. The whole female thing is very important to me of course, but then again it’s just as important as the fact that I have two legs and that I come from Iceland. It’s just one of
those things. I see so many women constantly questioning themselves. Questioning why they do certain things. There’s this endless analytical process. What they don’t understand is that the main reason men have thefree dom to do what they want, and get away with it, is that they don’tquestion themselves, they just do it. Women should stop doubting themselves because it cages them in and ties them down. They should just do what they want. Don’t take so much shit. If someone tries to make you feel guilty or intimidated, look them straight in the eye and laugh and they’ll probably start to cough in embarrassment. I’d much rather forget what I am, because at the end of the day, at the end of my life, I want to be happy with what I did in it, what I was in it. It doesn’t matter for shit whether I was a boy or a girl. That’s not the point.
My mother’s generation were very much about screaming and shouting about being locked in a cage. Then the cage was eventually opened. My generation is more about ignoring it, stop moaning and get things done.
I like festivals generally and get excited about them because my favourite thing is to play outdoors. You feel as if you are part of nature, and I have always loved that."
Many big festivals are often problematic for expermental pop-acts, who don’t give the audience exactly what they want : mainstream songs that people can sing along and dance to. Have you ever had a bad experience , when for example the audience were waiting for a band like say The Foo Fighters and meanwhile get a musical experience of the special art from you ?
Hmmm, i’d try to make it at the front of the artist’s stage at an early time, also at the festivals i am headlining at. I try to avoid to play in such an mood also because very few of my songs fit such an atmosphere. But i can examine/oversee it, personally i would like to see the artists in the afternoon in a sober state to then, afterwards, after a couple of drinks, dance to movement-orientated music. That’s the beauty of music it gives something fitting for every situation.
In an ideal world, would she make 20-track albums, each song in a different genre ?
No, it’s more like, I like to spend half the album like Sherlock Holmes, doing detective work, trying to find out, OK, there’s this unknown world inside me and I know what it is, and it’s like, how do I make that into sounds ? There’s a lot of time making mistakes and throwing things into the bin, until I find that place. But maybe I enjoy so much the Sherlock Holmes aspect that by the time I’ve found it I want to find the next thing.
Her feet are shod with a pair of football boots, complete with the full compliment of studs.
I got them during the World Cup. I went out to get some for my kid and I bought some for myself as well. Both of us got obsessed with the World Cup. To be honest, I think I tell more for the whole emotion of the thing, people crying and everything. I was just watching it as a human experience. I love to see people going mad like that. They went mad in Ireland too, didn’t they ? I love that. It’s incredible. My kid is in Iceland now with his dad, on holiday, and I’m sure he’s playing football. He became a football fan this Summer so we watched all of the World Cup together. He watched the football and I watched the humans.
Where I come from, it takes years to get truly intimate with people. You don’t say you’re friends until you’ve known them for ten years, delivered their babies, gone to funerals with them and all that bollocks (laughs). I met a lot of people in London but I dealt with them not as friends but as mates. Is there a level of difference there in English ? I thought that I would never have real friends here.
Now, you do realize you have a very devout gay male fan base.
Okay. [Giggles] I don’t think too much about it, but I have to say that a little bird whispered it in my ear at some point.
Why is it something that you don’t think about ?
When people tell you marketing figures about your fan base, it just sounds a bit cold. I like to think of people who buy my records as equals. Don’t think of them as gay or black or young or old. They’re just people who enjoy my music. I’ve had so many close gay friends all my life, it’s not that big of a deal with me. [Pauses] But I’d be lying if I said there weren’t things I find easier to talk about with gay guys. [Giggles]
Björk : It’s a different thing to marry in Iceland. We are not married in a church. You get more rights if you’re married. For me and Thor, it just took ten minutes. And then we could get money from the state to buy contact lenses for him. So it’s not very...
At nineteen, Björk discovered she was pregnant. She’d been with her poet boyfriend, Thor, for the best part of four years. It was a surprise. She was overjoyed. But then she talked to people, took their advice - "kind of being all brainy," she now says, emphasizing the last word as though there were no worse quality on earth than dry, unimpulsive reason - and scheduled an abortion. And then, on the morning of her appointment, she simply decided not to go.
I was too young to even think about it. It just kinda happened and I would do it completely differently now. Not that I did it wrong or right, but I was 20 and I was like "Oh, another person. Woohoo !"
If she’d just started, would Björk get signed in 2007 as readily as she was in 1987 ?
I probably wouldn’t even be interested in signing : you can put out your own records on the internet. I would still want to make records, but I wouldn’t need the machine.
The hard wheather of Iceland made people learn that nature is a thousand times stronger than men. For icelanders, ghosts are just natural beings. Not that I take gnomes serious, but I believe in them.
I tend to want to have songs that way that there are sections which are strict always the same lyrics and train your discipline and then have sections which are space and I can do whatever I want. So every time I sing those sections, they’re different. Sometimes Icelandic words,but mostly gibberish.
That was some time ago. I’d shaved my eyebrows, I was very pregnant and I exposed my belly on a TV show, performing in my band KUKL, a jazz punk thing. Apparently the combination was too much for some viewers. One woman had a heart attack while she was watching and sued me. Fortunately, she lost !
I remember very stupid things like the nurse kept giving me fruit juices instead of water and that really pissed me off. On the whole, it was probably one of my favorite experiences.
Iive just spent two weeks in Iceland and I got all these Icelandic books and videos for her. Itis important for me and for her. I remember when I was six years old, playing outside with all the other kids until 11pm in summer, when it’s bright for 24 hours a day. In a city, your parents hold your hand until you’re 14. It’s a very different feeling. It’s not just about Iceland. It’s about being part of nature.
It was actually what I’m most used to, that format. The Sugarcubes was such an exception to me, because I’d previously done film music in Iceland, music for theatre, produced stuff and also played drums and clarinet. I like to do stuff like that. I never really looked at myself as a singer.
It was until I was 27 that I felt ready to put out an album that was all my songs. I felt like I was a megalomaniac to want to do that. But it was a case of ’If you don’t do this now, you’ll never do it. You have to do it or you’ll sit there when you’re 60 and look back an think ’You blew it.’
I once went to Gagga Lund and was going to learn how to sing. She told me ; “You talk like a hen. I must first teach you how to talk before you learn how to sing.“ I spent the whole winter learning to speak. Gagga tought me so beautifully and it was mostly philosophy. She tought me the thought behind music, the thought that you’re only “being“ while on stage, you’re not “performing“. You’re not creating something called art, you’re just there.
Congratulations on the Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Album for Volta. Do these kinds of awards mean anything to you ?
I don’t know. I’m not going to pretend I don’t care about awards, but I don’t think I will ever win a Grammy. I’ve been nominated before. But I think they find me...I think it’s a really conservative, middle-of-the-road thing. I think they’re probably a little scared of me.
Does a ’Greatest Hits’ album give a good synopsis of an artists’ career ?
I think, like with everything, there are a lot of bad ’Greatest Hits’ albums and there are a lot of good ones. Just like with everything, the percentage is : some are 10% good and 90 % are rubbish. Although I still think it’s worth the risk to at least try. There are some ’Greatest Hits’ albums out there that I have loved, with music I am not so familiar with. For example, I was twenty-five when I found out that Marvin Gaye existed, I didn’t know soul music before that. I got some kind of singles collection or ’Greatest Hits’ of his.
I think you also have to trust people as well. Some of the Marvin Gaye collections were not so good when you just play number three or track nine or something, and the other ones were fantastic, like every song was excellent and the structure was perfect. So I think it is possible.
I seem to be able to get better and better at what I do... especially more of the
craftmanship side of what I do. I guess it’s maybe also part of the fact that I
come from Iceland, where sort of the heroes in Iceland are authors - people that
write books - and they write usually their masterpiece when they’re about 60 or
something. So it’s sort of, everything until 60 is a rehearsal.
I think it’s funny and actually I couldn’t be more pleased with the situation. When I was growing up, I always had this feeling that I had been dropped in from somewhere else. That was how I was treated at school in Iceland where the kids used to call me ’China girl’ and everybody thought I was unusual because I looked Chinese. It gave
me room to do my own thing. In school, I was mostly on my own, playing happily in my private world making things, composing little songs. If I can get the space I need to do my own thing by being called an alien, an elf, a China girl, or whatever, then that’s great ! I think I’ve only realised in the past few years what a comfortable situation that is.
I was born with the need to sing. Even worse ; I was one of those kids from that famous cliche : I could sing before I could talk.
Where I grew up, there lived 18,000 people. There was a main street and one big square. You only had to cross the street naked once and the people would remember for the rest of their lives.
It wasn’t as bohemian as it sounds. They all had proper jobs. There was never any unemployment in Iceland until about two years ago. My mother made furniture at one point but she also worked in an office doing Computers. My father was a full time blues musician. Everybody worked. Everybody got up early. In Iceland, even the hippies are workaholics.
I grew up with all these hippies. Ten of them and one of me. None of them wanted to work and spent all their time talking and dreaming and fooling around. 90% of that hippie stuff is just bullshit but the ideals of that generation were very beautiful and powerful and rebellious. I had to dress and feed myself from the time I was six, which meant I became a very organised person. But there came a point when I was about seven or eight, when I saw the absurdity of living in a commune and I said to them, ’Why don’t you just DO SOMETHING !?
Wow, I feel I could talk so much about it. I’m just flabbergasted that people are actually still interested. A lot’s been written about it. I guess I was brought up in a, well, compared to London anyway, it was a village, but 80,000 people lived there, so it was a big village.
Growing up in Iceland, the community was very, very close. We all trust and love each other, and that is a wonderful
environment for creativity. I remember, as a child, going up alone into
the woods to live for days, hunting and surviving. There was never that
fear that you get living in London, or New York, or Spain, or wherever.
And that kind of trust meant that you could also express yourself in
whatever way you wanted, and you didn’t feel embarrassed. So many people
I meet are too embarrassed to express themselves artistically, too
worried about what other people will think if they take a risk. But I
always take risks. It’s the only way to make art that’s truly inspired.
And inspiring.
I wouldn’t call it a hippy commune. I think that’s to exaggerate. It was just a place where eight people rented rooms in the same flat. I was the only child there, and they all had long hair, which doesn’t make it into a commune. But they all ate healthy food and listened to Jimi Hendrix. The pleasures of that generation, I guess. I could also stay up as long as I wanted.
As the only child there, were you spoilt rotten ?
I think you could put it that way. If I thought I had something to say, people would listen to me. And people would play me records that they were listening to, and explain them to me. It was very good for a kid to be brought up in that sort of atmosphere.
Well, and to be taken seriously
Yeah, for sure. And it was also like : "let’s go down the park and play with the kites for many hours with the grown-ups."
I could never stand guitar rock.
That’s the funny thing.
My father was a hippy who just listened to Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton and I grew up listening to that music. When I was seven, I was convinced tahth this music was ancient history, that I would do something new.
I think that as soon as any form becomes traditional, like the guitar, bass and drums, then people start to behave traditionally. It’s really difficult to get a band to stay on the edge using typical bass, guitar and drums set-up because it tends to lapse into a predictable form.
My ideal band would be an open-minded group that won’t let anything get in the way of creating something new. They could use saxophones, teaspoons, drum machines or anything to communicate a whole whole concept whether it be a house track, experminatal music, pop, or just a nursery rhyme.
I’ve never listened to guitar tock, really. To me, it was just an accident that we happened to have a guitarist in the Sugarcubes ; our style wasn’t planned. What’s always turned me on - since I was little - is jazzy and funky and soulful things, as opposed to rock & roll things. Igor Stravinsky is a big blast from the past that I like ; also Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry - those things were free, experimental, avant-garde.
Yeah, I guess so. I like things when they’re a bit alive. And if you don’t have a friend or a pet or you’re away traveling, then it is nice to have cuddly things to wear.
It’s weird what the baby does to your head. It’s like you have to train a muscle again. Nature is great at making you think about your baby 24 hours a day but when the baby doesn’t need you so much, it isn’t great at teaching you to look after yourself.
Does she have to resist what Nick Cave once described as "being chained to the same bowl of vomit" ? Does she have a comfort zone ?
I definitely have my problems, but that’s not one of them ! I’m a very claustrophobic person, and if there’s no surprises it makes me feel like I’m doing a 9 to 5 bank job or something. My attention span or tolerance for repeating myself is probably way lower than Nick Cave’s and I probably panic about two years before him. If I was looking at myself from the outside, I’d probably say, ’Look, Björk, why don’t you do two albums each time ?’ But I just can’t.
There’s always a song in the back of my head. It’s the
beauty of music ; it’s with you all the time. All you have to do is let
it flow. Sometimes you can capture it, put it on tape, other times, it
just passes through, like a fleeting kiss.
You have one relationship with your grandmother and one with your boyfriend and one with the guy in the grocery shop. That doesn’t mean you’re being fake or untrue, it’s just that you have those different colours in you.
It wasn’t that big a leap for me. I’ve got three younger sisters and threee younger brothers, so I’be always been surrounded by kids. I thought motherhood would be easy for me because I felt way more mature about it than my mother was. As for my kids, I’m very protective of them. I write certain songs about them but would never put those on a record for everybody to hear.
Everyone at my school hated the record and they hated me. The musicians wanted me to make a second one but I didn’t want to. I wanted to be with kids my own age for a bit.
The record label offered me all these songs and I turned them down because they were shit. I got very upset in the end so my mum ran around to her hippie musician mates and they all did songs for me. "The music was happy, light-hearted pop ; half bubblegum, half crazy. It was mostly adaptions of kids’ songs, as well as one I had written myself called ’Johannes Kjarval’.
It sold 7,000 copies, which is enough to go platinum in Iceland. Having a bit of success brought its problems - on the bus, kids shouted things at me, like ’oh she thinks she’s better than the rest of us.’
I just took it as it was. It was difficult sometimes being recognised but Reykjavik is really just a small town so everyone recognises everyone anyway.
I was so in love with music, and to be able to make an album was a
wonderful experience. It was right for me at the time,
but even then, I knew there was so much more that could be done with
music. I was studying classical music, but I was more interested in
making music that reached real people, music that was more in tune on a
street level. I became more and more obsessed with finding a new ’folk’
music. One of my favourite composers, Karlheinz Stockhausen, has always
said that music should arise from everyday sounds of the street, and he
is so right.
I felt guilty because I hadn’t written any of the songs. I was just a singer ; it felt like being a shadow, as if you are not the one doing the work. So I turned down the chance to make a second album. I was lucky : it made me know what I wanted to do
Hasn’t Björk’s mind-set changed at all since she entered her forties ?
The things that I used to panic about, I don’t panic about any more, and that’s a good feeling. Life is still the same struggle, but I have a sense of joy and peace. For me, that wisdom thing will probably take about another 50 years to kick in, though. I’m still quite good at getting into trouble !
I want to work with other people when I do music. What I am best at is
relationships. I am good at bringing out the best in people, and I they
lack a certain quality, I supply it. I like being someone’s other half
and think it is masturbation to work all by myself.
Ray Cokes : What would you say was your principal fault ? The biggest one - the one that everyone said to you ; "that’s terrible"
I have loads of stuff ! I guess probably the biggest thing about me is both a fault and a virtue. Whatever I’m doing, I do it nine hundred percent. Which in certain situations can be - "why don’t you just chill, ok ?". In other situations it’s excellent, right ?
I was the first child of a mother and father who had been in love since they were 14. And I was born when my mother was 19 and my father 20 ; They were very conservative, but happy people. And then, when my mother had been a housewife for 1 year with me, she freaked out and became a wild hippie and a feminist. And she separated with my father.
My father remained very conservative ; married a nurse. But he was a very hard-working, honest, very energetic man. Very full of power and joyful life. And my mother just being completely wanting to be strong ; and painting the walls with butterflies. And I lived in a house with a lot of people who have long hair, and listen to Jimi Hendrix. So I go between the two families and I learn : Okay, maybe freedom isn’t long hair ; maybe discipline isn’t suit ; and not to take anything for granted.
And then I went to music school when I was 5, for ten years. I played classical music all that time ; And my mother played hippie music - It’s like guitar solos 24 hours in my house, like on 10. And my grandparents and my real father, they listened more to jazz music, and Simon and Garfunkel, and more, like, conservative music. And I enjoy all of them ; I loved all of them. And I liked immediately to show the three different worlds not to take granted for what they have.
So i took a Jimi Hendrix record to my grandparents to show that, maybe, his solos were not that far from jazz ; And it was very nice. And I took jazz records to my music school to show them all that maybe, you know, Miles Davis was related to Strawinsky, maybe it’s not a big difference between the two. And I took classical music back to my parents. And I liked very much to be the outsider and show them, like, TA-DAA [big joyful face, hands held up next to it] : life is not that simple, there’s more to it than you think !
At the beginning of September, when the bomb was sent to my house... OK, that was terrible, the guy died, terrible. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. My whole life exploded in one way or another in one week. Where do you live Björk ? You’ve been in a suitcase for four years !
When I say this, I’m not doing the Kurt Cobain, or anything. I’m not saying, ’Oh, poor old me.’ No fucking way. Look at me, I’m a lucky cunt, you know ?
I’ve had a really top time, working with the most exciting, creative people. The most ridiculous, gorgeous situations I’ve been in. I’ve still got my mates, still got Iceland, still got my kid.
So I’m not moaning, I’m not moaning. But what I’m saying is, you go away from Iceland, and, Arrggh !, jump out of an airplane with no parachute and you’re going 9,000 miles per hour for four years. It’s not a situation where you’re gonna fade out. You’re gonna go, Pshewtt !, and you start a new period in your life.
It’s like music. So long as it’s a form of self-expression, I’m quite into it, but not when it becomes about power status. I do try and wear stuff by unknown designers, and I make sure I pay because if nothing else I have money.
On most of my albums there has been one mythical song, [a] kinda literature based thing. And I have usually asked my friend poet/author Sjón to help me with the lyrics on that one. To make it epic. For me there is continuity from "Human Behaviour" — "Isobel" — "Bachelorette" — "Oceania" — "Wanderlust." I guess it is slightly autobiographical but times one hundred. A heightened mythical state. Which I believe we all have ... it just depends from what angle we look at ourselves from...
My mother had a strong father who was really sexist, who beat her down. Her solution was to give me all the freedom she couldn’t have. She let me do whatever I wanted - probably more so because I was a girl. It’s a classic, isn’t it ?
Did she ever wish her mother was like other mothers ?
Not in the practical sense, because if I wanted that I could go to my grannies. One granny used to put me in a chair and comb my hair, because it was down to here - she gestures to her waist - and it used to get, like, dreadlocks. Another granny, my stepfather’s mother, used to take my socks off and darn the holes. I was not very tidy because I just took care of myself.
My mum was like a kid. When I was three my relatives saw me look left and right and take her across the street. Don’t get me wrong. She is a lovable person, a gorgeous creature, she said, though while saying it she looked, and sounded, sad.
I admire her a lot for her freedom. The practical things, like having a meal ready, I don’t mind. Her not ironing my clothes or changing my sheet ? I don’t mind. But emotionally not being there ? I would be lying if I said that. It does *** me off. This
remoteness on her mother’s part seems to have been pretty far-reaching. When I asked her if Hildur behaved differently with Sindri, Björk replied, without a trace of irony : Definitely. They talk together.
I think, without wanting it, I’ve got a lot of my mum in me - very restless and searching. And I’ve got a lot of my dad in me, which is probably what I’m more proud of - powerful, energetic, organised, a sort of fighter for righteousness.
I am a typical example of valuing what my mother did to me, and how she did it, more and more as I got older. You seem to paint it all black when you’re 14, and then it grows lighter the older you get.
My mum is about to becone one of the first homoeopathic doctors in Iceland. A few years ago, she fell in love with the chief of a tribe of American Indians and she was living in tepees in the mountains of California. I still feel maternal towards her. I’m the one to tell her off.
My mother and father divorced when I was 1 and my dad started a quite conservative family and a home that was full of people because he had another wife and, like, three kids. And my mom just invited all these friends to live with her so I kept being the hippie amongst the conservatives or the conservative amongst the hippies. And I quite liked that, I was kinda the outsider always going "Hmmm, but why can’t we have one meal a day please ?" and "Why does everything have to be purple ?"
Going to my conservative family and being the really freaky hippie, with the long hair and barefoot, and I go back to my hippie people and say, ’listen, actually you’re supposed to sleep once a day, you’re supposed to eat bread’, and being really down-to-earth practical, conservative, being the little kid to say, ’listen, I want food now, mum ! Dinner, no, stop it, comb your hair, now’, sort of thing.
It wasn’t as bohemian as it sounds. They all had proper jobs. There was never any unemployment in Iceland until about two years ago. My mother made furniture at one point but she also worked in an office doing Computers. My father was a full time
blues musician. Everybody worked. Everybody got up early. In Iceland, even the hippies are workaholics.
They all had normal jobs but they all wanted to change the world. It was great for a kid. I knew who to go to if I needed kindness, who to go to for a laugh, who to go to if I wanted to hear a particular kind of music. It was very free. And there was a very warm vibe which kids intuitively pick up on. If I fancied eating bananas for two days, that was cool. One day I didn’t want to get out of bed so I cut a hole in my bedsheet, put it over my head and went to school like that.
To be honest, I would have expected people to lose interest a long time ago, but I was gonna stick to what I have to do anyway. I do feel very lucky that people are still around and still interested.
It’s just one of these things where I’m not sure exactly, but probably everybody can see it but me. I just know it was right and a powerful decision. Maybe I’ll go back in a few years and go, ’Of course, it’s obvious, silly.’ But it seemed to sum up a lot of things for me.
Elis Regina, Nusrat Alleh Fateh Khan, Chaka Khan, Chet Baker, Milton Nascimento, Polly, and Martina (she sings with Tricky). I’m probably forgetting someone.
It’s very hard for me to pick because they’ve all got memories. It’s like a photo album. Off the top
of my head, "All is Full of Love" that Chris Cunningham did. Another one might be "Jóga" that I did with Michel Gondry, which is definitely one that we did together. It’s based on nature and how I experience Icelandic nature.
As someone with a Swedish metabolism, beware of the heat and humidity in Austin. My question : What is your favorite vocal "instrument" sound you make ?
just last week i was watching a japanese film, (that) i saw when i was a teenager, in iceland, and it became one of my favorite films, and i was happy to see it again, as a grown up. and i still thought it was fantastic. it’s called ’oni baba’. and i think in that film are a lot of things i like very much.
I recently went to see Christo’s wrapping in Berlin. Have you seen any of his work ? Do you like his work ?
I can’t stand it. A lot of these people, like Andy Warhol and these pop people, get one idea and do it 900 times ; I can’t stand these Philip Glass idiots.
Right now I have a lot of people I love very much in London.
That city has been very kind to me, I guess maybe because I’m
in Manhattan now... but part of my heart belongs to Manhattan.
Polly and Tricky. And Ren and Stimpy. Those are my four favourites. then she stops to think about how that quote will look in print.
"That’s very ’Björk,’ huh ?"
Hmmm... it’s really hard to pick ! It really depends on the show. I’ve done marvelous shows in great places, and then later done not-so-great shows in the same place. There are some gorgeous places around the world, both outside and inside. There’s one place that’s in a cave in the Canary Islands that I hope to play one day.
My first memory is being in a kindergarten and I refused to be one of the kids, I was always helping the ladies out. I remember putting butter and rye bread out for the kids. That’s it really.
I was obsessed with Sparks, which threw everyone. I think for them that was too "pop". My stepfather (Saevar Arnason), who I lived with from the age of four to fourteen, he was a guitarist ; he was quite grand, and played in bands in Iceland, and was really good. So I was brought up listening to a lot of guitar music, like, such as Eric Clapton, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, all that stuff. That was the norm in my house. So the fact that he and my mother hated Sparks made me like them more. I must have been like 7 or something ; I can’t remember precisely. When my aunt lived in London she sent me a 7" of Pinky and Perky, and my brother put it on the stove and it got bent. I listened to it - it was called The Holly and the Ivy.
My Grandmother’s always been my idol, and I used to watch her and my mum when I was a kid. My mum was may be 25 or 30, over-emotional, going through all that ’What am I going to do with my life ? Who do I love ?’... all these dramas that you have at that age. My Grandmother was 45, a full-on housewife, but she’s also an abstract painter. She’s 76 now, and every time I go home she’s done something new. That’s very inspiring. So I guess I’ve always known that if I’m a really, really good girl and I work really hard and acquire a lot of experiences, if I’m lucky, when I’m 55 I might write a good tune.
When I record live, I don’t think about the stakes, it’s completely instinctive : it’s the right hemisphere of the brain who is expressing itself. As a result, I don’t think of the logical and structural parts of the song. I keep myself away a few days before working again and even listening to these tracks. Then the left hemisphere takes the lead : "Let’s see,hmm.. what do we have to analyse today ?" (laughs)...It is this part of the brain who transforms these creative moments into songs. The more we grow old, the more we trust our left hemisphere. It drives our organisation, our storing. But unfortunately, every informations sent by the right hemisphere get off. It must be frustrated at the end (laughs)...I try to keep a balance between both by cheating on the left hemisphere, by lying to it. This is the only way to disconnect intelligence in order to recapture the instinct. When I want to do something dangerous, I make my left hemisphere fall asleep by sending false previsions to it, and, at the last moment, I change my plans and I chargein a different direction. If I wouldn’t be able to access to my pulsions, I wouldn’t be able to create more music. I would be cold meat.
Because I didn’t move away until I was 27, I’m just completely made out of this place. But as a
teen-ager my friends and me were confronted with several riddles to solve, and one of them was that all the bands in Reykjavik were imitating foreign bands. There was some sort of minority complex about being Icelandic. Also, because we were an isolated colony for 600 years, another thing we were [led to believe] was that foreigners are evil and we shouldn’t communicate with them. We have this very stubborn type of protection shield that we won’t let foreign things in.
When we were starting bands as teen-agers, it was about trying to loosen up a little bit : to be proud of being Icelandic, saying Icelandic words and still communicating with foreigners and still being Icelandic. You wouldn’t lose it. That became a very important thing for me and always will be, because this is the attitude from the soil that I come from.
Now we have laptops. Laptop beats. Harps and celestes, and music boxes, they download very well on the Internet. Acoustic instruments downloading on laptops : it’s all about the communication between those two.
I’m very pleased with it .My daily life has nothing to do with being a celebrity. I do interviews, and I do go on stage, but going on stage I don’t feel like a celebrity. When I step on stage I step down to a humble place where I surrender my ego rather than magnify it. And I try to merge with the whole room and become part of it.
I’m not followed by paparazzi, or very little, and I just hang out with my mates who don’t care anyway ... I do the music I want and people still buy my records, so I feel it’s a pretty good place. But then again, everything changes. So in a year, everything will be different, and in another year, everything will be different again ! So I’d better enjoy it, right ?
I think it’s a mission thing. I think everybody’s on a mission. I’m personally on a very, very sort of fast mission. I have to experience 900,000 things just to know that I’ve tried them all, you know ?
I guess to smitten people. Meaning a lot of things, it depends on what day it is and what situation I’m in. I sing about emotion and sometimes, it’s sympathetic, sometimes it’s to remind people of being alive. I’m not saying necessarily that I succeed all of the time but that’s my target, you see, that’s why I’m still doing this job after all of these years.
My role has always been pop and, I guess, to be some sort of translator. To introduce common people to the things they hadn’t heard before, some sort of David Attenborough of music. I show them the spiders they never knew were living underneath rocks. My mission in life, in a way, is to introduce mysteries to people.
I was brought up feeling that my mother had sacrificed herself for me. Fortunately she’s now got a little business doing homeopathy from home, but she’s almost 60. I’m still desperate to get over that sense of guilt. I don’t want my baby to feel that.
I’ve been doing this for so long I’ve definitely had time to separate what’s private and what’s professional. Then again, it’s kind of abstract because some of my songs are way more private than others, so you wrap them up in silk scarves... I like a performer to be like that : there are certain things I don’t want to know ; it’s unnecessary information. I definitely have cravings for very personal things from performers, but I don’t want stuff they don’t want to give.
I’m too close to myself, you see ? I’m just doing what turns me on. But then again, my point of view is quite different from other people’s, because I come from Iceland- So I’m made out of different things. Maybe you’d get another Icelandic person and they would do something similar. Maybe a lot of people who see Goldie - mixed race people in England, say - would go, ’Ah, I can fit into that mould,’ even when they don’t fit in it. But maybe there’s not a lot of Icelandic chicks in London.
I was a little ignorant with the tank girl incident and after that promised to not do that again . i just feel the bond between the music and the film has to be really deep and real , so often it is just a surfacy artificial thing , the film might be ok and the music ok but they are strangers to eachother !!! amphibian i was very proud to be asked , spike is a friend i had sort of watched him through the corner of my eye make his first film and i knew the connection was genuine , and i personally feel that that song and the piece where it got put match each other very well !!! I met the guy who made the professional , we had a mutual friend and i promised him a new song . I then noughtily moved on to another project ( post ) and couldn’t get it together to connect so I offered him to choose an old song instead as he had been editing with that piece of music anyway . so : proud of the amphibian thing but the other too where educating experiences that influenced strongly that i have since said no to almost every single soundtrack request i have been asked about . and then put everything aside and with all of me did dancer in the dark . I guess I am a all or nothing kinda person ...
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.
I did a record called "Debut," which was my first album and I wrote all the songs — with other people of course — but still it was the first time where I presented my own universe. Since then I did another album called "Post" and then when I did "Homogenic" in 1996, I felt I’d learned enough about the studio and beats and stuff, to maybe try to do Icelandic pop music or modern music that was still international.
Homogenic" was maybe an album where I would base songs on Icelandic folk songs and create electronic volcanic beats and try to be truthful in my origin and try to use everything that I had learned in the best way I could. Later I did "Vespertine," which was sort of my winter album, which maybe wasn’t so Icelandic but (reflected more of an) introverted, frozen winter world.
Then I guess I felt I was at that point where I had covered both the extrovert and the introvert in me, which was more the quiet poetic universe. I decided to look back and put out an album that would tell that story and is some sort of a retrospect of that.
With Debut I was really a beginner so a lot of it was just learning about the studio even though obviously I had been in studios since I was eleven so I was very comfortable there. But usually I had just taken care of my vocals and lyrics. I was usually there during the mix with the Sugarcubes, and I had ideas but I never been responsible for the whole thing. So Debut was the first time I talked about arrangements and towards the end of Debut I talked about rhythms and towards Post I got braver in that way and produced more. Homogenic was the first album where I knew how the whole production, not the whole detail, but the big picture I knew what it was going to be before it started. So it was more of a case of playing little roles inside that picture. Where with Debut and Post sometimes I would have half the song and I would ask someone to complete it, so it was like a duet or a collaboration. I guess in Homogenic I started to get a little more bossy.
The essence I don’t think has changed at all since Debut. I’ve just become better at working in the studio and I feel like I’m a better singer. People keep saying : “Ooh, between every album it’s a revolution“, and they either praise me or knock me for my short attention span .And I’m like : “What short attention span ?“ I don’t feel like I’ve changed at all.
I feel like I’ve come a long way. I feel like I’m much better now at putting down the music inside my head. I had the live side of my character and then there was the studio boffin side ; the boffin side kind of peaked with Vespertine and Medúlla, and Volta is where they meet again. So I feel the merge between the spontaneous and the academic is more seamless on Volta . . . it’s more fluid between the left and the right hemispheres of my brain.
For my own music I use all available means. And I don’t draw the line anywhere, no. It can go in any musical direction, as long as I recognise it as something I did and as long as I have fun making that music. I see both Debut and Post as an account of a week of my life. A week where many different things happen, just like in real life. I want my music to be just as restless and whimsical as I am. Otherwise it would get very boring, wouldn’t it ? I mean, nobody’s aggressive all the time ? Or cool all the time ? Or vulnerable ? That’s not possible ; and it isn’t possible in music either. That’s why I don’t limit myself to a single style, like many people would like me to. Because I don’t think that way. Furthermore, I get bored easily And I still have the certainty that my voice, my emotions and my lyrics are still very recognisable.
My father was an electrician, and my mother was sort of meant to be a proper housewife. I think it was a very generational thing, because two years down the line she couldn’t handle it and had a divorce, which I think was quite common in that generation of women : to kind of have a divorce more from the actual lifestyle, rather than the man she loved. And she became very independent and moved into a place where a lot of people who felt a similar way lived together.
I was the first child of a mother and father who had been in love since they were 14. And I was born when my mother was 19 and my father 20 ; They were very conservative, but happy people. And then, when my mother had been a housewife for 1 year with me, she freaked out and
became a wild hippie and a feminist. And she separated with my father. My father remained very conservative ; married a nurse. But he was a very hard-working, honest, very energetic man. Very full of power and joyful life. And my mother just being completely wanting to be strong ; and
painting the walls with butterflies. And I lived in a house with a lot of people who have long hair, and listen to Jimi Hendrix. So I go between the two families and I learn : Okay, maybe freedom isn’t long hair ; maybe discipline isn’t suit ; and not to take anything for granted.
My mom has been a total hero. She’s always been trying to help me keep on making music, without trying to make me do something I don’t want to do. I met my stepfather when I was four years old and he is the most patient man I know. We spent many nights writing down lyrics up from albums. He plays the electric guitar and nursed me with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and more of the old ones. The Beatles also had something to say, it’s not possible to be born in 1965 and not be affected by them.
I liked paper a lot and different cardboards and I would tear them to pieces and whatever came out would be pictures and I would make little worlds.
And once, says Björk, she spent a whole day making one of these paper worlds, a huge, special paper world.
I’d fallen in love with this girl in school, I was six, and I took it to her. And I’d never talked to her before. She kind ot rolled it apart and it was just a lot ot torn pieces of paper with nothing written on them. I just suddeniy realised it wasn’t that brilliant, just rubbish really. She just laughed really hard and threw it in the dustbin. Björk laughs. It’s a sad story.
I’ve always been happy, silly, sad, boring, furious, ecstatic, in love, the whole scale, all at the same time. So if I’m not happy all the time, it doesn’t make me unhappy, if you see what I mean.
A lot of people look at me as a sort of fast, mad chick, but I’m really old-fashioned and conservative. I’m really, really into knowing yourself well enough to know where you flourish.
I’m surprising myself. I’m sitting on my own for hours on end and I’m giggling, ’cos I’m just going into funny places that I’ve never been, ever. I’m taking myself there, going, ’C’mon, don’t be scared’. It’s fun.
I guess I don’t look at my albums to be sincere. I don’t look at them being better or worse. But I guess it’s sort of a way for me as a craftsman to feel I’ve got along way to go to some place, to document my interior though I still have got a lot to learn. In those terms, Debut is quite naïve and Vespertine is more specific and detailed. I guess that feels good to me that I managed to do that, you know. But being immature can be a good thing. Even though all you are doing is some big sketches or something - like Debut - it’s very simple. It doesn’t mean that it’s bad. Like for me now, I have done Vespertine, and I still feel like I’ve got so far to go. I feel like I’ve learnt something now and I feel like I’ve managed to document my extrovert side, which is Homogenic and my more introvert side which is Vespertine, so I feel like I mapped it slightly out. So now I feel I’m ready to do a proper album, that I have all the colours on the palette, and I am ready to start. That’s how it feels for me, but maybe that’s more the craftsmanship side of me talking.
On Debut I looked back on what had happened to me the 10 years before and on Post I look back on the last two years ; the period after Debut. Just to conclude that nothing’s really changed. Because that is the biggest misunder- standing there is about me : people think that my life has changed enormously since Debut’s success. But I’ve bee accostumed to attention and success all my life. On a small scale, true, but still : at eleven I was already a celebrity in my village of birth. Singing in the local pub, you know. I’m used to being watched, analysed and criticised. At an early age I learned to be a public figure and act like one. I then made the decision to do what I want for the rest of my life. After all, I’m the only one who knows what’s right for me. The drawback is : normal people can still just go to the hair- dresser to have their hair cut. If I do that, people will immediately say : ’Oh look, she’s changing her image !’, you know.
The cliché is true, that the older you get the more abstract time becomes. When you see those films with time travelling, something that happened 50 years ago feels like 5 minutes ago. It’s very sort of abstract. It’s like pockets. I mean, my relationship to music actually hasn’t changed that much, it’s pretty similar. and I would think overall, when I made Homogenic . I had just been a lot, in a city and I basically escaped, to the mountain in Spain and we recorded an album full of homesickness to Iceland. And that doesn’t sound too different to what I’m doing now.
I’ve got the right to be an idiot and I’ve got the right to be clever, both at the same time, and I refuse to be only one or the other. I insist to be happy. I make an effort not to forget all those different colors : to get hilariously drunk sometimes and to pay all my electricity bills and to forget what time it is and run a band without a fault.
I just have the most boring... the one that was on the phone when I bought it ! It’s gross. I know. I just haven’t had time. I should. I used to have one that I really like, but I lose things all the time - credit cards. My favourite [ring tonel - you’re not going to be surprised by this - was somebody beat boxing. But I didn’t programme it in myself.
Björk liked being alone. She would walk around, sing, and play games. She would rehearse running down the middle of the street, a busy street with several intersections, with her eyes shut, and eventually she learned to run down it as fast as she could without looking, just relying on her other senses. It was such a kick. So much adrenaline. Then one day she ran into a lamppost. She still has a scar on her right palm.
I woke up one morning and I had this mania. I was like a woman obsessed for two weeks. I just had to find a place in the forest or in nature or I would die — now. I found this place in a matter of days. Afterwards I found out I was pregnant, and I was like, Okay, that’s why.
You’ve got happy, sad, angry, confused, and then all the 50,000 other colours that a human feels. And if one song is just about turquoise blue - that can mean a lot of things ; that [can mean the way] you feel about apples, and your brother, and your wooden bed from your childhood. And you would sing about that in one song, and people might say, ’Oh, it’s about her boyfriend.’ But that’s OK. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that I capture that turquoise-blue thing. If I do my job right. I guess I look at it more like that. As kind of ... abstract.
I think of the tracks as characters, like my friends. I get really, ’This is the track with lilies that are dying, past their prime, and black and kinda sexual,’ or whatever. And then another track is the happy one with all the kites and childlike energy. So I’m pretty stubborn, once a track is that character, I will stay with that character. I’ll say things like, ’No no no, this is not a pink song. It’s more like this section is narrow and the chorus is wide, there’s a lot of space. I can stop them if they’re going down the wrong road.
I don’t know why it is just me still doing this sort of music and being this sort of perfomer. I think the world has maybe got more conservative. But there is a backlash rising, especially in America. People like Joanna Newsom and Antony and the Johnsons give me hope.
Michel explains very well the way I create my songs. When I write, I plant little seeds. Then, the question is : When will they be ripe ? And that is up to Michel. For example, my favorite Michel video is Isobel. It’s Michel who found the poetry in it. He also found the thread we had on the first videos : Human Behaviour, Isobel and Bachlorette... It’s the same story with the same character who is neither Björk nor Gondry but a third person : us. It’s the story of a girl frightened by adults - a teenager who becomes aware of her femininity - then an instinctive character who discovers her femininity, with the good sides and the bad sides. In the end of Bachelorette, she realises she would be better where it all started : in the woods, alone. These videos are my different sides.
I’ve been singing since I was a little kid. I used to sing walking to school, whether it was raining outside or snowing. In Iceland, you can sing at the top of your lungs, and no one can hear you. Most of my youth was a very euphoric experience, me walking and singing at the top of my lungs. I never thought I’d sing for other people. It was always my secret and my survival kit. I’ve been singing for many, many years, long before I sang for others. It wasn’t really until I was 27 that I sang for others. But singing outside on my own while walking was where my voice developed. It’s very acoustic on its own, without microphones.
I’m not gonna change my voice because another sound is fashionable. The people I work with don’t look at music as a trend or a fashion - it’s their voice. If you called Tricky a tripper he’d probably hit you.
I think I have gained more vocal control, but at the same time
I think that’s one advantages of getting older.
You will always have the emotion and the rawness.
I guess there won’t be a day when you’ve woken up and you
feelings are "finished !. You gain more empathy and emotion as you
get older but at the same time, because now I train my voice in the
mornings when I wake up.
It grows, emotionally but also technically. It’s one of the most
exciting things for me. I think actually it’s where discipline and
instinct meet ...in the most intense way !
In me.
I think it mirrors everything I do.
I may get a new favorite album, make new friends, be happy.
Get drunk. Gain respect for taxidrivers ! *LOL*
I could go on forever, but it will all turn up in my voice.
As you get older your technique becomes more important. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Technique can become natural and impulsive. Like riding a bike. With Volta I didn’t notice a lot of difference but now, touring, I had to bring a vocal trainer with me for two months and my voice has grown a lot. One more show and we reckon I can do it on my own again. It sort of comes in chunks. But he says my voice has just grown into its best stage now. He says, “If you are good with your technique the voice is at its best between ages 45 and 60.“ Which is the reason why most working opera singers are that age. But on another note, I love when you can hear age in voices – whether it is childlike or old croaky style. This over-importance that everything has to sound teen-age is a bit boring, a bit anti-life.
My songs may seem to be without structure, but they are very structured. The confusion is probably caused by the arrangements. I look upon them as a sort of decoration, that I like to play with.
But about those structures... I grew up more or less among hippies and they used to improvise and jam a lot. Initially, I thought it was fun and exciting, but later I found it tiresome. Ever since, I hate musicians who don’t know where they’re going with their music. Don’t get me wrong, I respect spontaneity - that’s what life is full of - but I also demand discipline. And a sense for direction and structure. Only when all those things come together, it’s perfect for me.
When I write songs, they have gone through a long period of growth in my head first. They’re puzzles, that are completed very slowly, piece by piece. Only then will I write things down. And structure is very important for that. It doesn’t matter then whether I go in the studio with nine banjo players or with 23 drumcomputer experts, the structure will always remain the same.
But maybe people don’t recognize those structures because they’ve been in my head for so long that I don’t feel the need anymore to emphasize them. I’m actually already tired of them, don’t find them exciting anymore and already start making variations on them. And that’s how they end up on the record.
So I understand your question. It’s the greatest thing when people recognize the basic structure without it actually being played. It seems to work that way with lots of pieces by Charlie Parker. The listeners effortlessly pick up the structure, so Parker can simply do babble jibble. I hope it will work that way with my music one day. But maybe I should contain myself a bit with those arrangements [laughs].
At the other hand : that’s just what I like about it. It’s ambience, dressing. It’s like standing in front of my wardrobe and thinking : what shall I wear today ? Is it raining or is it dry ? Is it cold or is it warm ? Am I going to a meeting or to a party ? Is it already Christmas ? I like to connect a target to my music. A destination. And on Homogenic that destination is called : home. And can I help it that no one knows what my house looks like ?
I don’t watch many Hollywood films, and being from Iceland, it’s pretty accidental what gets over there. Most Hollywood films that I watch are Busby Berkeley musicals and … what’s that movie called with all the swimming ? Esther Williams, that sort of thing, so I thought it’d be very appropriate to wear a swan. I guess they don’t do those things anymore, right ? But it was a tribute to Busby Berkeley and that sort of elegance.
I come from a culture in which living with nature is important. From a very early age in Iceland you’re taught that taking special herbs and natural drinks is far more beneficial for your body than normal, doctored food and drinks. Taking advantage of nature is a common-sense approach to life. But in Britain, using natural cures and some off-the-wall remedies seems to make you some sort of hippy freak.
My mother is a homeopathic doctor, so I was brought up with what you call alternative medicine as a normal part of day-to-day life. It was never alternative to me, just natural. When I was a child, Mum refused to let doctors give me antibiotics because she said that, even though they might prevent disease in the short term, they help to break down your body’s natural immune system in the long run.
It’s so important to build up strength in the body, and chemicals aren’t the best way to do that. If you want to increase your energy so that it lasts for life, you have to use alternative medicine.
I learned those lessons and have tried to bring my child up in the same way. My son has never had antibiotics or vaccinations, only homeopathic remedies, especially at this time of year for hay feaver.
I’m not saying all alternative medicine works - I’m not sure about some of the stranger practices. But if I try something and I feel good, then I’ll stick with it.
I think Icelandic and Irish people are really similar. You know that dance that came from Spain ? The Macarena ? Well, it was huge everywhere, number one all over the world, except in Ireland and Iceland. Because when we get pissed, we don’t wanna go like this [starts dancing the Macarena], we wanna go like this [at which point Björk grabs her glass and bursts into song].
At the moment I have this new album inside me, which is somehow more vulnerable then the others that came before it. Vespertine is a lot more emotionally brave and fragile, and I want to make sure that the pictures are like that too.
The reason I do photographs is to help people understand my music, so it’s very important that I am the same, emotionally, in the photographs as in the music.
Most people’s eyes are much better developed than their ears. If they see a certain emotion in the photograph, then they’ll understand the music. So instead of having to listen to my album ten times, they’ll get it the first time.
I was one of those who began to sing before I learnt how to talk. I’ve always known that music was what I was meant to do. I was sent to a musicschool and stayed there for 10 years. I learned how to play the recorder and was most likely a hard pupil. I knew right away how I wanted to do things and was never satisfied with what others did. Maybe I didn’t reach what I wanted either, but I still kept going. I didn’t want to play Bach and Beethoven so I always showed up with my own sheet music. But even though it was rough, and I had up to 5 teachers, I’m still pleased with this period of my life. I know how to use that recorder and I can make it do what I want, if I practice a bit. It has also been put to a use in singing to know how to breathe. The reason I began to play in bands was that when I was 11 years old I sang on a vinyl which was called “Björk“. It lead to that I connected with some older pop musicians but still I began to play with my peers. Now I had gone through with making one album, and at least I knew what to do.
In a way it’s very much like hunting in the forest. You put up traps somewhere for your animal. But you don’t know where it’s going to run or how it’s gonna behave. You can guess and that’s how you become a good organizer. You become a good guesser.
But you can never know. You will never know. And I will never know how to write a song cause no two songs are the same. Unconsciously I try to treat each song different. There are no rules but I like it. I like it very much cause for me it’s like playing a game for myself. Surprise myself and sometimes the most predictable can be the most surprising.
I come from Iceland, a society where people hunt all the time. I guess it must seem very primitive, but people don’t kill more than they need. No matter how you look at it, we are on this planet and we kill some things and we bring other things to life - that’s the name of the game. it’s a question of whether or not you do it with respect.
The people who went to Iceland were the Vikings. And they went because they couldn’t deal with authority in Norway. So they flew off into this mad ocean in a wooden boat which is pretty hardcore, North Atlantic in the year 800. And found this island full of snow. Yeaah !
Iceland is my little world, the village with my relatives and friends, people I love and people I hate. It’s a magical place. Our feeling for magic stems from out recent past ; until 50 years ago Icelanders were still living in the Middle Ages. Actually they still do. The average Icelander might now have a portable phone and a satellite antenna, but his soul still lives in the rural Iceland of the 1750’s. Even though I’ve felt quite misunderstood in Iceland, I’ve always found that quite fascinating.
It’s impossible be a popstar in Iceland. The cab driver gets you in the airport and comes saying : ’Don’t think that, just ’cause you became famous you are better than I, ok ? I met your grandma and she said you don’t phone her anymore’. Everybody knows you !
I think I’m a much better Icelander abroad than I am in Iceland. In Iceland, everyone thinks I’m really foreign and eccentric and really strange and they don’t understand me and my music sounds very awkward and foreign. And then I go abroad and they say, "Oh, you are so strange and awkward. That must be because you are from Iceland." I quite like that, you see. And then all the people I work with - say one minute I’m working with a string quartet and the next minute I’m working with techno people and the next minute I’m working with the saxophone quartet and the next minute I’m working with a flute player - I always liked being the one being like "OK that’s cool, but have you thought about this ?", and almost kind of gently say, "Listen, don’t take this for granted. There’s more to this." And not because I’m destructive but just to kind of keep things alert.
I found out that I can’t move to Iceland because I can’t lead a normal life there, and I can’t live in London, either. At one time I used to be just the girl with the funny clothes and the strange haircut who lived at the end of the road. Now everybody knows my name.
I think I’d be the same no matter where I grew up. Thing is, Iceland is a place where if someone needs a house, they go out and build it. If they need food, they hunt or fish for it. Same with art. If they need a song, they go and write it. Art isn’t put on a pedestal [in Iceland]. It’s part of life - like baking a cake.
I want to be truthful about Iceland and being from Iceland," Björk says. "And I don’t mean Viking helmets and all of that shit. I was born here in 1965. I was born with raw nature everywhere, but still brought up with computers and technology. For a lot of people, nationalism is a bad thing, because it’s about the past. What’s beautiful about modern days now, all over the world, is more and more people are having similar lifestyles.
And because of that, our identity becomes even stronger, because the opposites meet in an even more fierce way. I go to London, and I’ve never been so Icelandic. When I lived here, I didn’t even think about it. The sound of the album was an attempt to be truthful to updating what we are today and what we sound like.
I am from Iceland. I was born with two legs, two arms, and genes that go 1,200 years back being what I am, with my nose, my eyes, whatever. That is Icelandic. I’m singing in English because I’ve chosen to communicate and it’s not going to get us anywhere if I’m singing in Icelandic. So I’m just being truthful about being a person who comes from Iceland who’s willing to communicate. I think what’s most Icelandic about this album is, energy-wise, it’s kind of raw. There’s a sense of identity I can hear very strongly in the music. But it’s purely emotional, rather than particular sounds or noises.
In Iceland I’m quite happy just doing what I did before I moved, which was being like a housewife, doing several jobs, cooking with friends, getting pissed, going to the tundra and driving around in the wildnerness. Writing songs is a way of trying to connect you with your surroundings, I guess, and plug yourself in somehow and it’s almost like you don’t have to in Iceland.
Though she now spends much of her time in New York, she keeps coming back to Iceland, where she lives for several months of the year. The relative simplicity of the place is reassuring to her. Once, she translated a local news headline for my benefit : “TIRE TRACKS IN FOOTBALL FIELD.“ A look of pleasure crossed her face as she studied photographic evidence of the catastrophe. “This is so Iceland,“ she said.
It’s very fierce, Over dramatic, like fierce beauty, that sort of thing. It’s very barren, no trees at all, a lot of molten Lava and hot springs. it’s a country still in the making, I saw all my friends and we ran around in the blizzards, drank a lot of vodka, and had a great party and a lot of dancing. Jungle is really big in Iceland at the moment. Iceland can relate to it. They don’t like fashion that much, but they like things like Rage Against The Machine. They really pick up on that, Beastie Boys ! Jungle ! Anything that’s got that same energy .
Iceland is definitely at a crossroads. Financially it’s a greedy time – a bit like what happened in Britain in the 1980s. The entrepreneurs and politicians want the industrial revolution we missed out on because we were a colony for 600 years, but I think it’s too late.
My generation and other people younger than me are hoping we can go straight to the green revolution instead, but the 70-year-olds who run the country think its utopian euphoria, hippy stuff. The sad thing is that they’ve already built a dam that’s as controversial as the [Three Gorges] dam in China, and they have plans for four or five more. It’s crazy.
Is the demographic of the country changing in the light of the economic changes ?
It is, I think. For the first time we’re getting a lot of illegal immigrant workers. I don’t have a problem with it, and I think they should let more people in. The problem is how they are treated when they get there. At the moment you’ve got 10 people living in one room. My father is a union leader, and he’s fighting to get Icelandic companies to pay immigrant workers from Poland the same as they pay Icelandic people.
Do you mind if we talk a bit about Iceland, because you have spent quite a bit of your time in New York and London and elsewhere. Do you retain your culture as much as you’d like ?
Yeah, I’m still [Icelandic] because I spend half of my time there, and it’s been like that more or less since I was eighteen. I guess I was in a position that’s probably not offered to many, that we were touring a lot—and to be honest I toured a lot more with the Sugarcubes than I ever toured by myself. And then you set up this kind of balance where half the time you’re travelling the world and the other half you’re at home. And I really like that balance—it makes you even more patriotic than if you were there all the time. I’ve written my most patriotic songs—like for example on Homogenic, I did that in Spain. Sort of when you get really really homesick and you’re somewhere else and you look back and it inspires you.
But I think also part of me and what I stand for in Iceland, is very much [that] Iceland was a colony for 600 years and we were treated really badly by the Danish. And the first generation—like my father and my mother—they were born [in] the year of independence so it sort of took that generation to get their heads around that they were actually their own persons.
So it was sort of the role of my generation to be the first generation that kind of really broke off. And when Punk arrived in Iceland we weren’t fighting against Margaret Thatcher or class structure in Britain, we were more sort of declaring independence from the Danish, and we were singing songs in Icelandic and being very sort of punk/patriotic/Viking and also declaring independence from Scandinavia, because we were always looked at as being part of Scandinavia but we’re actually quite different. It’s very different, like literature from there and art are really different, it’s kind of more anarchic and more freedom-loving, ecstatic, kind of aggressive. It’s definitely not sort of Ingmar Bergman, let’s-sit-here-and-analyze-each-other-for-a-whole-movie-and-suffer. [laughs] That’s definitely not Iceland’s way.
I don’t say it’s better or worse—I don’t mean it like that—but it’s a very different mindset. So I would say when we started travelling and playing Icelandic music all over the world and [were] very proud of our heritage, it was to stop the isolation, because Iceland was isolated for 600 years from the rest of the world, and when we got our independence we were sort of still in the middle ages, it was like we hadn’t really had any progress. So part of my generation was saying—and there was a lot of fear, kind of "foreigners are evil and then they corrupt you and destroy you and they are like the Danish, and they just want to abuse you and everything abroad is horrible and we should just stick together and wear woolly sweaters and read the sagas out loud to each other and be isolated for ever and ever". [laughs]
So my generation was very much about about breaking that up and saying : listen, I could go and play Mexico and I could play New Zealand and I will be as Icelandic as any of you guys. I’m not going to get corrupted and I’m not going to get abused ; it’s okay to mingle with the aliens [laughs] and you won’t get destroyed. And that’s part of Iceland’s pride—it’s to be a country in the world and be able to communicate with other countries.
So I’m sorry it’s a very long answer but I think it explains a lot why I’ve always felt that it is important to travel and mingle with the aliens. [laughs]
I had that experience a couple of weeks ago because I went to Iceland for the first time. I was in Reykjavík for that big music day. That was incredible ! It was a shock to be in a country where everyone is an artist, you know ? People were either singing or playing or writing a saga or making a film. [both laugh] It was like a dream come true. What is it like to live in a place where everybody is doing something like that ? Was it claustrophobic at all, or was it inspiring ?
For me at least, it felt great. It’s not only art : My father built his house, and my family hunts the food they eat. Or half of it—let’s not exaggerate. They knit dresses, too. So it’s kind of self-sufficient in that way. It’s also kind of nice because being an actress and things like that aren’t put on a pedestal. Sometimes the reason why you start making music is that the music in the local bar is rubbish, you know ?. So you might as well do it. So, I think you are right because on most small islands, the people have a really strong tendency of getting claustrophobic—you have that sort of lifelong “Should I stay, or should I go ?“ I noticed that also in places like Japan or New Zealand or Hawaii. You can feel pretty stuck after a while.
But Iceland seems so different from the other islands like Japan or England. They seem like they have a lot in common : They have the king and the tea and the big navies and the gardens and all—they have the same kind of obsessions, and they’re very formal. But I was so shocked by the people in Iceland. They didn’t see formal at all. They gave me this book to read, Independent People [Halldór Laxness’s chronicle of tragedy and survival in Iceland], and while your record is filled with so much generosity and graciousness, in that book there’s a lot of silence and stubbornness. Can you relate to that as an Icelander also ?
I think Icelandic people are very stubborn. It’s kind of a stereotype to find the reason, but I think maybe it’s because it was a pretty hard place to survive in before the last century. The people who survived were the ones who were almost aggressively optimistic. It was like they insisted on surviving. Like, with a lot of people in Iceland—I don’t know if you know this—but if you start saying, “Oh, the weather isn’t so nice,“ they get really defensive. They go, “Yes it is !“ [both laugh] But we’re definitely not the Latin kind of extrovert types.
Oh, yeah. Hot Latin blood does not come to mind when I think of Iceland.
No. [laughs]
People in Iceland were also talking pretty casually about elves. They would just drop them into the conversation, and they’re quite sure they exist. You know those little houses they build in Hong Kong for the elves ? Have you ever seen those ?
I’ve heard about them. They wanted to get a woman from Iceland who is a specialist to go over there and help with them. I heard rumors about it, but I didn’t see pictures or anything. So they built the houses ?
Well, they built a tiny one because they don’t have a lot of room. I heard that when they build a new high-rise and displace the elves, they need to have a small house for them. So they attach a little one, the size of a dog house maybe, next to the door to the high-rise for them to live in.
It got trendy when I left, didn’t it ? Yeah, it’s quite funny. I read that the Spice Girls were there. I heard that one of the Spice Girls is going out with an Icelander.
Yeah, Mel B.
Yeah, it was good, because it was so much in the gutter press. There’s so few people in Iceland, and in the background you can see your mates and your downtown square. I got really homesick.
When I saw there was a shop called Iceland I was totally confused. I thought it was the National Embassy. But when I went inside there was just loads of fridge-freezers.
Instead of lounging on a sandy beach, Björk and Barney split their time between Iceland and New York, where Barney has an apartment downtown and Björk owns a house upstate “in the forest, with the Bambis". It’s a bi-continental lifestyle that works nicely with Björk’s seasonal preferences.
.
In December and January, she explains , “it’s colder in Manhattan than in Iceland, and the Christmasy thing is a bit insane ! In Iceland, it’s like a winter wonderland, and there’s only light for one hour a day, it’s about family and drinking hot chocolate with cognac in it and cuddling.“
( Summer in New York is also out : “I think it should be illegal to be in Manhattan in August.“ )
What kind of relationship do you currently have with your native country, do you still travel between New York and Iceland and do you need these extremes in your life ?
Thats right, i’m in between these 2 places, but besides that i just travel a lot. It can be tough at times, but Iceland will always be my homecountry.
The people who live there don’t give a st and it’s something they would rather make sure that I’m OK. They’re very down to earth there : salt-of-the-earth people. But there are a lot of tourists.
It’s one of the hottest places to go now, isn’t it ?
Yeah, it’s like my son rode his bike off all the main streets, and for like, ten minutes on a bicycle he said he only saw foreigners.
Why do you think that is ?
I can’t work it out ; it’s kind of weird. There are 260,000 people in Iceland and 300,000 visiting a year. One of my main triumphs when I started making music was that Iceland was too puritan, and their relationship with the rest of the world was fd because of the meglomania, and the minority-complex going on and it wasn’t balanced, so they were kind of "let’s never mingle with foreigners ever and be pure, because we are the purest" and then the next sentence was "let’s not buy our kind of music because it’s crap, so only music from London and America is great, or if it’s sung in English." So it’s kind of like the gap between the two opinions was too big. So I always thought you could be very, very Icelandic but still communicate, and you could still travel the world but you wouldn’t have compromised your identity in any way. I fought quite hard for that. And then now when I walk down the main street in Iceland and it’s full of foreigners, I’m kind of questioning that.
You’re not sure whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing ?
[laughs] It’s a good test. But I think maybe it’s because it’s just beginning, that’s why it’s kind of funny and it seems a bit like an invasion, but maybe give it ten years and it’ll settle.
asked whether it was time for Iceland to get under the EU umbrella she replied :
Right now I would say it looks like it’s the only way.
I have talked to hundreds of start-up companies seeking to help Iceland remould its economy, formally based around fishing, in the hope of stopping large-scale and non-environmentally friendly exploitation of its energy reserves, such as through the recent setting up of massive aluminium smelters
All those I have spoken to say that at the top of the list, they need the euro to stabilise the currency, so I would go for that, because Icelandic unemployment could hit 20 percent by Christmas.
For Bjork, Icelandic literature and art is more "anarchic", "freedom loving" and "aggressive" than in countries like Norway and Sweden.
I wouldn’t say it’s better or worse. I don’t mean it like that, but it’s definitely a different mindset.
After independence there was also a feeling in Iceland that all foreign countries were like Denmark and that they should all stick together "in our woolly sweaters" and be "isolated forever".
Bjork wasn’t having that and along with the other Sugarcubes she showed that it was "okay to mingle with the aliens".
So when we started playing Icelandic music all over the world, and being very proud of our heritage, it was to stop the isolation. My generation was very much about breaking that up and [now] I can go and play Mexico and New Zealand and I will [still] be as Icelandic as any of you guys.
First of all, there is no such thing as Icelandic music. But I want to prove that there should be. Just by looking at the mountains and walking around, you can feel that.
In Iceland, if your car breaks down you fix it, and if you need a house you build it. I’m not saying if you’re hungry you go hunt, but it’s not far from that. My family still hunts half their food. If you need good music, you make it.
I think I’m very real. I have a working class background. I’ve worked hard all my life. As a teenager, I moved into a house with 14 others and got myself a job, so I know what problems you have in everyday life, and the most important thing is to know what those problems are. But you also have to stay close to your imagination. Personallly I think a mixture between 50 percent realism and 50 percent fiction is the best combination. Reality and imagination can blend in completely amazing ways. For example when you sleep and dream about wonderful things, your dreams will give you enough energy to cope during the following day. At day-time you’re face to face with reality again but when you go to bed you go back to your dreams and fanatasies. This way, your dreams affect your life and your life affect your dreams.
If you are happy and you are in love, obviously it’s going to have an effect on your work. I think we probably influence each other on a very human level, the way any boy would affect any girl. Not sort of, ’Oh, now I’m going through a pink period, and you’re going through a pink period’. Nothing artificial or literal like that. It’s more about nourishment, and me doing my work and being nourished. It’s a very clifferent place than to be malfunctioning and then having to make something.
I sort of feel like I never left. When I was touring with the Sugarcubes, I would spend half my time away and half there. So it still feels like that. I find it with friends that live here all the time, they want to go away at least four times a year.
I follow my instinct and if that supports young girls in any way, great. But I’d rather they saw it more about a lesson in following their own instincts rather than imitating somebody.
I think I used to go here to sympathise with the immigrants," she laughs. "It almost makes it comical how you don’t fit in, if you don’t fit in. You see these gorgeous Indian women wearing trainers and track-suits over their saris and the men are all in the pub. I completely felt like I didn’t fit in the first two years. I think what changed was I got the sense of humour ...
I left home when I was 14 because I got the feeling that time was running out, that there were all these things happening out there and I was missing them. You decide that you want to rent a flat and cook really bad meals. I had to come home a year later when I was broke.
When punk arrived in Iceland, we weren’t fighting against Margaret Thatcher ; for us it was more like declaring independence from the Danish. We were singing songs in Icelandic and being very punk, patriotic, and Viking.
My mother and father were born in the year of independence [1944] so it took that generation to get their heads around the fact they were actually their own person. So it was the role of my generation that really broke off.
I’m very open to learning and I love influences. But if you’ve got a strong sense of identity you can mingle with aliens and you’ll still be yourself. With everyone I’ve worked with, was a big give and take. I’ve had working relationships for 20 years, it’s a very sensitive thing, like friendships. If you have friends for a long time its not about publishing or credits, it’s about an emotional connection. You gave and took, there is a certain equality there.
I seem to have so little time and so many ideas I want to do. I have to refuse myself doing these ones and focus on these instead, so as of yet I’m not afraid of losing my inspirations. I’m more worried about time, like ’how the fuck am I gonna finish all this ?’
After traveling so much, I realize how gorgeous the Internet is, bringing the home together again. So I’m looking back on a living room in the ’50s where the whole family is, but it’s modern and technological.
You know, its ironic that just at the point the lawyers and the businessmen had calculated how to control music, the internet comes along and fucks everything up.“ Björk gives the finger again, this time waving it into the air. “God bless the internet,“ she adds.
In one way, I think the internet is great. You know, I like it when new galaxies are formed. Sorry to be poetic ! But the way people can express themselves, find people like them, talk about all sorts of geeky stuff, I love it. But having a secret name on boards and things – I know the risks too. Sometimes it’s obscene...there’s no control, so you have be healthy towards it. I wouldn’t talk to my fans like blogging, for instance. Not because I think I’m better, it’s the opposite : I find it uncomfortable that people think I’m God. I’d rather speak to music fanatics, nerds, on an equal level, really. I hope that’s not too offensive, but I’m into healthy relationships !
Everybody around me had been obsessed with the Internet for years, but the first time I could connect with it is when I could emotionally relate to the sound world that the Internet provides. There is no oxygen there, and everything is downloaded. To me, it sounds very much like your thought process, very secretive somehow. I got obsessed with that, and laptop beats. It seemed to marry very well with the whole internal world I was creating. I picked instruments that are quiet and shy and passive and peaceful : harp, celeste and music boxes.
Does she agree that there’s a false sense of anyone-can-do-it democracy today, what with YouTube and MySpace, and that only uniquely gifted individuals like Elvis Presley or Billy Mackenzie or Björk herself should ever be allowed near a recording studio ?
Not at all ! You’re trying to push my buttons. Are you setting me up ? Anyway, people who really have to make music, like Billy or Elvis, they’re going to make music no matter whether they get money for it or not," she continues.
But also, we’re seeing the revenge of the public against the elitist media, and it will find a balance. Eventually there will be room for everyone : people who like reality TV or whatever, and nerds like me doing what we like.
Say for example, the corner, where the roads meet. One building is so tall and then this road goes at that angle, then this building is shaped like that, and it sort of directs the characters. And so when you hear that in a song it either opens up or it goes really narrow. Do you know what I mean ?
Sorry, it’s nothing personal but generally journalists don’t have a clue. I don’t expect them to have one. It’s very rare that you read something with some insight. Maybe five per cent of reviews I can identify with and then only a little bit.
Usually people ask me crap questions about the music but I like your questions. I like it when people talk about the music, it’s common sense, it’s like bread and butter. You can’t live without it. Usually I hate music questions, I change the subject and become the scruffy alien people want me to be.
It’s always a bore doing interviews for countries like Mexico or Japan where they haven’t done you before. You just sit there going, ’No, I don’t have a polar bear sitting in my bath at home.
I’ve never felt all that comfortable giving interviews, and it’s something I still have a major problem with. I can see the
necessity of it - it’s important that people know when you have
something new happening - but there is so much unnecessary nonsense that
goes on around it to. How do you describe a piece of music ? And if you
could, should you ? Wouldn’t that take away the magic of it ?
We all have our own ways of interpreting what we hear, and the same
piece of music can mean a host of different things to different people.
I’d be ashamed to do this interview in Icelandic. But I can do it in English because it’s the language of cheap things : Small talk, clichés, fashion. It’s very exciting, though - like a party game.
There’s a lot of similarities between Iceland and Ireland. All the poetry, I guess, and the literature and the drinking. Do you play chess over there ? Chess is massive in Iceland. There’s a lot of chess-playing and telling stories while you’re getting hilariously drunk. Falling asleep on the chess table is very much part of Icelandic culture.
I guess I was definitely the odd one out as a kid. But I thought it was very
exciting. And I think it’s sort of made me become obsessed with things that are
Japanese very early on.
Maybe as a teenager I liked... Mishima ?... I would read that. It’s sort of a teenage thing, right ? Ehm... Yeah, I’m curious actually... about the Shinto religion, I would love to read about it ! Is it like a God and everything, inside ? All the objects ? That’s very pretty... I’m a bit ignorant, I have to say. I like to learn more.
At one point I even applied to study at a Japanese animation school. I was going to go, too, but then I joined some band. ( That band was Tappi Tikarass )
I wanted to ask you about where the joy of music comes from for you. When you’re using your voice to jump out of yourself, or when you invent something, where does it live for you ?
Well, having started as a singer, I think the main kick for me is the singing. The rest is something I just have to work at every day. It brings out a more maternal side of me—making sure that people don’t give up on songs even though it looks hopeless. You know, “You still have to give it one more try !“ and that sort of thing. I guess having new ideas is probably the part of me that I am least proud of. It’s probably a bit of a show-off thing, right ? But then again, I like stuff like that. When I used to go to hip-hop clubs— very rarely because there weren’t any in my country—people would be break-dancing. I mean, how showoffy can you get, right ? But I love it so much ! Like when people try to top each other. Sort of like who has got the biggest feathers or something. A little bit of that isn’t that bad, you know ?
Her latest musical passion is jungle. She tells me she adopts an anthropological approach and sneaks along to raves in "David Attenborough mode". Her face lights up as she describes her attraction.
It’s positive. It’s about fierce, fierce, fierce joy. That sort of [she pants like a dog, imagining dance exhaustion] I’m just too happy, I want to explode. Aaarrgghh ! That’s jungle. It’s like when you meet a person who you know is going to be your friend for ten years. And the energy that’s there, it’s like aargghh !
I was quite conscious that I wanted permission to be able to be sad and funny, and human and crazy and silly, and childish and wise, because I think everybody is like that.
We didn’t choose each other. We were picked. It happened when à si in Grammið and Guðni Rúnar had that musicbroadcast à fangi on the radio and when they were quitting they decided to have the last show “live“. They wrote down 6 names and asked us to rehearse for the show. We did and it went so well that Kukl was formed.
Je ne comprends pas cette obsession permanente du passé. J’ai eu de sérieuses prises de bec avec le directeur, mais en même temps, je suis celle qui a fréquenté cette école le plus longtemps. Nous avions une relation passionnelle d’amour-haine. J’avais envie de faire des choses neuves, pas de copier ce qui avait déjà été fait.
En Islande, on ne dépend de personne, on se fait soi-même. Si ta voiture tombe en panne, tu la répares toute seule. Dans ma famille, on continue à se nourrir de chasse et de pêche. On est restés très proches de la nature.
Il y a peu de différence de température entre les saisons, mais il y a une énorme différence de luminosité. En été, la vie sociale est intense, mais en hiver, les gens se replient sur eux-mêmes et restent chez eux. J’aime cette alternance, je m’y retrouve.
When I was in Spain, I never liked lace. I thought it was kind of cheap. But then I started thinking there’s lace everywhere ! Why is it everyone around the world wears this same pattern and thinks it’s sexy ? It doesn’t matter if it’s a millionaire’s wife in Dallas or a whore in Honolulu. Maybe our blood cells choreograph themselves into a state of passion.
When I am thinking about work and using technical musical terms I think in English. But when it is to do with my feelings I think in Icelandic. I visit the English language, but Icelandic is what I feel in. I usually write my songs in Icelandic, and then translate them myself into English.
When I was a kid, I walked a lot outside. Between my grandmother’s house, my father’s house, my mother’s house, my school, my music school. Because Iceland, most of it is like nobody lives there. And when I walked I could sing and sing and sing and no-one could hear me. And that’s how I learned to sing ; And that’s what i did for I don’t know, ten years, or fifteen years, or whatever, of my life. And that was kind of my little treasure, my little secret.
And then when I met an engineer, much later, first they tried asking me just to be in one place while I sing, which is absolutely ridiculous. It took them ages to teach me that one, and I sort of managed to learn. But then I’d sing very quiet and whisper and be really delicate and the next second I would scream and everything would explode and they would have to repair everything and I would sit there kind of all embarassed.
But I’ve been singing now for about seventeen years in microphones and I thought I might allow myself one luxury and that would be singing outside again. So we would record the songs and mix them, do like an instrumental mix of them, and in the evening they would buy some beers, get like an 8-track machine and a DAT-machine ; and headphones with very very long leads and microphones with very very very long leads. And they would sit behind the bush, sitting and drinking their beers.
Around midnight, a starry sky, and I go and run on the beach, go away from them, so nobody can see me, like, black and the stars up over. I would put my feet in the sea and out-sing the quiet bits against the sand, and change the sound with the micro- phone like this (makes as if she’s holding the mike in her armpit), and stand up and run and do the happy bits, and go into the bushes and hide behind them ; it was a complete goosepimple experience for me ; it was very very precious and I hope I can sing like that more in the future.
I left home first, actually, at 14. I got the feeling that time was running out, and there were all these exciting things happening out there, and you’re missing them. You wanted to rent a flat and cook really bad meals, that sort of thing. I came back a year later when I was broke.
I left at 14 - nobody thought it strange. I was ready. It was a very crossroads time for Iceland, because of what I was talking about before. There wasn’t a lot of Icelandic music around, and when punk hit Iceland, the statement was loud music, because there was no loud music, just
discotheque and foreign music. So it was like "let’s write about our lives, walking downtown in the street, as real an Icelandic experience as possible." So suddenly there were 5,000 bands, everybody was in a band, and there was this whole punk thing, like, come on, it doesn’t
matter if you don’t know how to play. It became an Icelandic statement.
So basically out of all that came this band called K.U.K.L. When that was over, there were six people picked for a radio show with the kind of John Peel of Iceland, and he picked six people from six different bands and asked them to play together for a radio show. We liked it so much
that we continued to work together. This guy started a record shop when I was 14, which was the only indie record shop in Iceland, or the only record shop to sell anything apart Top 40, so anything apart than say Abba and Beethoven. So he would sell, like, opera, board-music, reggae,
and dub, and later hip-hop and all the other stuff. You couldn’t get it, you had to go abroad before that time, and buy your records and bring them back. There wasn’t anything that wasn’t Tom Jones or something - Top 40. So he started the first record shop which had all the other
stuff.
Left-field stuff ?
Yeah, but also just like opera because you couldn’t get that in Iceland, or film-soundtracks - just anything that wasn’t in Woolworths, really. And we all as young kids, some were into punk bands, some poets and sculptures or whatever, and just wanted an alternative, and couldn’t
handle the small-town mentality. There’s more to life than fishing, you know ?
So we all worked the one till in the shop, and then this happened, and so all the people that weren’t as passionate about the scene as we were. You know how it is when you’re 14, and then when you’re 18 you get married or get a normal job or something. But out of all the bands I’ve
been in until today, K.U.K.L was the most like a blueprint for my music-making. And for the six of us, we all quit the bands we were in and it was almost like a cult - talking about polarising. Birthday [the first Sugarcubes single] was like a cute little candy-bar compared to what we
were. I still meet people that saw us and say "that is the best concert I’ve ever heard in my whole life", or "that was the worst pile of rubbish". It was like five times more extreme than the Sugarcubes. So, that for me was my first love if you want in collaboration.
Well, I think it is a fairie tale. I find it very tiring when people think magic is like in David Copperfield or like the Ghostbusters. No, I totally, just to set the record straight, I believe, I’m very much into magic and fairies. Yeah. I’m probably the biggest fan of magic realism there is. You know, Lorca, Frida Kahlo. The sagas of Iceland are similar to that : down-to-earth, common-sense, bread-and-butter. It is real. And I don’t believe in escapism, fantasy, I believe in the magic that is just there. But I can’t, say, write out my life because that would kill it. I don’t want to know what happens next, you know ? That’s very important to me.
What is live music ? In the full sense of the word. What’s the difference between performing and studio work ?
You could write a whole book about that. The first thing that occurs to me is the question of when a song comes into being or a concept comes into being, preserving the essence throughout the whole working process, managing to dinstinguish between what’s creative and matters and what can be dispensed with. Sure you can argue forever about how the original concept was. If we’re talking about live music, including music that’s produced in a studio and then the process of arranging it for performing in concert, the trick is not to do it literally. The instrumentation doesn’t have to be exactly the same, nor the arrangement. Often you need to change the arrangements totally so the music can be performed in concert. Preserve the original concept, the seed. I think that’s the trick.
I was thinking about moving to LA, New York and Paris too, as it had to be a big city if I was to leave Reykjavik. There had to be lots of musicians, clubs, movies and books. But England was only two hours from Iceland. I eventually fell in love with this country, but like all flirting periods it had a lot to do with being hard to get at first. I’m not into conservatism and tradition, which is so woven into English life, so when I tried getting into English culture I ended up going out and buying Indian music. I’m a visitor here : I call myself an immigrant housewife. I hang out with the Indians in Southall and go to Thai takeaways. They haven’t sacrificed their culture for fish’n’chips or hooliganism or Victorian dandyism.
I don’t even like London. But it’s brilliant for work. It’s like you can’t even imagine a better place. And it makes my life very comfortable and I can focus on my work and the city is so ugly that it doesn’t take my attention away from my work.
I moved about a half a year ago now. Yeah, that’s what works. It was a love-hate relationship with England because it was the only place where you could make your dreams come true, but at the same time the English have a way to patronize. But I guess if you’re an immigrant coming into a culture, they’re always going to treat you as an alien.
I don’t even like London. But it’s brilliant for work. It’s like you can’t even imagine a better place. And it makes my life very comfortable and I can focus on my work and the city is so ugly that it doesn’t take my attention away from my work.
I miss London’s relationship with music. The CD shops, the DJs, how passionate people there are about it. The paparazzi there is horrid though – four tabloids compared to Manhattan’s one. Both are cosmopolitan cities a reasonable distance from Iceland. I have always spent half of my time there.
How did you feel when you were losing your voice ?
I was basically faced with, ’If I can’t sing, it’s not only me and my life, but a lot of people rely on that’, you know ? It was kind of strange to be confronted with it.
But I heard that you had nodules (whatever they might be) on your throat.
I got nodules, but basically it is physical exhaustion. It’s so clever the way the body functions ; it makes you crash and makes you rethink everything.
How long did you crash for ?
I crashed for a few days, but then I did the whole tour very carefully. I called it my ’monk tip’. So my last few months of touring has been Björk on the monk tip. If you’re sort of really bored, Jefferson, and you want a new angle on life : don’t do drugs, stop talking. It’s amazing. The amount of energy that goes into communicating is just outrageous. And you end up just writing what is dead important. Everything becomes so precious. And it’s very interesting. You start very quickly listening to completely different music as well, and reading completely different books and you get this urge for completely different films as well.
Straight after recording my last album, Post, I set out on a world tour. By December 1995 - seven months into it - I realised I hadn’t taken a proper break for three years. The knock-on effect was that I had begun to suffer the most terrible stress and physical exhaustion. I felt so drained and eventually my voice became hoarse and started to fail.
My mind is very demanding, and I get very easily bored. For me, falling in love is such a head thing. It has to be someone who can turn you on with your imagination, and the body usually follows.
And as far as love, and the falling out if it...
It all just tumbles, doesn’t it ? In one week. Even less. You end up saying, `What was it we did the last three years ? I forgot.’
I hope those weren’t your exact words.
No, I’m being cruel.
She thinks a moment, realizing that words which were supposed to be free-floating and emblematic suddenly seem horrible and specific.
I fucking wake up in the morning with a far too big heart, I don’t know what to do with it really. I love so many people so deeply I could happily die now. It’s scary. It’s so scary it’s outrageous. If it wasn’t for my kid I would... emotionally-wise, I think I’ve achieved as much I think I can achieve.
I was born to be in love. I think it’s more important for me to love than to actually be loved. It’s such a head thing. It has to be with someone who can turn you on with your imagination and the body usually follows. When you’re a teenager you meet someone and you always have a laugh together and you want to marry him and always be with him. Then you meet another person and you’ve got great sex together so you just want to marry him and love him and be with him forever. But to get all those things in one person, you have to know yourself really, really well. I’m learning. It isn’t calculated. That’s one thing love isn’t. But I want to meet someone. Who doesn’t ?
I don’t talk about it but I’m not going out of my way to keep it private. I’d rather keep it to us because it’s precious and it’s all we’ve got. You know what love is like, you’ve got your own lingo, your own little world, so you don’t want to share it. That’s the nature of a relationship, there’s a privacy there, but I’m also not going to make mine and his life a living hell because we’re too protective. I’m not going to rent secret hotel rooms to meet him. It has to be natural.
There is no universal answer why some relationships work and others don’t. There are plently of matters when you fall in love, sometimes they’re very simple and sometimes they’re extremely complicated. Every time it’s different matters that make you fall in love and that’s why you always fall in love with different persons. So it isn’t really fair to compare your feelings from one relationship with your feelings from another. That’s what love is all about ; to get lost in your subconscious and reach something greater and bigger, something you don’t know. Falling in love is never about rediscovering things you already knew. It’s about being part of a new adventure.
She has had many boyfriends and, although in no rush to talk about it, for a year has been going out with the noted American artist Matthew Barney, who left his wife for her. I put to her something that the interviewer Lynn Barber once wrote, that falling in love is not her problem : staying in love is. She can’t settle down.
But I have my home. I have my songs. I have always had that. I think it depends what people want. If people want boyfriends or relationships for the habit thing, the routine thing, and the security, that is OK.
But what about her ? What does she want ? In Poetry, another song on Vespertine, she repeats "I love him" seven times and then promises : "I am going to keep him this time."
What I really like when you fall in love, is that it is completely out of your hands. It is like the weather, and every time it happens you just go with it. I have been with boys for many, many years and I have been with boys for a few weeks. I like it because it is out of my hands.
So the question of whether a brilliant creative person such as herself can live permanently with someone else remains unanswered ?
It is not black and white. You cannot say one thing is good and another is bad. It is like a formula and I don’t like formulas.
Lyrics add something to a song. Otherwise, I might just as well sing ’babba dabba doo’. But the lyrics are mostly just describing the atmosphere, translating it into words.
They’re as literal as they can get. Icelandic is quite personal to me. I’ve tried to do interviews like this in Icelandic, but I can’t. I just feel like I’m lying, because English is in the head, being clever, analyzing myself, seeing myself from the outside. Icelandic is personal and private. I still can’t translate certain lyrics, because they’re just too intimate.
A lyric in two different languages is never the same. I start in Icelandic and I juggle it into English and back and forth ,and back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. And then in the end you got two very independent lyrics that are different but that focus on the same emotion.
Emotionally, I should have just a few musicians and invite one listener at the time into the room because it’s so personal.
When I’m playing small rooms for 200 people, it’s actually very liberating, because that’s how I learned to sing. I used to walk around to school, back as a child, and I would sing at the top of my lungs. In venues with 3,000 people, I did try to sing acoustically, but it wasn’t even brave. It was foolhardy. It’s just not possible.
It’s such a contradiction in a way, to have an orchestra and a choir. Because you’ve got 74 musicians and 3,000 people watching you. And we’re trying to create a one-on-one situation.
I do it all myself. From the moment I think of the song to its going through the studio. I see it through right to the end. I’ll mix it and watch the whole process. I hate to feel I haven’t done something myself.
I’ve done this
long enough to know that nothing else satisfies me as much as making
music. I look at media people and photographers as making a documentary
about me rather than trying to create an image from illusion. What the
public thinks affects me, but it doesn’t change my decisions. It doesn’t
alter what I do. The energy and drive I have is because I love to do it
and I want to do it. If people like what I do, that is a bonus, I’m
still the one who is having a great time.
Juergen Teller : The last time we spoke, you were practicing karate. Are you still doing it ?
Björk : I’m doing kung fu at the moment.
Juergen Teller : What’s the difference ?
Björk : For me the distinction between martial arts isn’t so much the style as it is in the teacher. Maybe that’s because I always pick up on the emotional side of things. But I’d say kung fu is similar to dancing. It’s very flowing, with soft, filigreed, gorgeous movements. When sixty people are in the room, all doing it, kung fu feels almost like ballroom dancing. Whereas karate is very brutal and explosive-in a good way.
This may sound unrelated, but my favorite stuff in school was math. I was obsessed with it. I did all these extra classes. I remember one time when I was taking a math exam. I was the only girl in this group of boy nerds. I was writing a formula, and it felt as if I were looking under a curtain that was blowing the wind. Math and movement are where I feel at home. With people, I’m clumsy.
I thought I should be in the magazine, in the television and on the radio ; and it should be ME. Just the same version of me that I know. Which is a big misunderstanding. I realized very quickly that these were two different things, you know : the person in the media, and me. And that’s not because I’m putting on a show, or pretending, or anything ; It’s just the same way as this room looks completely different from the inside or from the outside. It doesn’t mean that someone on the outside, who can’t see this sofa, is seeing, like, a lie. So it’s just a little game I try to play ; I don’t mean it in a cheap way, or anything like that. But you’ve got to be aware of it — it’s not, like, something to die for or anything.
I’m pretty loyal to a melody. For me a melody is something sacred and ancient that has its own little magic powers if it is structured right. So I will wait patiently for a good melody and usually don’t even start with a song unless that has come to me. Then the other half of me can noodle endlessly on arrangements. When I am recording I will wait for the right day, when my voice is in the right place and I am in the right mood. I don’t believe in forcing things that way. It would be bulldozing over fertile stuff.
You lived in London for a large part of the ’90s. Do you ever miss it ?
Definitely. I miss the music, the people and the feeling of acceptance. When I was a teenager in Iceland people would throw rocks and shout abuse at me because they thought I was weird. I never got that in London no matter where I went or what I wore. The English press were also the first to embrace The Sugarcubes. I don’t know where it stems from, but I think the English have a real appetite for difference and eccentricity.
Money just saves time. It means I can do more of the things I love to do and less of the things I hate to do. All my family are very hard working people. They’re electricians, carpenters, bricklayers. My mother always worked. Now, that I have some money, she doesn’t have to work but she does. She’s actually studying homeopathy, making her lifelong dream come true alter all these years. We don’t have the class system in Iceland but we were a working class type of family. Our money came from work. That’s what I’m used to, work.
If I didn’t have a job or any money tomorrow morning, I’d go down to the market and sell junk or whatever. Self-sufficiency. I make fun of because it’s pathetic being such a workaholic but it’s what I was brought up with. You have to learn how to manage. And if you have, you can manage. But it doesn’t mean that you stop working or that you change as a person. Not for Icelandic people.
You know, a hundred years ago, if you wanted to do music you would probably be playing on street corners. I could have been in a hundred Rokk í Reykjavíks and fifty Sugarcubes then and still not become famous. But when all the money started coming into music it attracted a new type of person who hadn’t been there before, gambler types who like to wager a lot of money on this and that, hoping for giant returns. Now, with the internet, people are going to have to ask themselves whether they want to go into music even if they may not become multimillionaires.
I’ve been signed to an independent label since I was 14, and I’ve never worried much about being commercial. It wouldn’t scare me to have no money. And it wouldn’t scare me to record a song and just put out 100 copies that only your friends and family buy.
Now, while we have the money, me and Derek think, ‘Okay, let’s spend it on a 70-piece orchestra !’ And that’s because we know that we might not be able to afford one in 10 years’ time. I’ve done choirs. I’ve done the flashy stuff. But when I’m old and groggy and maybe I have to do an album with two banjo players in a bedroom I’ll be just as happy.
My son is starting to become a teenager. He wants to be part of a gang, she says (meaning with friends rather than as a hoodlum). He says to me, ’Listen, Mum, this is a priority now. This is more important’
I made a sacrifice by leaving Iceland, but I’ve been on a little personal mission - which was for my songs, so that they would get the instruments and the work and the pain and happiness they deserved. Basically, the money, studio and equipment was all here, not in Iceland. I still have a house in Iceland. Iceland is actually like my sub-concious and England my concious.
I loved Reykjavik and my friends there, being a housewife, cooking good food, going out and getting drunk and all that. It was a drastic decision to move to London, to drag my son with me, but I just had to do it. I’d had these songs in me since I was a little kid and I knew that I might submerae this creative impulse forever. But I looked around me and thought about all the things that give me the greatest joy in life. It might be incredibly good wine that’s just perfect or the right music where you can tell that the artist has gone all the way, done anything to create a perfect song, I had to have a go at least once before I die and see if I could do the same thing
I’m well aware of making a sacrifice by leaving Iceland, because I’m so much from there. But I’ve been on a little personal mission, which is my album. Basically, the money, studio and equipment was all here, not in Iceland.
When I first left home, I carried all sorts of stupid stuff around with me in boxes, but I gradually learnt to give that up. I realised that the best thing is to have, when you go somewhere, is what you’re wearing. One book and you’re laughing. Especially when you’re trying to move from one country to another. You have to start again.
It took a lot for me to swallow my pride and move to London because I’m as patriotic as people can get. Going on my Mission, it didn’t make any sense to do it by fax from lceland. After thinking about it, I realised that, anyway, I’ve travelled with my kid since he was one, and he’s still as lcelandic as an icelandic person can get but very international al the same time.
When I first moved here with my kid, I was very aware that he might hate it. I knew we might have to go back and that I would have to do other jobs. I was prepared to do that if he didn’t like it because want him to remain very much an icelandic person but, fortunately, he loved it.
Sometimes, to get closer you have to go further away. That’s what I did four years ago : I left Iceland and everything that was dear to me because I wanted to be introduced to unfamiliar elements. I was leading a beautiful life at home - musical evenings, good books, good films, getting plastered with my friendsùbut sometimes you feel like you’re only using 20 percent of yourself and just once before you die you want to use 100 per cent.
I wanted danger, I wanted threats. It’s like Bruce Willis in Die Hard : when the ceiling’s collapsed, the walls are on fire and 53 terrorists are after you, something comes out that wouldn’t normally. You do things you would never have done on a normal Tuesday.
I had been quite isolated in Iceland - I wasn’t really into people. I thought I’d live alone in a lighthouse. But in London I was ready to come out of my shell. I was doing interviews all day. It was about communicating. It was for the music. There was a lot going on. It was a magical time. It was like going to university.
About two years ago, when the Sugarcubes were just breaking up. I decided I was going to do my own project, and doing that, every little fucking detail has to be perfect. Because I manage myself and everything had to be done under my name, it just became ridiculous doing it from Iceland. I was just constantly on the phone or the fax machine. And also, coming over here, it gives you so much space. I’m not for professionalism, but to have professional people to take care of things, it just takes a lot of the burden off your shoulders. People who know exactly what to do. Very, very good printers, bass players, engineers, you can find them all here.
Obviously I wanted to move on. It was a combination of things. I’d always written songs in my house, but I’d never sung to anybody, and I’d never intended to sing them to anybody ; it was sort of like my own diary, my own little safety net if you want. I’d got that bit older and travelled a lot and kind of already worked with everybody in Iceland. It’s very open in Iceland, you know, just like Gus-Gus.
You know, you’re in a heavy-metal band one day, and it’s not that big a deal, because it’s all the same people there, and everybody knows each other, and you’re brothers and sisters with everyone. It’s not like the catagories here, like style. People don’t care so much about style. You
can be in a heavy metal band and five minutes later be in a jazz-band ; it’s just like wearing a T-shirt and then getting yourself a jumper ; it’s not that big a deal.
My home is where I am when I am there. I do not like the idea of having lots of things - I’ve never been a collector. If I had to leave New York I could pack up my apartment very quickly. It’s only got one bedroom.
Why did you choose to live in New York when you used to live in London ?
A mix of things. It’s not somewhere I’ve wanted to live all my life or anything like that. it’s different from London in that London was always the big city next to Iceland and I remember going to London when I was 16 with all my pocket money. I really did love London but there was a time when I had the paparazzi hanging outside my bush.
That sounds rude !
That was a mistake [laughing]. You could take it that way as well if you want. I’m not judging people who thrive on that sort of attention but i don’t.
Did you feel invaded ?
It made me feel like expanded into this monster and if I blinked my eyes then fifty people would know about it. I find it a very interesting thing. I can read about it. All this about Anna Nicole Smith in the papers, I’m fascinated by it. I just don’t want that to be myself. Another of the reasons I ended up in New York was I don’t get followed around here, which is amazing. And my boyfriend’s from here…
There’s no paparazzi. That kind of tabloid mentality - that people who make music are supposed to sacrifice their personal lives - you don’t find that here. I had people camping outside my house in London. I would go away for months at a time, and I’d arrive from the airport, go to my house, and half an hour later they’d be Paparazzi following me around. It’s a very English thing, a little bit in France too, but not here. PJ Harvey moved over here because of that. Same thing.
I had lived in England for three years, and I was an A-list celebrity there. It was me and five other people. It sounds really bigheaded, but it was just a fact. As a foreigner, I was kind of flattered. It was like I was being offered a role in their society : ’Will you be the person we watch and look at ?’ But I didn’t like it. I felt if I breathed in, that 100,000 people were synchronising their breathing with me. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that everybody leaves England - John Lennon, David Bowie, Becks (David Beckham) and Posh (Victoria Beckham). People can’t handle it over there. So I said, ’Thanks for the honour, but I’m not interested,’ and I moved to Spain for six months, made "Homogenic" and stepped out of the whole thing.
When I was one year old I would get goose pimples when I heard a beautiful song. When he was one my son got goose pimples on his arm whenever he heard a beautiful sentence. And some other people get goose pimples when they see something pretty. But I’m more like that with sounds and noises.
It’s amazing that you can sit in a car and be really depressed and horrible in a taxi or something, and then just the right song comes on the radio. And it just fucking sorts you out. I just find that... that’s a miracle.
I think what hopefully will happen is people will rediscover pop music as one of the strongest forces in the world, up there with religion, sex, food, politics.
So you think music can change the world.
Definitely. It does every day. It’s just the biggest nurse in the world. Because it sorts out people’s heads, it makes them braver and happier and sadder or whatever. It’s one of the most important emotional forces in the world, I think.
I think a lot of pop music is written in reference to other pop music, which is ridiculous. You have to write pop music about real life, so I keep trying to change old songs and old styles to get more real-life things, so that it comes out almost like film music.
I’ve got no problems with things you can whistle. I love simplicity, it’s gorgeous. A song that a two-year old and a granny can sing, that’s the tops. That’s the ultimate. If you make the most experimental song in the world but it will still be pop, completely simple ; that’s the ultimate target which I still think I haven’t reached. But Oasis just presents stagnation to me. I just don’t get it. It’s like I think it’s very important if you want to enjoy life to have excitement about it, curiosity and appetite for it, and for me to write songs that have already been written... I don’t know, it just feels sad.
I used to travel with my little ghettoblaster, and have my pocket full of tapes, and try to always find the right song. I didn’t care what song it was, as long as it would unite everybody in the room and get everybody together. But sometimes that can be quite a cheap trick, you know ?
I think that in popular music today people are trying to come to terms with the fact that they are living with all of these machines, and trying to combine machines and humans and trying to marry them in a happy marriage : trying to be optimistic about it. I was brought up by a mother who believed fiercely in nature and wanted me just to be barefoot 24 hours and all of these things, so I was brought up with this big guilt complex of cars and skyscrapers, and I was taught to hate them, and then I think I’m, like, in the middle. I can see this generation who are ten years younger than me making music, trying to live with it. But everything is with those regular rhythms and learning to love them, but still be human, still be all gritty and organic.
I can think of any song in my head and make it become reality, which for me is 500 thousand times better than champagne or toyboys or chicks or whatever.
I’m not into nostalgia. I’ve always wanted to write the kind of song that no one has written before. I was always the rebel. They [the teachers in school] were teaching me 300 years of German music and calling it classical. Why couldn’t music from other parts of the world be called classical ? The headmaster of my music school had me up in his office a lot.
Ever since I was a child, I’ve had this naive belief that in daily life in any situation that is awkward, like when you have to keep up small talk with people you don’t know, it’s much more natural to break into a tune in your mind by closing your eyes and tilting your head.
I want music to be more real. More what your day is like. Music has to be more like a film. I love listening to film soundtracks because they capture lots of different moods. It allows human feelings to exist, the music allows you to be a bit unpredictable whereas pop music today is so clinical and sterile. There’s so much bad pop music around that people don’t believe in magic any more.
In the past, I have been very anti-escapism. I thought people were being cowards by making pop music that didn’t sound like their own life. I’d listen to the radio and say, ’That’s not like my life. What’s she singing about ? I’ve never felt that, you know ?’ I tried to make songs that actually sounded like everyday life.
I never thought my albums were for clubs. I think it’s more maybe the remixes and they were not really done for clubs, either. I think my music has always been for headphones and people listen to it in private. I was really flattered when people called me dance diva and all that.
But no, I go to clubs, but I guess I’ve got quite picky. Living in London where there’s so many clubs, you’re spoilt rotten. I have to know there’s a good DJ before I’ll get off my arse and go. But the whole Squarepusher and Mike Paradinas and Aphex - any of those lot will get me out of my chair. Metalheadz and the whole Anokha thing.
I make music for myself and at the time I’m making it, I’m really not thinking about commercial appeal or mass acceptance. That’s the only way to keep developing. I hate to repeat myself and the only moments in my life when I have, like on the second Sugarcubes record, have always happened because I’ve been trying to please other people. When you’re not doing it for your own satisfaction but for someone else, you go into service mode
The best thing was that it introduced me to all music. ... Well, that’s not true. That was another thing I learned. "Classical music is really music from Germany over a period of two to three hundred years. You go to the classical Section at Tower Records, and it’s German music. That says a lot about the history of humans for two thousand years, because we’ve been making music all this time.
My obsession was always to work with people to create something that had never been created before. That became very obvious in my school. I had a lot of meetings with the headmaster. He would sit there and say, "What are you doing with yourself ? You’ve got this talent, and you’re just wasting it ! You’ve got no concentration !" It was like a love/hate relationship between us. I used to go to his classes, and he’d try to make me work. But I’d just sit there and cry my eyes out.
I couldn’t fit in the mold. He was Jewish ; he escaped from Germany to Iceland just before the war. But I’m Icelandic ; I’ve got a voice, and it doesn’t have to be so complicated. It’s just about me and you communicating. That’s my biggest turn-on, to meet someone who comes from a completely different place than I do. I’ll show them everything ; I’ll give them everything I’ve got. For me, that’s creating : One plus one is three.
If I do a song, people have to listen to it 10 times to grasp it ; but if they have an image to go along with it, they only have to listen to it a couple of times.
With a lot of videos, I never have a marketing plan like a lot of pop musicians do. I let the work just take as long as it needs to, because the creative process is like a plant. That’s the best thing about creativity. You can’t say, OK, by Tuesday, I want this twig to have grown three centimeters northwest. It won’t do that ; it will just go wherever it wants to. The only thing you can do is make it feel good, and make sure you give it the nourishment it wants. I’m very protective of the creative process and go out of the way to protect the visual artists who work for me.
For most people, the eyes are a lot more developed than the ears. For most people, music is a pretty abstract thing. If you look at my songs as a cave, the words and the photographs are the guide who goes out of the cave and says, ’Listen, look in here.’
Sort of a David Attenborough thing : If you look right here, there’s a bit of joy here, and if you look on the left, there’s a bit of humor. Go a little bit deeper in the caves, and there’s some pain. The words and the images are more like signposts, a tool to describe the songs, because I want to communicate. I am obviously spoiled rotten, having such genius collaborators to work with.
I don’t look at it like that. I think it’s more about the people who I work with. Like I did six videos with Michel Gondry, which is a lot. Michel is really possessive, he hates me working with other directors. He calls me and threatens me. When he goes really neurotic and starts to worry, he is almost like Woody Allen. You have to say, ’it’s ok, you don’t have cancer’. He’s really sweet. I only did one with Chris Cunningham, two with Spike Jonze. Maybe those three guys, people I still keep in touch with.
I get really excited when I see something visual that I like, but after seeing so many videos on MTV where you see the best video and hear the best song but they don’t fit together at all, I decided to really go out of my way to make sure there is a connection between what you see and what you hear. I think that connection might be more important than either part on it’s own. The handshake is more important.
I have this ongoing argument with Nellee Hooper where I say falling in love is a bad replica of making music, and he says, no, sort your shit out Björk, music is a replica of people falling in love ! What is copying what ? I don’t know, maybe it’s because everybody’s got one sense stronger than the other. Some people’s got the eye, some people got the body or athletics, mine is definitely the ear. You can go through a day in your life with all the relationships you’ve got going on and your friends and your work and it’s just fucked up. The minute you put the right song on, suddenly everything makes sense.
I quite like that my friends have got different music tastes. I’m really curious about what makes other people tick, and it doesn’t have to be the same things that make me tick, for sure.
It sounds really stupid to say that, but it’s the only way to nail it down, really. I could say, ’All banks and politicians and so on’, and institutions just in general. But being the anti-establishment person I am, it’s too easy. There are too many politicians and people like that to choose from. Because I think it’s so typical to judge politicians as baddies and nurses as goodies, but when it comes down to it, it’s much more complicated than that.
If things were that black and white it would be easy to live without making errors. But it’s all much more colourful than that. Like you get awkward things like companies that are supposed to distribute music to the world, like record companies, and they do lots of stupid evil things. And it’s just stupid.
Let’s talk about the song itself. How did it come together ?
It came from my frustration after doing the Náttúra concert. I felt, wow, this all went really well, but it was just one more environmental event that wasn’t going to change anything. The aluminum factories were just going to stick their fingers in their ears for five minutes. I was touring, in hotel rooms, dressing rooms around the world, with a lot of spare time.
I had all the files from Volta on my computer. I was really excited by sort of tribal drums, and felt maybe if I had spent another year on Volta I would have gone further into that sort of stuff. I took Brian Chippendale’s drums for "Earth Intruders", which we actually didn’t use ; we used him mostly on "The Dull Flame of Desire". So I started editing that like crazy in the hotel rooms, and not in a 4/4 way, which a lot of beat editing is usually, but rather in clusters. But it didn’t have to fit to a grid or Logic or all these software programs that are all about the Lego. So I took Brian’s drums and made this new song out of his drums. I think the beat from "Náttúra" would be really hard to play live, even for Brian Chippendale. I mean, he does incredible things, I don’t mean it like that. But it sort of was harnessing his energy and taking it in more organic units than grid units.
Once I had that, I sang on top of it. I just sang it in one take. It’s just a celebration of nature and how unpredictable it is and you cannot control it and you just have to kind of like let it fall all over you and go with it.
How did Thom Yorke get involved ?
I’ve always been so against this kind of, like, send to someone and they sing and then they send. I was like, fuck that. Actually, this is the only song out of all of the collaborations I’ve done over all the years. But I was like what should I do ? They are going to build those aluminum factories oh my god and I am stuck in a hotel room in Singapore ! What can I do about this ?
So I emailed Thom Yorke. He was in another hotel somewhere, I think in Germany or something, and he just sang on top of that into his computer and emailed it back to me.
Then I was with Mark Bell, he was with me on tour, and he programmed these little things to support what I edited from Brian’s drums. Just put sort of like Photoshop on the bass drum, because it was all taken it out of context, what I edited. So like the bass drum, where the one is, needed accents, so he did very subtle stuff like that.
I think we all had a go at the bassline. I knew I wanted a huge, rude bassline. I tried a few and they were either too rude or I don’t know what. I wanted it to be the main thing. Then Thom Yorke tried a bassline, Mark Bell tried a bassline, everybody had a go. And then I was in London and I called my friend Matthew Herbert. I said, "I am in a hotel room and I need a bassline now ! They are going to build the aluminum factories ! Come quick !" [laughs] It was hilarious. He’s one of the funniest people I know. He just came with a suitcase of gadgets. He was like, "I feel like the bass doctor ! Emergency ! Save the planet !" Just then and there, with headphones and mini bar biscuits, he did a bassline on it. Then I had the song ready. And Mark "Spike" Stent mixed it for free.
Then I came to Iceland eight weeks ago and I was like OK, let’s put it out. But then I thought, let’s face it, it’s gonna get all this media attention. I can use it as a torch to put that light on the problems. But I can’t do that now. So that’s why I ended up going to this eight weeks of going out there and meeting all the job development centers in the countryside, reading every single suggestion of a seed company there ever has been in Iceland that I know of and meeting all the companies that are doing that anyway. I don’t want to take too much credit, there are a lot of people out there doing that anyway, but maybe what I did was more just bring them all together.
How did you become involved with the Náttúra Campaign ? What is the organization’s mission ?
I kind of founded it. In a way, it’s just me and four other people who share a Google group. [laughs] The other people include Andri [Snaer Magnason], who has written this book [Dreamland : A Self-Help Manual to a Frightened Nation] and Magga Vilhjálms, who has been my friend since I was 11. She’s an actress, and she organized a concert called Hætta !, which means "stop," two years ago.
When I did the gig in the summer [the Náttúra concert] with Sigur Rós and 30,000 people came— which is 10% of the [population of Iceland]— we wanted to raise awareness for the environment. We did that and it was amazing. Then for six weeks, I was in hotel rooms and dressing rooms thinking fuck, that’s not going to do shit. I’m gonna have to have one more whack at it, and try to be functionalist and not just ideological. As much as I don’t want to get my hands dirty— I would rather just do music— I have to follow this up, or it was totally pointless.
Nobody has ever told me how my records should sound. I make them and give them to the record company and that’s it. I know from other musicians that is very rare and I’m grateful I’ve been allowed to go through a natural evolution.
I need to go to the ocean often, just to be beside it. And I love mountains. For me, climbing a mountain is very renewing. I sometimes go back to Iceland to do it.
I love nature, I love being outside. In Iceland I used to walk outside singing all the time as a child. I wasn’t used to anything else. I must have sung that way for ten, fifteen years before I first saw a microphone. From that moment on, singing only became more difficult for me. For one thing, I really had to get used to standing still during recording. It just felt completely unnatural
When I’m in nature everything falls into place. I’m just one tiny piece of a big jigsaw puzzle, and I like that. For me religion isn’t intellectual ; it’s more related to physics. It’s about things exploding and planets moving in synchronisation and where we are in all of that. When you consider that stuff, some book in the Bible seems ridiculous to me.
Religion isn’t about speaking and it’s not about people, it’s a cosmic thing about your place in nature and space. When people spend too long in cities they get neurotic and paranoid, but if you put them in the mountains for two weeks all those small worries drop down like dead flies.
For me, techno and nature is the same thing. It’s just a question of the future and the past. You take a log cabin in the mountains. Ten thousand years ago, monkey-humans would have thought, That’s fucking techno. Now in 1997 you see a log cabin and go, Oh, that’s nature. There is fear of techno because it’s the unknown. I think it is a very organic thing, like electricity. But then, my father is an electrician - and my grandfather as well.
Well, that’s a bit like Guy Fawkes night — fireworks and bonfires. Actually, people in Iceland have a world record for fireworks — they buy more per person than any other country. Everything just goes mad, and they all shoot it off at midnight. Iceland people are known to drink a lot and so the whole country gets drunk together for 24 hours.
The last year has been outrageous. I’ve spent most of my time since the film came out in New York. People stop me quite a lot on the streets. In a very sweet way. It feels very genuine. I was actually taking the piss out of it with my friends, saying it’s just amazing that people are so verbal in this city, on the street - ’I love your shoes !’ They really let you know how they feel.
I like the bridges - they’re good for walking on. And sailing under. I like the tide, and the amount of bird species are incredible ! The Hudson is a migrating path. I like how kids in the bars dress. I like how many different kinds of concerts you can go to here. I like Meredith Monk. I like Public Enemy. I like the top floors of buildings
With recent across-the-board coverage of the escapades of Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and the like, the media seems obsessed with lightweight celebrity news. What should newspapers and TV news shows be covering instead ?
They should cover what the public buys. And that’s what the public buys. So that’s why it is in the papers.
I’ve got a studio in my house and I make things in my house. I like honest noises and if I hear a synth noise I’m terribly critical. I can analyse it to pieces and for me it’s just emotion, complete emotion. Every noise is different - it’s warm, it’s cold, it’s shy, it’s delicate, it’s rude, it’s pranksterish, whatever - just a synth noise, one note.
About your concept of normality, if you excuse me for being long-winded. I mean I’ve not met one normal person. And those you think are normal have a l w a y s got some secret hobby they show up after eight years, haven’t they ?
I don’t want to be the conqueror of the world or be the most famous person on earth. I’ve got no ambitions in that direction. Otherwise I would have done things very differently, I think.
I’m not an artist or a poet. A poet is someone who can create something with words that can stand on their own on paper, that become a world of their own you can enter. My words are very dependent on their music. I try to make the music into a world in its own right. But really, beyond that, I haven’t got a lot to say
A lot of people think, ’Oh he’s into birds, so she’ll make a bird album’, when it’s the total opposite. When you love someone you feel secure and you get the confidence to present your own universe.
In the first years of my solo career - the period around Debut - I wasn’t able to record a dark or sad song. You have to know, I was raised hardcore happy. That’s something typically Icelandic : to be happy, to feel good, to see everything from the positive side. So it took me a lot of courage to try something moody. On Debut it didn’t work, on Post it did, eventually. Possibly Maybe was my first dark song.
I’ve got just one life. And that’s sad because there are too many brilliant things out there. I’d love to be a nurse in Africa and a ballet dancer in New York and run a children’s music school in China and a cafe in Peru. There’s so much that I want to do that I haven’t got time for.
You do not seem like someone who thinks about record sales, and yet that must play a part in your being able to do some of your more ambitious projects.
Yes. I was very aware on Vespertine, for example, that might be the first and last time I could afford to tour a string orchestra and a choir and fireworks. You sort of make the most of it. Then you can do ukulele albums later...
Will you perform at this year’s openingscelebration of the Olympics in China ?
They actually did ask me again, if i wanted to do it, but it didn’t feel right. I think singing at the Olympics is a very meaningful thing, anything that tops that is too much.
I’m both, but I’m an optimist in the end, because I always have a strong sense of wonder for everything. Even when I feel down i still think, ’mmmm, maybe there’s a song to be had from this’. As a rule, we Icelanders are gloomier folk than others because living in the high north we get very little light, but we have developed a natural immunity against that. That is why there are so many artists in Iceland - art is a natural way of dealing with gloomy feelings. But I want to prove that music can be happy and facinating at the same time. That there is as much intense emotion in ’I feel fantastic,’ as in ’oh, I’m such a martyr !’
Now I’m working at a kindergarten but I’ve definitely worked at approx. 50 places in the last 5 years. It’s not because I’m unlucky, I just want it this way. I’ve worked in fish, a store, factory, been on a farm and a school, etc. I find it fine to keep it this way, because I don’t want to be a musician as a career. I’m exactly as much in music as I want to. You both need to collect and give ideas. You’ll be emptied if you only give away. When music is a hobby then you’re always thinking about it and collecting ideas. I want music to be a solid part of my life, not a job.
I always wanted to be a farmer. There is a tradition of that in my family. I’m a bit of a nerd, I wouldn’t mind working in a shop like 12 Tónar selling records, or having a radio show where I could play obscure singles. I would also like to teach music. It’s weird the way they teach music in schools like Juliard these days. I know someone who graduated at age 20 as a classical composer, playing music the way they did a hundred years ago or more. I would take kids out into nature, and teach them that they can be right, and not just the teacher. I would let them lead the way. To some degree, at least. But now that rock is turning 50, its become in a way classical in itself. People even listen to bands like the Crass as classics. Its interesting to see that development.
I feel I will always be doing something associated with music, but it is a surprise to me that I ended up a "pop star." That was definitely not on the top of my list. I, for example, have a childhood dream of starting a music school for young children.
I use words like ‘pagan’ sometimes. But these are things I say just to get something across, not because I have a picture in my head. But there is a feeling. A feeling I carry around in me, and that I really want to put at the center of this album. Kind of like folk music, but without any folk attached.
Everything must be done with passion. Dancing, fighting, fucking, eating. Yes ! I don’t get into many fights, I usually stop them. I was attacked by a dog, though, but that was self-defence.
Which musician has come closest to sustaining the sort of consistently challenging long-term career that she has in mind ?
I don’t necessarily look at it like that. Besides, I don’t think I’ve been as extreme as people think I am. I just think change is more natural than staying the same. It’s like film directors : just because they make one movie that happens in space, it doesn’t mean that their next ten happen in space. Their next one could be a family movie or one set in the 1800s. But a lot of music these days is stagnant. In the last 50 years pop music has become a very profitable thing and the market has made it stagnant.
To finally answer your question, I have a lot of respect for people like Ravel and Debussy ; people who bridged the gap between more serious music and more public music, and were very true to themselves and didn’t water themselves down to please anyone.
When I’m performing I feel at home - which doesn’t mean that it always goes well. It takes a lot of effort to find that comfortable place. It’s partly about determining if there’s anything visual that I can "see" in the music. I have a love-hate relationship with the visual world. you’ve probably hard me moan about it. I’m surrounded by visual artists, and cinema and fashion are two of my favorite things. But then my senses get overloaded, so the minute a song starts I want to close my eyes
You sacrifice yourself. And you lose everything - like the fact that I’m this big and an Icelandic female and all that. I think this is the reason music and sex are so often compared to each other. The most common way of feeling this is probably in sex. Because when you’re having sex you don’t think, I’m now going to move my left arm 30 centimetres. You just have to do something and you follow your instincts. In that sense, although I’m not saying I’m thinking about sex all the time when I’m on stage, it’s a very similar feeling to having very good sex with someone.
Most people have something : claustrophobia, fear of heights, something they can’t explain. My thing has always been oxygen, ever since I was a kid.
My brother used to tease me by flicking a scarf across my face and I would freak out. When I was about five I accidentally got locked in an accordian box and it developed into a sort of phobia. Basically it starts off by being into oxygen.
I don’t think I ever enjoyed it. It’s more like I do it, then don’t like the results so try to come up with some better ideas so it’s bearable. I think it’s nice when you start a relationship with a photographer. It can almost be like making a song with someone.
i am lucky enough to say that i have always been able to pick who i work with . 9 out of 10 times i have known the person for quite a while before with no work in mind and then it just sort of happens . spontaneously mostly . for example mark bell i had met back in 1990 , we had kept in touch and then in 1996 he came to spain for 2 weeks and stayed for 6 months . we ended up completing most of each other’s ideas for 4 years but always just took one week or one month at a time .
same goes for programmers or engineers or any collaborator , visual stuff or audio .
remixes are a bit different though , i like the honesty in them that it is about a collaboration between people that have perhaps never met . once in a while it is liberating to communicate only in the purest name of music without personal involvements but :
i have to say : being as helplessly human as i am i prefer one on one longterm in the studio situation any day . to jump in the deep end and become the others other half ... and again that goes for both engineers , programmers or music writers or players or producers or singers or photographers or ....
It was an amazing experience for me,. The songs left so much to the imagination of the singer—you know, they were originally written for a cabaret singer or an untrained singer like me. Kent Nagano wanted to make a recording of it, but I really felt like I would be invading the territory of people who sing this for a lifetime.
While we were playing (at Big Day Out in Brisbane), the crowd was just standing with their mouths open... we thought nobody liked us. So we thought ’Oh fuck’em...’ and we just had fun. We are a bit strange on this bill. It’s 12 hours of Grunge, and we’re like the pink dot in the middle of all these noisy rock guitars.
I’ve done gigs in Iceland that have been ridiculous because people know you and when you’re singing, they’re shouting, Hey, you didn’t make your English degree ! Your uncle is fucking my niece !
I feel weird because I’ve been doing interviews for 20 years and this is the first time I’ve ever talked about stuff like politics. I would prefer that music was abstract rather than standing on a podium pointing a finger at what’s wrong with the world. I’m an example of someone who always said they would never get involved in politics. But then situations can become too much so that even someone like me has to stand up and say ’wait a minute.’ It reached a moment when I’d had enough.
Things have changed a lot in the last ten years,’ she explains. ‘I think the 90s started with this feeling that we will overcome our problems and everything was gonna be amazing. But if you look at history, periods like that are very rare, so maybe this is more normal. I like to think it’s the end of the dinosaurs and the Texan tycoons and white trash Christianity maybe. I think you’ve never had so many people interested in politics as there is right now. If somebody like me is interested, it’s gotta mean that everybody is, right ?
It’s not me, I think it’s just the zeitgeist, and that’s why it’s really important to react. It seems like ten years ago people like me didn’t have to spell it out, so of course I don’t wanna explode people in another part of the world, and of course I don’t wanna ruin nature. I’m not saying I’m left wing, because I’m not. I still don’t vote in Iceland, and the few times I have voted I’ve delivered a blank. I still like to consider myself an apolitical person, but it’s just that in times like this, you’re forced to spell it out. I bet most of the people who marched against the Iraq war never even worried about politics before.
In the past three years, I’ve been logging into newssites everyday to find out about what’s going on. And if I, of all people, am developing an interest in politics, then a lot of other people must be as well. Now, even supermodels are discussing international affairs between themselves. But the good thing is that now people like me are learning more about Islam. We’re learning more about the way people think in the American south and becoming aware of things we didn’t know about before.
In the ’90s, you know, I’d go to dinner with friends, and we’d sometimes talk about how things were getting better for women. But in the last ten years, it was like something got stuck. I think it’s all about the Bush years. There’s this feeling of men running everything and having to be macho – the need to fill yourself up with power. It reminds me of women in the Reagan years and how it used to be. Back then, it was all about American females, how they became the most popular ones, culturally. You know, it’s not a coincidence that Material Girl was written then, was it ? I mean, Madonna had her tongue in her cheek in a way, and she’s become something else, but you can feel those eight years of Bush now like ’Woah’. But, thank God, I really think things are changing right now. People are caring a lot, lot more, and criticising the bad things with a voice that’s a lot bigger.
Politics is so black and white and what’s great about music is that it’s above and beyond that . Music is so complex and it has all these organic mechanisms and life forces and flora growing inside it. It’s so unpredictable, like nature, and you can’t put it in a box. It’s belittling it to say music is left or right or pro-this or anti-that. It’s a much bigger force than that.
Pop music to me is very very important. I think it’s one of the most powerful forces in daily life. I talked to my friend in America the other day and he said ’Oh fuck this pop music ; it’s bollocks, you know.’ And he’s a bit of a snob and he wants me to be writing Steve Reich music and so on. And I was like ’No it’s not ; it’s a lot more important, it’s a lot more powerful.
There are certain problems - personal problems ; say the average American person would get into trouble. Who would they call for help ? Aretha Franklin or Bill Clinton ? And I think that 90% of them, if they have a heartbreak, will put Aretha Franklin on. Or if they wanted to celebrate, which is just as important as being sad, they would put like [sings R-E-S-P-E-C-T], like Aretha Franklin on. Aretha Franklin is always there for them when they need her.
Bill Clinton of course, he takes care of other areas, which is like, maybe politics. Or takes care / takes care not of, you can argue forever about that ; let’s skip that one. But there are people that take care of politics, big politics ; that’s important. But music, pop music, takes care of the personal politics ; if they wouldn’t do it, nobody would.
There are situations when you can sit and talk with your best friend for ten hours and he can not help you ; the right song WILL. Now THAT’s how important pop music is.
I don’t look at it as some planned thing.
I think pop music is very chaotic and I think it is a collection of
accidents. I just happen to be one of them. Pop music is supposed to be
about real life, if it all sounds the same then It is an illusion. No
one can lead a life like that. No one can plan their life, it just
happens. My turn-on now may be different to where I end up. I can’t
analyse it too much because I would be taking away jobs from journalists
or historians or musicologists. It’s their job to analyse. People call
me lot of things, you know, at the end of the day it’s all about being a
pop artist, about making pop music. I just do it.
I think people have lost respect for pop music because of how it’s been abused and mistreated. Pop music is supposed to be music of the moment, about what’s going on now and to express what’s in the air at the moment and that means it’s disposable but not worthless.
The great thing about pop music is that people can do it for 900 different reasons. Some people can do it just to bring a political message across, some people do it because they want everyone to love each other, some people do it because they want to look sexy, everyone can do it for different reasons. People who do dance routines, they probably do it a bit more for entertainment.
I don’t read a lot of press... I’m terrible with praise.
You are very good at it in the US and Canada :)
In Iceland, if you like someone, you sort of hint that they are okay
after you’ve known them for ten years. So I’m sorry to say I’m not
very recptive when it comes to praise.
Or criticism.
I guess it’s a weakness, because I think I have a fear that it will
put me off my path. To get lazy. Since I feel I have only started
and have so far to go, I shy away from distractions.
I’m very certain in my head about what’s private and what’s professional. I have only once let people take photos of my son, and that was a friend of mine who came to Iceland and I actually quite regret doing that.
I’ve worked for so long with Pro Tools now, I can hardly imagine doing that any other way, on reel-to-reel or something. I would have done the piece in a very different way if it weren’t for Pro Tools. It’s really easy to work with.
I want to be quite self-sufficient like that. I think people should only do that in the case of emergency, but at the end of the day you’ve got to learn to live with yourself and if you need constant assistance just to do that... also I think you are supposed to be able to solve those things through friends and your relationship, not in an analysed, calculated manner, but in a free flowing, natural way, so you don’t end up stuck with the same problems for ten years...
I’m lucky because I travel a lot, so if I give an interview in one city, by the time it’s published I’m probably somewhere else so I don’t see it and I don’t care about it.
It’s a very intimate relationship you have with your child. It’s being with someone 24 hours a day. But he’s more than like a friend in the sense that I don’t think I’ve got any right to try to control his life.
All these things, videos, the internet... I’m really interested in how they connect the brain and the heart. Right now, I’m reading a book called Musicophilia by Oliver Sachs, about the brain and its connections with music : people who see colours, the links between nature and the mind. It’s like David Attenborough, who I love, love, love – that curiosity, the big heart behind finding how things work. The best bit of it is when Oliver Sachs says about free jazz linking with Tourettes – that appealed to my sense of humour ! And another book I read called The Alphabet and the Goddess...it was about myth and language, all sorts, it mixed together science and human stuff. I like books and art that have that kind of optimism about connecting things. I think that’s very important.
I do. I don’t change my ways, aiming to be liked, though. I more look at it as a bonus if they do. But overall, my music seems to inspire a reaction, and I feel lucky with that.
It’s not like everyone loves it ; the reactions have been very diverse and I like it that way. If I can feel conflict in the reception, it seems that people think I do so many different types of music — "Vespertine-style" or "Homogenic-style" or "Debut-style" or so on — and they get very opinionated on which style I should only do and skip all the others. So they argue between themselves about it. "Vespertine was the best one, why wasn’t Volta like that ?" or "Debut is the best one, all the others are rubbish" and so on.
I find it very interesting because the "styles" seem to be very equally liked. It just amazes me how differently to me they see it. It has sort of taken a life of its own. I do not think in those terms when I make music. At any given time I can only do the album I do. I cannot repeat myself. I cannot force a "style". But I do find it flattering that people feel so strongly about it all, though.
I don’t see why people can’t take things as they are. What’s wrong with bread and butter and tube stations and cinemas, all these things around us ? I think they are the most intereesting and exciting and crazy things, the real things, so why do people have to put pretentions on things. like seeing things through pink sunglasses ? Reality is much more exciting than fantasy.
Did you do a lot of laptop stuff on Medúlla ? Once you get the music done, do you like to sit around and edit it ?
Yeah. I was almost religious about it on the last album, Vespertine [2001]. The vocals sound like I was whispering and trying to have a sound that would be the same coming out from tiny speakers as big ones. Medúlla is really different in the sounds, but with all the vocals, I wanted them to be quite bloody and meaty. But we actually ended up recording a lot on a laptop.
Why not ? That’s so great and handy.
Yeah. And we traveled to so many of the singers’ houses and just set it up. You can just be chatting while you’re working. It was fun. I really feel like I’ve touched on something. Since I gave the record to the publishers, I keep finding new CDs of sounds that I never knew about, like yodeling.
I never write volume or expression directions into the brass parts, but I stand there in the room and feel it and then perhaps change the parts, ask people to go up or down an octave in certain areas and give them emotional hints [to] what the song is about. Then we play it many times through, most often with me singing, until we’ve got it. I enjoy, with acoustic instruments, to be quite organic and feel it in the room hands-on so it can become as ‘live’ as possible.
If you put a book out at 20, you’re regarded as promising. It isn’t until 40 that the serious shit really kicks in and perhaps you’ll write your masterpiece at 55. You have to collect all these experiences to write about. Then you need the work ethic to sit down for a year and cut yourself off while you put it together. As I get older and more mature, my relationship with my music is becoming like that. It’s more challenging, like a mystery. It’s exciting and scary, instead of just doing it in your sleep because you’ve done it before.
I’m very, very over-romantic and I very much believe in relationships. But I don’t think it’s as simple as being husband and wife, you know.
I’ve got relationships with many people, like most of the people on the album "Post". Like Tricky, Nellee Hooper, Marius the programmer, the engineers and Graham Massey who wrote a song with me. My manger is a friend since 12 years and the guy who drew the album-cover together with me is also a friend for 8 years. These are all relationships I’ve got and they’re very important to me. But none two are the same, you know and that’s very important.
I definitely believe there is something as meeting a person and being with for the rest of your life. But I think people have to stop putting standards to relationships. You can have a friend you sometimes feel erupted with, a friend you never feel erupted with. You can have a friend who’s very humorous, a friend you’re feeling strong with. You can have a friend you feel very angry with and it feels good cause you’re both angry together on the rest of the world. You can have a friend you feel very childish with and all this must exist cause everyone’s got this inside. You can’t stop and say "Oh, this relationship is like this". No relationships are the same. No marriages are the same, you know.
You are known for putting out a lot of releases to accompany each record.
They are really good with that. For my tastes, I think sometimes, they release a little bit too much, I’m like waaait a minute. But I’ve got to respect him, he’s very supportive of what I do, Derek [Birkett, One Little Indian co-founder]. We both come from a sort of punk rock background, where we were trying to do the opposite of what the huge record companies were doing, where nothing was released except greatest hits or something. We come from another standpoint.
I mean, I’ve never been thinking that if you’re a fan you have to buy everything that somebody puts out. I mean, you’ve got a choice. If you don’t want it, just don’t buy it. It’s also a reaction to YouTube and sharing of files. A lot of it is really bad sound, really low quality. So the librarian in me wants it at least to exist there so that in 20 years when I’m sitting in my rocking chair, it will still exist in the best sound quality possible, even though it only sold 1000 units or whatever. As much as I love the whole pirate kind of thing, the quality suffers.
I’ve got my own religion. Iceland sets a world-record. The United Nations asked people from all over the world a series of questions. Iceland stuck out on one thing. When we were asked what do we believe, 90% said, ’ourselves’. I think I’m in that group. If I get into trouble, there’s no God or Allah to sort me out. I have to do it myself.
The United Nations did a survey, some years ago, to a sample of people in all the countries in the world. They asked them 100 very basic questions. One was, ’what do you believe in ?’. Everybody, I mean 90 per cent of the universe, said ’Allah’, or ’God’ or ’The Virgin Mary’, or ’Buddha’, or whatever. In Iceland, they said ’myself’.
Another question was ’are you happy ?’. And people all over the world were like ’no, not yet’, or ’I used to be’, or something. But Iceland went, ’yes... of course... and fuck off’.
I’m very religious, yes. But I have my own religion. In Iceland it doesn’t makes sense two people be in the same religion. It’s like have the same fingerprint.
Ray Cokes : Does any religion make any sense to you ?
I think all religions can make sense, I think it’s about what you DO with them that goes a bit funny. I personally prefer when people are religious in private, that it doesn’t become like a political movement.
Well, I think no two people have the same religion, and a lot of people would call that being un-religious. But I’m actually very religious. The way I’d sum it up is. . . the United Nations did a world-wide survey, asking 100 standard questions. And they got two really freak answers from Iceland. The first question was, "What do you believe in ?" And everybody around the world said Buddha, God, Allah, whatever. And the Icelanders said "Myself" I think that’s because it’s such a tough place, that when you get into trouble you better be able to sort it out yourself you know ?
What was the other ?
They asked everyone if they were happy, and everybody said no, not really. But the Icelanders said "’Yes !"
Compared to America, or even Europe, God isn’t a big part of our lives here. I don’t know anyone here who goes to church when he’s had a rough divorce or is going through depression or something. We go out into nature instead. Nature is our chapel
I’m just bored of the self-importance of religion. Perhaps people don’t spend enough time in nature. Then it becomes obvious how silly it, religion, is. They build cathedrals in urban situations with tall ceilings to imitate nature. Get a feeling for the sky. But it is much easier to just take a trip into the Tundra. I also feel a lot of religious people first come across as someone interested in goodness, then very quickly how interested they are in power and hierarchy ; how that seems more in the forefront. The idea of God is saying yes to hierarchy. That someone is above you. I guess I am too much of an anarchist to agree with that. As far as I’m concerned, everyone is equal.
It’s kind of sad to have to do that, but at the same time, if you only make records for people with 5.1 systems, you would just be making music for rich people ! And that’s something I don’t want to do.
I’m a sucker for creativity and music that is brave. I found what was most exciting in England were the
remix artists. I don’t feel I am sacrificing anything by letting people remix my
songs, because I already did my own versions. Some of these
remixers are my friends, ao I trust them musically, completely.
When I started out in 1993, I was a bit naïve, and my record company would send my songs to people that I had never heard of. That immediately felt really wrong. Ever since, I’ve only been choosing people that I’ve met or that I know or I admire their work. So usually I’m really excited— it’s one of the most exciting things, because you don’t know what they’re going to do with what you did. I think it’s important. There’s so much music out there. Music is being abused so much. There are so many things with no emotion, no feeling, and without craft— it’s a tool of power. And I’ve always felt that it was my role to do the other thing. To keep it emotional.
Genius cartoon - I’ve got the originals. The guy who wrote it first sold the idea and it’s all commercial and not wicked and funny any more, they ruined it, terrible. The originals, me and Sindri used to watch them all the time. When I saw what they’d done I felt like crying, it was like an old mate of yours who’s gone mad, like he wasn’t there any more, like, ’Hello ?
Well, I’m definitely one of them, that’s for sure. But I look on myself as one of those people rather than as a representative. And to me the future will be about being able to do all things at once, You can be, like, a really good businessman and also be a mother and also be really into health food, and you can do basketball - just pick up the best things.
I think if there is a place to reveal yourself then it’s in the songs. It’s not like you decide, OK, I’m going to reveal myself. It’s just a certain need. You’re just focusing on the things you’re talking about and not necessarily yourself. I compare what I do to sleeping, because most journalists seem to get that pretty easily. There’s no way you can decide what position you’re going to be in when you wake up in the morning. You just roll around the bed and it happens. And if you don’t do it for a week, you go mad.
At the age of 41, does Björk feel that she has to cram in as much music as she can in the time she has left ?
Yeah, I do, but I felt like time was running out when I was a teenager as well ; I think that is one thing that hasn’t changed. I’m very aware that I could live seven lives and still not do all the stuff I wanna do. But it’s not fear you know . . . it’s a form of enthusiasm. I feel totally like I haven’t even scratched the surface yet.
I would always write songs about happy things and keep my dirty laundry to myself. I was brought up so self-sufficient and happy and to never complain. Icelandic people are so furiously optimistic that it’s aggressive. So for me to write songs that are not happy is a bit abhorrent You feel ashamed about it. The first unhappy song I wrote was ’Possibly Maybe.’ That was very hard for me. Usually I write all the time, but that was like nothing happened for months. Then the song came out. I was ashamed writing a song that was not giving hope.
Yeah, travel –I could write a book on it. If Vespertine and Medullawere albums that romanticised domesticity, Volta is more of a travel-worship thing. It’s been about one-and-a-half years since we got the boat, and we’ve already been to Malta, Tunisia and Gibraltar. We sailed down to Mexico and Guatemala, too.
Björk says Isadora travels with them, and that “ some juggling goes on with the babysitting. She does have a dad, after all,“ she adds with a laugh, but her usual guardedness is kicking in, and it’s clear that I’m not about to get a detailed snapshot of her home life.
What about the legal side of sailing here, there and everywhere, then ? Is there a lot of red tape to negotiate ?
You have to let the shipping traffic people know, but it’s easier than you think. The hardest thing is the marinas, but you don’t want to drop anchor there anyway – it’s all yachts and bright white clothes.
It’s nice to stop in little fishing villages in the middle of nowhere. Or sometimes we just anchor offshore. We didn’t know until we got there, but Malta has all these incredible carpenters. It’s been on the trade route for thousands of years, and people would come there to get their ships mended. I got them to change this little bunkroom where we had our washing machine into a recording studio, and they adapted it all with this beautiful wood. Quite a lot of Volta was recorded at sea.
The sales of your albums have gone down, as your records have got better. How do you feel about that and about record sales generally ?
It’s interesting because in certain areas, they’ve gone up, like when they were down in England they went up in France, so it’s really different between countries. Maybe it’s because my albums are so different from each other. I quite like that actually. Like the French love Vespertine, for example. And the classical world in New York totally fell for it too. I’m so flattered ! When I sat at home, was I aiming for the classical market ? No ! [chuckling] It’s just quite coincidental what things come out - I do an all-vocal album [Medulla]. What market am I aiming at ? I don’t know. Medulla was the same as the other albums ; in the States all my albums have done the same. When I lived in England I was sort of an A list celebrity and I was selling a lot here. And when I moved it kind of went down a bit. But this [the UK] is the only country where that’s happened. Everywhere else I was never an A-lister, which I liked because, I can walk the streets. It’s one of the reasons why I moved here [New York] because I just couldn’t handle it and it’s not something I’m good at dealing with. So... do I worry about record sales ? I’m happy if I sell a lot. I’d be lying to say that I don’t give a fuck. But it would never influence how I do stuff. I could only be run by what’s going on inside me. At 27 I thought, “l’m just going to do whatever l’m going te do. If people like it, great, if they don’t..." so that’s more why I do what I do.
I’ve always been a big fan of the World Saxophone Quartet. Two-and-a-half years ago in Iceland, I recorded some brass songs with three saxophones and a voice with Icelandic brass players. I sensed they needed something ; musically, they were right and it was the form I wanted them to be, but they needed arrangement. I sent Oliver the score and tape, and he kind of rewrote the bits for saxophone and made it come alive. He put attitude in it that I was incapable of.
I’m not so into jazz at all. I am and I’m not.
There’s nothing I hate more than saxophones. Eighty per cent of it I can’t stand, like rock ’n’ roll sax, but Oliver’s attitude is very modern. It’s fresh. Saxophones tend to romanticise a lot, I like them being quite pranksterish, sounding rude. I don’t like it when it’s red-wine bar and dinner music. The stuff Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry did together is my favourite. It doesn’t take anything for granted and has a sense of humour which is so imponant. So many people forget about humour.
Most of Scandinavia exists for me like the children’s stories I read when I grew up. It’s obviously Pippi Longstocking and the Moomins from Finland and Thorbjörn Egners, you know Karius and Baktus.
Well, at the moment I’m the Moomin-mother. Touring and doing this project I’m doing is very much like being like her. Being very understanding and always having a bag full of things. If someone breaks her favorite vas she just goes "Oh, I didn’t like it anyway".
Especially while touring, I’m very much like the Moomin-mother. But I think I used to be more of a Pippi Longstocking. I still am but I used to be more, especially as a teenager.
I love secrets and mystery and I provoke that in my son - he doesn’t tell me everything. I can’t even go into people’s bags. When people ask me to get their keys from the bags, I can’t. I expect the same from my friends. Sometimes I trust too much, I just leave letters lying about and think nobody will read them. If I see a postcard for someone else I won’t read it. I’m brainwashed !
I guess for me, there’s two kinds of politics, it’s sort of... usually it’s called
"politics", which is sort of power struggles on an international
level. And then there is the other politics which I think I deal with, which is
the about "do we get along with the people we love ?" and those kind of
relationships, or those kinda personal politics. I think it’s very important in
the times of war, is to not forget the personal - "politics" if you
want. And I think music is about that. I don’t think the way to deal with the
september 11th is to sit down and write a song about it. I think you have to sit
down and write a song about something else. Because there are more
things in the world than Bush and Bin Laden. Thank God !
I was as deeply affected as everyone else in the city, but I was then equally shocked by the American reaction which felt like Nazi Germany or something.
I had a huge red shirt and big boots - quite punky, I have to say it - and I went on a mission with this boy. We actually went to his friend’s house. It was dark and I remember thinking I wasn’t sure if that was it or not. But I thought it was ever so exciting.
Having sex would not always be so convenient.
In Iceland teenagers don’t have anywhere to go. So you just put on ski overalls and if it’s a blizzard you just drink one vodka bottle each and then you just fuck between the houses.
I lost my virginity about 14-15 - a pretty normal age. I’ve got a funny thing where for me love and lust are the same thing. I’m very healthy and natural when it comes to sex. Strange locations always turn me on. Aeroplane toilets... I think that would turn anybody on. Freedom and being brave, scary things turn me on too. I remember once I camped outside the biggest waterfall in Iceland. We were just in front of the waterfall and the tent was completely wet. That was scary and very healthy and we had very healthy sex !
You are the sign of Scorpio, the renowned sexual predator Are you sexually adventurous ?
I don’t know. I think I’m normal. Not normal, just healthy. People’s taste in sex is usually split into two categories. I call it rural and urban. I’m definitely rural. Top of a mountain on a sunny day or inside a forest is wonderful for me. But a lot of people like to be inside a city wearing plastic and fishnet stockings. I love to fiddle with it, but more out of curiosity. And I want to be wide awake, completely sober, completely alert, not sleepy.
If a doctor would measure me, he would think I would have to have sex three times a day. It’s, you know... a problem. I sort of do karate and swimming and working out and masturbating all morning every day and then I’m okay.
A woman will be just as greedy and want hard-core sex like a man, She’d much rather fuck whoever’s at the disco - like the guys do. But she knows she’ll have to take care of him for the next week, or year, or whatever. So she’ll stop herself - she’ll go home and make love to her husband, because she’s already taking care of him emotionally anyway.
The reason women don’t sleep around as much as men is because they’re like, ’Oh my God, I can’t deal with this other guy being on the phone for the next six months !
You once said you were obsessed with three things : sex, death and life. How do those obsessions hold true today ?
That might’ve come from the Sugarcubes. We talked a lot about those things. That’s a very teenage thing — sex, death and life [laughs]. I would say that since I’ve started making my own albums, I’m not so black and white. It’s more about love and the emotional complexities of the human being.
I feel odd asking you this, but what makes a man sexy ? I’m a bit off the map when it comes to sexiness.
[Giggles] I can find men sexy, women sexy, plants sexy, the ocean, fish. If we’re talking something physical, the back of necks. Necks on people and animals.
You must really like giraffes.
[Laughs] It’s not about length !
Well, at least when it comes to necks. So, what lady would you switch for ?
Too many. That’sa bit slippery. If you want a specific, I’d have to pick an animal. [Pauses] A panda. I’d switch for a sexy panda.
The pop industry is sexist, end of story. Why ? Too many reasons. One, perhaps CD buyers are not interested in a female point of view ? I found in a couple of review of Kate Bush, she was ridiculed in quite "intellectual papers" for writing a song that included her washing machine. It was like they were trying to say that music written by women about household items doesn’t count, but songs written on guitars about driving cars or drinking beer is rock solid. It’s silly, really.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a society that is not so racist or sexist or all these things. Women in Iceland are quite independent. Women and men are equal. Unfortunately, they still go to jobs that are low paid - babysitting and all that - but we’ve got the most women in Parliament in the world, the head of Parliament is a woman, the President used to be a woman. The amount of women in high positions is the highest in the world. We’ve had to fight our feminist fights and all that bollocks, but it’s like "mmm...so what ?" It’s no big deal.
You know, feminists really tire me, they really bore me to death. Especially my generation. I can relate to it if you’re talking about my mother’s age or my grandmother’s age and they’re still angry and upset. I don’t agree with everything she says - because we’re human and we’re different - but I have to agree with Courtney Love when she says she can’t understand these feminists now.
You’ve had a very aggressive feminist movement for over 100 years ! So for women to stand up and say [in snotty American whine] ’It’s just not the same, men get all the chances, it’s so hard to be a woman today, rarara’, they’re basically dissing all the women in this century who have fought. They’re saying there haven’t been any fights fought, but there have been. You get women like 20 years older than me - they finally opened that cage. For women our age to say [whine again] ’Oh, I’m in a cage, I wish I was born a man, and men suck, men are so macho-’
Wait, do you feel like women say that ? Because I don’t feel like I hear that so much...
Ffffttt. Oh, God, the arguments I get into at parties.
Really ?
Oh, yeah ! They’re so bitter ! The thing is, the cage has been opened and what you’ve got to do, a woman today, is walk out of it. I find with problems - you’ve got all sorts of different brands of problems - sexism is the kind where the more you talk about it, the bigger it gets, you see. Maybe, say, in America 50 years ago, it was necessary to talk and get the tumor and cut it open with a knife and get all dirty and ugly about it. Say for example being a single parent. A hundred years ago being a single parent in the States, you couldn’t financially.
And you would have been vilified
Yeah, and all this morality blahblahblah. But today, there are no problems like that.
Well...
Well, there are. But you can make anything into a problem. If you’re going to say, "Oh, I’ve got a baby, it’s going to be so difficult", it is. If you work on it, you’ll be fine. And I’m not saying this in an arrogant way - "Oh, that’s alright of you to say because you’ve got money" - because I’ve only had money for, say, three years. I was a working class, hard-working, single mother until then.
I’m glad to make music these days, you know. But it’s quite weird in the mainstream, because 95% of that music now is jangly boy guitar stuff. It’s like when I was back in the Sugarcubes with those three big indie magazines. The only room in music to be a girl was to be someone that journalists fancied. It’s been surprising to me how quickly the anarchy of the internet formed into these constellations of the same things on repeat. I mean there’s lots of really good stuff, but those lads-beer-guitar bands – it’s like 95% of what’s covered. We have to fight against the boys !
In a lot of ways, writing a song with a guy is far more erotic than having a sexual relationship with him. People are so narrow-minded that they think sex only in the form of fishnet stockings or hard-core fucking. But everything can be sexual, from putting your socks on in the morning, to buying milk, to laughing, to talking on the phone. I’m not trying to say that sex is probably one of the least important things in life, but at the same time, I drown them.
It was easy... I started nicking things from supermarkets. Once I even nicked a swimming pool. It was an inflatable one, ’cos we needed a bath and we didn’t have one where we were renting. I used to do that sometimes when I was drunk and was bored. But then the minute I got money I stopped nicking. Before it was me saying, ’I’ve got no money, fuck off society, let’s go to the supermarket and get what I deserve.
It’s just something I’ve been taught. I had a Malaysian teacher in Iceland, but with something like that I think the biggest discoveries you make on your own. Obviously it’s a defense thing, but it’s very focused. It basically aims to kill in one hit, but it’s a lot about breathing. It allows you to use oxygen as a fuel for what you do. It’s one of the few physical things that’s good to teach singers to breathe and run at the same time. So it’s really good for gigs.
I use a computer program called "Sibelius" which notates things for you. You have a virtual sheet of manuscript paper and you write the music in using the mouse. Sibelius is great because it has loads of different instrument sounds and you can work with just your laptop and headphones. You write a line, press play, and you can hear it immediately. You don’t have to be Mozart, storing it all up in your head.
Larissa : what would be the worst thing for you : losing your sight or losing your hearing or losing your voice ?
bjork : i have lost my voice and it’s the most scary thing i can imagine. i guess, biologically, i have exceptionally large lungs.
Apparently people who have big lungs, they get obsessed with oxygen so they celebrate it when they sing. to sing, for me, is inhaling the most oxygen and let it go in and out and in and out as much as you can per minute. so i guess, biologically, that’s sort of my prime, what i’m about.
My ears come up pretty close though out of the three things you mentioned. i’m probably least upset about losing my sight, second my hearing and number one my voice.
He gets most of his education through the Internet anyway. He’s a bit of a professor, he reads encyclopedias while other people play football . He’s wicked - I’ll be chatting with my friends and talking about different countries, say Madagascar and I’ll say `What’s the religion in Madagascar again, Sindri ?’ and he’ll know it right off. He knows more about Bosnia than I do.
Singing is very pure for me : it’s my own way of dealing with other things going on in my head. I use my voice to think, in the same way that Buddhists use their ’Om’ chanting. I love to sing in the wind, in the rain, during a storm, at sea, on a lava flow... me against the elements. Even for ’Post’, for some of the songs I used a special microphone with a very long chord so I could sing on the beach instead of the studio.
I guess that as much as I’m reluctant to take part in the industry, singles are always fun. It’s a chance to do videos, mixes, B-sides. Singles give you freedom -maybe there’s some people you’ve met and you want to ask them to remix a track ? I quite often end up writing with them, later.
Does having a hit record separate that song out from the rest of your work. I imagine you think of your work as being some kind of continuum, like a whole, but then you have a big hit and then suddenly that song is much more prominent and then maybe some are more experimental. Does that then separate it out for you in some way from the other work ?
It is a tricky decision, when you do a single, like why you should do it. I guess I have usually been pretty excited by it because in a way it gives you space to put out ’b’ sides. A lot of the ’b’ sides that I have done so far, have perhaps been pretty experimental or remixes that mates have done. A lot of the times these have been the first step to leading to us working later on together. It is a field where you can experiment. It is an amazing field of commitment as well when you put something on an album. Also, I have been pretty excited about doing videos and working with and enjoying the process with the video directors, it sets me free in a lot of ways. When I was in a band as a teenager it was a lot experimenting but not a lot of ego, and when you done what I do for as long as I have done it, you become quite a specialist in your field, which is why you do it, and it is excellent. But when I do videos, I become a beginner again, and it also all about group work and I really, really enjoy that.
Yeah, I’ve been hanging out there since a long time ago, since I was a teenager. Yeah, it’s kind of nice and scruffy and anybody can just go up and DJ so they’re not too precious, and so you can sort of have all your favourite songs, and yeah, it’s a good one.
So if you went back there today you could go out there and DJ ?
Yeah, I mean we all know the woman who runs it, so we sort of take turns, you know ? Sometimes people just turn up with their iPods and DJ.
I’m obsessed with oxygen. I just hate smoke in general. And just basically lack of oxygen in anything. I just get phobic. Also, I got in situations when I was singing on stage with a punk band when I was 15 or something and there was a smoke machine right next to me and I lost my voice halfway through the first song because of it. And they’ve just freaked me out after that.
Fortunately, I was in a punk band, so you were allowed to make quite desperate noises in the microphone. It kind of suited the music. But ever since that I’ve hated them, really hard.
When I was a teenager, one of my favourite things was to go off with my tent, and just be alone for two weeks, and just walk and sing at the top of my lungs. There’s nothing better in the world ; you can’t be any happier than that. It’s the best. I guess that’s sort of my temple.
J’avais le droit de faire tout ce que je voulais. Il n’y avait aucune restriction ni aucune discipline. Je me suis donc élevée toute seule. Ma mère avait toujours l’air de planer. Elle ne se droguait pas, non, mais elle était du genre à peindre des nuages au plafond ou à courir dehors toute nue à l’heure du dîner. Mais l’avantage de vivre dans un petit village, c’est que tout le monde est un peu de la famille et que j’avais donc des dizaines de gens qui s’occupaient de moi, me faisaient à manger et me grondaient aussi quand c’était nécessaire.
I am a song-writer first and foremost. You have to give it a lot. Every song is different. I would die for a song, of course I would. It is the most important thing. I’m a down-to-earth person obsessed with music.
People saying ’techno is cold’ is rubbish. Since when do you expect the instruments you work with to deliver soul ? You do music with computers and get a cold tune, that’s because nobody put soul into it. You don’t look at a guitar and say, ’Go on then, do a soulful tune’. You have to put soul into it yourself. People are just lazy.
For me Icelandic is my instinct and English is me being clever. Icelandic is unconscious and English is conscious. And when I speak English, especially when I do interviews and stuff, I can very easily see myself from the outside and describe myself. But then again I would have to be pretty stupid not to have developed that thing, because I’ve done interviews now for 900 years. But it’s impossible for me to do interviews in Icelandic. I just listen to myself and I sound so fake and so terribly pretentious and so Little Miss Know-it-all, I just want to strangle myself. The Icelandic media is going bonkers because I do one interview there every five years...
My son was all slippery about the spiritual world, so I asked him, "What do you reckon moves the planets then ?" That says it all for me. A force of nature. That’s what I think, it’s so obvious. My son says, "Gravity, so-and-so times three." But I say "Uh-uh." It’s so gorgeous.
What is a good day and what is a bad day ? A bad day is when you’re out of that flow, or God or Buddha or nature or whatever you want to call it. If you’re a planet, you go on the right track, you won’t crash into the next one.
No, but sometimes it’s easier in the aftermath - when it can get very painful, you sit in front of a person that you love to pieces but you have to face it that it doesn’t work - sometimes there’s so much emotion you can’t be organised when you look at them and you’re in the same room as them. You got to write it down.
In october 1998, a Spanish man who had stalked Björk for four years broke into her mother Hildur’s home and lived there for 24 hours. The man slept in her mothers bed, ate her food and left threatening messages for Björk. When the mother returned home and discovered the Spaniard, he refusesd to leave what he called "his home". The police had to be called.
I am seriously thinking about quitting as an artist. I am afraid for my sons life. This is worse than the mailbomb. My mother whouls not have to meet strange men in her home just because of my job. In that care, it’s better to quit as an artist.
The worst part is that I know that my mother has been receiving strange telephonecalls before. She just hasn’t told me because she didn’t want to worry me. That the people I love are subjected to threats because of me is horrible ! And the thought alone that someone could hurt my son makes me feel sick. I feel very guilty.
Maybe I have to stop releasing my music. Before I was 26 my motto was to never let anyone else hear my music. Maybe I should return to that attitude...
I already get stalked down the street in Iceland and get tourists that walk up to me and poke me with their finger like they’ve just bought a trip to Disneyland and they met Donald Duck. They totally don’t treat me like a human being.
I was brought up with nature, so it’s as normal to me and everyday as Times Square is for Manhattaners.
The stereotyped Icelandic person is someone who believes in elves and makes a concrete road that goes in a circle around an elf rock, not to upset the elves. But they still have a mobile telephone and a laptop. I’d like to say that I’m like that. Truthful to nature and truthful to technology.
I might just make it my mission to make everyone in the world read this book. It says you do whatever you want, even if it’s morally incorrect.
For instance, if you feel like a train is running through your head, it is. And if you feel like putting eggs inside your bottom, you should.
There’s no such freedom in the world, that you can pick anything you want and put it in your butt.
I was still very shy. I was all hairy and wet on the inside, not saying anything, double double shy. My boyfriend gave me the book. It was one of these books that proved to me that I was not insane.
Written in 1928, it is a short novel, but it packs into its few pages almost endless violations. There are rapes. There is a murder. Eggs and the testicle of a freshly killed bull disappear up various orifices. At the book’s climax, the eyeball of a murdered priest is used instead.
It’s not to be taken literally. It’s a mind thing. You know when you wake up in the morning, and you’ve dreamed you are Elvis Presley ? Do you know what I mean ?
Well, I never have actually dreamed I was Elvis Presley, but...
No, not me either. I’m just saying. It’s about all the things that you think about, even though they don’t happen in real life. With that sort of freedom, you can play games with your mind and feel quite healthy about it. It was very good for a seventeen-year-old to read that book.
So it didn’t make you think, "Oh wow, maybe it would be fun to stick an egg up my bum....?"
No I think... about 4 years ago I went to a radio station and was very shy... and they wanted to do an interview with me but I got stuck inside myself, so I brought out a book and read the beginning of it... and they put it out on a CD without my permission.... but I thought it was quite sweet ...and since, I’ve heard a lot of rumors about it, you know... but it’s like four or five years ago... yeah, I think they just put it out on a CD.... but it was just the beginning, it was like the first chapter or something...
Simone is a character in Story Of The Eye by Georges Bataille. It’s basically a book that proves that you should do what you want, no matter what. I mean, it is a book, but the good thing about books and music and stuff is that things can happen in them and you don’t have to take the consequences. Like you can kill people and you don’t have to go to jail for it. And that book shows that you can play games like that with your head. And anything in the world you want can happen.
And it’s kind of anti-morals. It’s like there’s all these behaviour patterns you’re taught, and it’s saying, ’F- all them’. And you should just follow your instinct and your need, and trust your system. Because all the little signals it’s giving you all the time are actually right. It’s not just about sexual obsession, it’s about being obsessed with one’s needs and going all the way, just if you need it, and that you don’t have to find logic to it.
Of course, the master in that category is sex, because the way your mind works with sex, you want to have sex with all sorts of people, but it doesn’t make any sense and that’s why you never do it. Or at least, very seldom. Because you can’t take the consequences of it. Sex is like the master of illogical needs, but at the end of the day, what this book is saying is that the needs are logical and real and you should believe in them - which is brilliant. I read that book when I was 17 and it just changed my life. It proved to me that I wasn’t mad.
Storytelling is us. The Icelandic people, we were the ones who wrote down all the sagas. They memorized stories from generation to generation ; they could go on for, like, two hours. That’s why I believe in old-school songwriting.
I have got better working with strings. The arrangements on Vespertine were better than on Post. But I’m still a beginner. I’d be standing in front of an orchestra asking them if they could play more rudely, or make section seven sound more like blueberries, please.
I’ve been playing live since I was 5 years old, and that is the most natural thing for me. Later in life, I started doing records and I find it a very very different process. In a way very unnatural. And that kind of makes it a challenge. So I look at them as opposites, but I don’t prefer one to the other. But it’s very important for me that a gig is a gig, and a record is a record. And that’s why I completely rearranged my songs for the concerts.
I’ve always been very anti-style. Music has got nothing to do with style, it’s a question of sincerity. So I wanted to make it irrelevant what style was used. It’s just like a jumper and a pair of trousers. When you meet a person, you try to find out what the person is about. What she’s wearing doesn’t matter. The songs were what mattered, and they could have anything they wanted. It didn’t matter if they needed a 20-piece brass orchestra from Bombay, or a trombone player from Kent. Journalists see all these different styles as a statement, but why I was doing it was to make that invisible, to make the songs more visible.
I definitely haven’t got the ambition to be bigger than everyone. I don’t want to sound like I’m arty, like I didn’t pick to be here, because I think that’s a pathetic attitude as well, but I’ve actually started to think a bit about it all. It’s just so... untrendy.
I would very happily live without it. I’m not moaning, but as far as I’m concerned, all that bullshit comes with the job, and if you want to make a big record, you’ve got to take part in all that. I’ve come a long way. Most of it’s the same game, only a hundred times bigger.
I’ve been through a period where I’ve been very anti all that, and I wouldn’t do autographs. We were very politically correct, and passionate rebels. Somebody would ask for an autograph and we would be willing to discuss his life and what was wrong with it, like how come you’re humiliating yourself in front of me ?
It’s not like that, really. This is just what I do. I mean, you sleep, you eat, you meet your mates and you have to make music. When you look back after thirteen years, that’s a lot of music but it’s not like when you’re doing it that you’re this obsessed person. It just stacks up as the years go by. It’s very similar to people who make shoes or take care of children — it’s the same kind of hours just because you care for it. It’s just my way of living.
I was playing this tour last summer around the States and I got a message from my friend, Spike Jonze, saying "Is it ok if I come see your show on the guest list ? It’s me plus 17." I never get requests like that, so it was really funny. So I played the show, and with live shows you’ve got good ones and bad ones, and maybe that one wasn’t one of the best, but afterwards we had all these tables and chairs outdoors. We had a little ghetto blaster and Drew from Matmos was Djing a little bit, and Spike and his 17 guests came to say hi. I met all the guys and it just became so much fun. Everybody started dancing, but it was really muddy there, so somebody dragged out a carpet they’d nicked from somewhere and put it over the mud. Everybody started breakdancing and inventing these stupid dances, and it ended up being 10 times funner than the show. But I got introduced to all those skaters there, and then two months later I got an email from Spike wondering if I’d be up for doing a song for their video. I was really excited, like "Yeah, of course !" I was in the middle of making this new album and I was on this little island of the coast of Africa in a tiny studio, and Spike was in LA, so I wrote the song and he’d email me the footage of them skating so I could see what it was going to look like. I was watching the footage at like the size of the stamp. I’d send him some music, he’d comment on it, I’d rework it and get it right. I had met all the guys on the tour, but I’d had a few drinks and wasn’t really fresh with remembering all of them on the spot, but I got this English kid who skates and lives on the island to say all the names of the skaters, and I sampled that and put it into the song. But it was such a fun experience, those guys were outrageous ! It was great fun.
If I had to give advice to myself as a teenager now I’d say : ’Just stick to your gut’. Have I done that ? Yes and no. 50 and 50 like anyone. You do things to please people like anyone ; you do what you think what you’re suppose to do, whatever that is. But the important thing is not get too selfish and no too cabin-feverish, try and go with your feelings but think about others. That’s what I tell my children. But definitely take risks more than not take risks.
Ever since I can remember, there have always been people teaching me 9,000 things. But I can say with my hand on my heart that I would always try to teach them 9,000 things as well.
Most people look at technology that it’s cold and people that use synthesizers and all these samples are lazy bastards who just have everything on tape and just press ON and out comes the song, which of course, isn’t true !
Synthesizers are quite an organic, natural thing. But I think it’s always with mankind that every time something new arrives, like say when they invented fire, they were terrified : "Oh this is going to kill us all ! It’s doomsday !"
A gorgeous thing is happening now as technology becomes more common. It’s like years ago, when there was a piano or guitar in everyone’s home and everybody would know how to use them. It’s excellent, because if one’s human spirit wants to write a song, it’s more likely to be captured now. Good music always wins.
If I hear one more person who comes up to me and complains about "computer-music has no soul" then I will go furious, you know.
’Cause of course - the computer is just a tool. And if there is no soul in computer-music then it’s because nobody put it there, and that’s not the computers role. It’s the role of the songwriter. He puts down his soul in the song if he wants to. A guitar will never write a song and a computer will never write a song. These are just tools.
And I think people were terrified in the beginning of the century when the telephone was invented. They were like "people will stop meeting each other and just talk in the phone all day" - but that’s ridiculous cause nothing can replace a meeting with another person.
Most people look at technology that it’s cold and people that use synthesizers and all these samples are lazy bastards who just have everything on tape and just press ON and out comes the song, which of course, isn’t true.
Synthesizers are quite an organic, natural thing. But I think it’s always with mankind that every time something new arrives, like say when they invented fire, they were terrified : "Oh this is going to kill us all ! It’s doomsday !"
99% of jazz is shit and 99% of dance music is shit and 99% of contemporary, like minimalist music for example, is shit, you know. 99% of opera is shit. But it’s that 1% that sticks out. And 99% of my music is shit, I think. I just try and try and try and try — and that one time [snaps fingers] it works.
I was on the 12th floor in Manhattan listening to all the versions, and I could see into all these windows. I suddenly realised that in all the bedrooms all around the world, there are people so busy doing so many things. After that, I stopped walking past houses thinking, "Oh this is just a place where people are couch potatoes and lead mundane lives"
Maybe we can’t do anything about Bush and Bin Laden and those guys are going to play their games whatever happens, but I thought , ’here’s something where we can have a say’ and I wanted to be part of it and join the conversation.
That was probably the fourth time in my whole life that I have lost my temper. Basically there were eight camera crews there and my son was there too. It was like mother instinct. They were asking me questions and I said I will give a press conference later so they started asking my son personal questions ! They were abusing the fact that he was a kid.
I know it was the wrong thing to do, but this energy came out of me that I never knew I had. There were three grown up males on my back and I just threw them off. I was just ready to kill anyone who touched my son’s innocence
In Bangkok, 40 people turned up with massive cameras at the airport after a long flight, and this woman is doing a live broadcast for millions of people. I tried to deal with it as gracefully as I could, just saying I was sorry that I was tired. But this woman just wouldn’t give up and she said (adopts sarcastic tone), Ooh, she obviously hasn’t got any time for us because she’s got more important things to do, and we’ve come all this way because we love her music so much.
I ignored it. I decided it was her problem. So she went for my son, who was nine years old. She goes, Oh, it must be so difficult to be the son of a lady so full of herself that she won’t give me an interview. She put the microphone on him, and I can hardly remember what I did. I was just thinking, You touch my son and you’re dead ! I’m not proud of it at all, but something snapped.
And you beat the shit out of her. On reflection, did the reporter deserve such a battering ?
I don’t know. I don’t believe in punishment like that, but we’re both human. She jumped to the conclusion that she had a licence to behave in a certain way - and I jumped to the conclusion that I had a licence to behave in a certain way, and we clashed. We probably both figured out we were wrong. That’s it, really.
I wasn’t afraid. I can deal with the ugly sides of my job because I get all the good sides of it, which are quite a few. So I’m ready to take the downside of my job but when it spreads out over the people I love, I think it’s very unfair, and then I get very protective and that’s what happened very much last year.
There would be a lot of paparazzi sticking their noses into my son’s life and it was just out of my control. It can be very mixed emotions when your success is actually making the one you love most not very happy.
People, they kind of, take two events out of a whole year and they kind of draw their own picture out of that, Björk sighs.
I think it’s almost coincidental what gets to the surface and what doesn’t. Of course, there was a lot going on in my life, it’s true, but I’ve been touring with my kid since he was born and he’s seen a thing or two.
The journalist just shoved a microphone in my son’s face and asked what bit was like having a mother like me. I just saw red. I’m not proud of fighting her, but I’d do it again.
The bomb incident changed my life definitely. But not in the way that people probably think. Because the biggest test has been to my relationships with my friends and my family.
I’ve got a brilliant job - I can wake up in the morning with a song in my head and before I go back to bed it’s on vinyl and I can get almost any person I could dream of to play that song with me. And it’s literally a dream come true. And I’m ready to take the down side of that, which is being hassled and people thinking I’m things I’m not.
But what’s difficult is that it affects my friends and my family. And that’s kind of where I draw the line. The bomb incident, for example, my only son’s life was in danger because I happen to sing through a microphone sometimes. And that’s scary. I can take it myself and the effect it has on my life but the fact that my granny gets calls to make waffles for the Daily Mirror ; and all my friends are asked if I’m going out with so-and-so. It’s been a test and I’ve never appreciated my friends more than I do now.
Apparently, notes MTV, the guy objected to her mixed-race relationship...
I didn’t take that so seriously. The guy was called Lopez, which is Latin, and he doesn’t want a Icelandic person to go out with a guy who’s half-Scottish and half-Jamaican ? I’m sorry, that is definitely not the root of the problem. I just think it’s very, very sad. The guy obviously suffered but I have to say that I’m emotionally healthy enough not to take it personally. But still it affects me and I cried and I couldn’t sleep for nights, just thinking of his face. It’s really, really sad.
When he decided to...leave, he filmed himself with my music in the background. Four days later he started to, you know, smell and his neighbours called the cops.
Bjork was on a plane flying back to London from Miami when he sent the package, and had to phone Sindri explaining why he couldn’t open any mail. She tells of another obsessive fan who harassed her, but he ended up "leaving" too.
Bjork says she "cried her heart out" when she found out, but insists all she does is make music and these men obviously had huge problems and were wrong to try to bring her into them.
What I do is make music. It’s all about love to me. If I start looking at what I am doing too closely, I will lose the kick I get out of doing it. Then I may as well go back to Iceland and work in the fish market.
It happened right before I started the record and - apart from the drama around it - it felt like it was symbolic for what was happening in my own life, professionally as well as emotionally. I was obsessed as well. By something completely different, mind you, especially by new and exciting challenges, but still. I suddenly realized how something like that could escalate. So, yeah, I’ve learned a great deal from that incident. It was as if, all of a sudden, I was back into reality and, during my continuous search for kicks, had been acting so fake for four years. A humbling experience. It made me feel quite down for a while.
It was really, really scary. At that time I’d been traveling for four years and I was actually in Florida when he shot himself. Just three blocks away from him and he didn’t know. It was a night where it was thundering and lightning. So he sends the bomb to England and I fly over to London while the bomb is on its way. I’m coming home and it really fucked up my whole life and the idea of what my home is. Forty media people were hanging outside my house with a lens on my toilet seat. I didn’t feel very welcome at my own home. Of course, I cried for the man and I was very upset over his death. I couldn’t sleep ...for him. But for me it destroyed my home. I had to rediscover everything. Me and my son, Sindri, talked a lot about it. Now home is when we meet, wherever we are. Home is where the heart is.
Overall, my fans are quite sweet people, says Björk with a weak smile. Whatever that means, sweet. But last year was terrible. The boy died. And all these things happened in the space of five days. Looking back, it was completely mental.
Things were happening all around me, and I realised that I’d come to the end of the extrovert thing. I had to go home and search for myself again. My job is essentially about generosity and when I went to London, I had a lot to give, and it turned out I had given it all. If I’d tried to give any more, it would have become bad energy. So I left at just the right time. I’m not saying that I was responsible for the letter bomb, or that I saw it coming, but it didn’t surprise me either, because something definitely wasn’t right. I am much much happier now.
It was the tip of the iceberg, reall. For a while before it I knew I was on my way. I already knew I’d been there too long. My work had become just so outrageous, I think I only ever took one day off. I really enjoyed it, but I went to Spain the day after the letter-bomb arrived. I guess that became an excuse.
I wasn’t afraid. I can deal with the ugly sides of my job because I get all the good sides of it, which are quite a few. So I’m ready to take the downside of my job but when it spreads out over the people I love, I think it’s very unfair, and then I get very protective and that’s what happened very much last year.
There would be a lot of paparazzi sticking their noses into my son’s life and it was just out of my control. It can be very mixed emotions when your success is actually making the one you love most not very happy.
You look at most people in my sort of job and they have had loads of things happen like that and they get over it. So many amazing things have happened to me. I think I have been pretty lucky. But the media like drama, so it’s : ’She’s in Hell.’ And I’m, like, no, I had a bad day in February and a bad day in September, but a brilliant summer.’
When I was younger I used to play with the cat a lot - I would teach it how to fly. Because, you see, he used to watch all the birds flying about and I could tell he wanted to fly and chill with the birds. I wasn’t very successful though.
The artwork for Family Tree is by an Icelandic friend, a sculptor named Gabriela. Like me, she has four chambers in her which we call "roots," "beats," "strings" and "words." So I used this for the taxonomic structure of Family Tree… To bring together roots, beats, strings, and words, to unite all these opposing sytems, is to be a medium between disparate worlds trying to unite history, the present and the environment into a song on the radio, in a possible moment of utopia…
Roots
Where we come from, the ancient things in us - in my case, stubbornness and patriotism ; enthusiasm for Iceland, the culture and the natural physical environment ; old-woman melodies and indigenous punk rock ; my voice. Appears here in songs representing some of the biggest leaps and discoveries in my harmonic development from the age of fifteen until now…
Beats
Our craving for modern times - in my case, the desire to unite with the new and unknown, the alien and taboo by merging my voice with foreign electronic beats. With this experience, I could then try to develop a peculiarly “Icelandic“ electronic rhythm. Appears here as some of the first experiments I made around 1990 with English electronic beatmakers Graham Massey and Mark Bell…
Strings
Our struggle with education and all things academic—in my case, ten years of classical music training where I was force-fed German composers then spent the next fifteen battling them : if we were going to invent a new Icelandic modern musical language then where did Brahms and Beethoven come into it ? After all these years, string arrangements have enabled me to unite my musical universe with the academic one. Appears here as my collaborations with the Brodsky quartet in 1995…
Words
How we use words to tell stories about different emotional states—in my case, I always felt that I was first a music-maker using words as signposts for the music ; no mood is inferior, every emotion can be defended ; I can write songs in a spontaneous, flippant mood or I can focus on more complex structures that require a whole notebook of thoughts compressed into a few verses. Appears here as a selection of my lyrics over time…
Freedom is the biggest aphrodisiac. The good things in life is having a bottle of red wine and a friend of yours all sleeping in the grass or jumping in the ocean.
I think the most magical thing about the net is that it allows people with jobs like mine to do whatever they want, so to predict what will happen might spoil the surprise. Each music maker should be able to treat the web in a different way.
i was asked to write the song [Gollum’s Song from Lord Of The Rings : The Two Towers] a month before thew birth of my daughter , when i turned it down because i was too pregnant they said fair enough and got another writer then approached me again said they had a song and lyric in my style , they understood i didn’t have time to write it but if i could sing it , i thought it was a little noughty but asked them to send me the notes and the lyrics since i was curious what is "my style" then had to tell them it was 3 days until my baby was due and i couldn’t focus on anything else they then said they were going to ask "björk-kinda singers" and told me they got 3 singers , they didn’t tell me the names but say A,B and C .
then after the birth they said they weren’t happy with the results and asked me please if i could save them , they could put the deadline back to october 30th ( my baby was born on the 3rd ) i told them my baby was priority and i was told they went back and chose one of the A or B or C . i then later found out it was emiliana .
i am not pissed off because i didn’t get to sing the song . since "play dead" i decided to never do just one song so i have always passed offers like that on . film music today is too much of a megamix , i think it is better if the same person does a whole film and gives all of her/him to it .
but anyway : the point of the story above is that lord of the rings people find it nothing wrong of copying people . i have last few years been approached by a lot of film people and people making commercials , also a lot of my friends , for example the video directors , we get asked for our "flavour" and if we say no they just go around and artificially create our "style" with some calculated moves .
i think it is really criminal , maybe this lord of the rings incident is not the best example , but my "style" or my voice is my life’s work , people going on the net and nicking my songs off it bothers me but not really , at least it is my work , unchanged and people know that it is me . but what really really hurts and i know i am speaking for a lot of people here , video directors , musicians , photographers and so on , is when a lifetime of work get’s copied in 5 minutes with absolutely no guilt .
that expression : imitation is the sincerest form of flattery , it might be true but it is the kind of flattery that robs you . i spoke quite a lot about this with thom from the radiohead couple of years ago when every other singer on the radio was trying to be him and he said it really confused him , after hearing all that , next time he stood by the mike he didn’t know anymore what was him and what was all those copycats . it is one of the reasons kid a was so hard to make . what’s your opininon on this ?
The book is very popular with Icelanders. It has a very Nordic feeling to it, even though it is Russian. It ridicules bureaucracy, it has black magic and Arctic magic realism. You could say it is ‘Alice in Wonderland’ for the Arctic grown-up. Of course, you have to watch for the Nordic cliché. ‘Hello ! I am a Viking ! My name is Björk !’ A friend of mine says that when record-company executives come to Iceland they ask the bands if they believe in elves, and whoever says yes gets signed up.
I think that the structure of the entertainment industry has ten floors of people doing something it only takes five people to do. All these people are losing their jobs, but sitting behind them are people who don’t care any more. So I’m not going to make much money ? That’s okay because I want to make music. The people who care about music aren’t gonna leave. You are doing it because you love music.
I have 100 cds I take with me everywhere.
It’s very hard for me to pick out one !
One by Chris Watson called "Outside the Circle of Fire".
Anything by Oval.
People don’t realise how annoying it can get". Many didn’t understand why Diana kept on complaining about the
paparazzi. Didn’t she have all that she desired ? But in the mean time
they have killed her ! Of course she did get five times as much attention
than me, but I can immagine how it must’ve been.
When
I’m doing an interview or a photo shoot, I’m making myself vulnerable
and show a piece of me. Then, I’m like nude. But that’s ok, cuz’ that
was the deal. But ! When they photograph me standing in a window in me
jammies, talking to my child, then that is rape ! Paparazzi defend
themselves like rapists, with the same excuse : "Oh, I wasn’t raping her,
she loves sex now doesn’t she ?" In my case it isn’t all that bad, but
Lady Di was followed 17 years for 24 hours a day : a recipe for
insanity.
Robert Altman should make a movie about the paparazzi. About this little world of people who lurk in the bushes for five days, hardly sleeping or eating, waiting like hunters for the prey, for Lady Diana or whoever. They hate each other, and they hate the prey. It is all about the moment of the kill. It would be a very interesting movie, yes ?
The air conditioning on flights is so bad because it’s all just recycled stale air and that can give you a cold - which is the last thing I need before a concert. So because I travel so much, I have loads of acupuncturists in different countries and they all have different treatments. The trouble is that I have so many things I need to do - interviews, travelling, recording - that no matter how much good they do, I always feel I need at least two extra bodies.
Perhaps then all three of us could have acupuncture at the same time - that would be great.
Who the real Björk is, remains a mystery, even to me. Today I’m this, tomorrow I’m that. People say sometimes that, except for my voice, I haven’t got a true musical identity. Well, that’s true. But that’s never bothered me. Artists who are and then just take on a certain style, are people without identity. And they know it, or they wouldn’t be so preoccupied with defining the music that alledgedly suits them ; something I’ve never done myself. With me, everything comes natural. I can’t help it. I can’t be dishonest with myself. It was already like that when I was sixteen, playing in Top 40-coverbands. I never managed to sound like someone else. And I still can’t. I’m the worst actress in the world. And as copycat I am completely unconvincing. I can’t lie.
Yet, many people think you’re building up some kind of image : that of the happy child-woman.
Listen, I grew up in a very small town. When I was eight, I was already on Icelandic TV. In itself nothing special, because every Icelander is on TV at least once in his life. People didn’t just see me on TV, but also in the street. So I could hardly act different on TV than how I really was ; people would notice immediately. What I mean is that it’s always seemed completely pointless to me, to create an image that differs from my real self. That’s not in me. Not even now that I live in London. I’ll give you another example. Via MTV, lots of Icelandic children get to know the phenomenon of ’asking an autograph’. But to them that’s something completely absurd, because they meet the Icelandic celebrities in person once a week anyway !
Is the Icelandic community that small ?
Okay, I’m exaggerating. But where I grew up, there lived 18,000 people. There was a main street and one big square. You only had to cross the street naked once and the people would remember for the rest of their lives.
The theme of Scanner’s album was that all noises in the world are for free, which I thought was really clever and interesting. I offered them money which they agreed to, but then they signed to a publishing company who thought, ’Oh, Björk has sampled them - let’s try to put the Scanner album in the charts by making something of that’. They obviously didn’t have a clue what they were talking about - these publishing people are not very into music, they’re just trying to get the money.
the order is extremely important to me . in homogenic i wanted to do a narrative journey since the album is extrovert -eye-contacty in yer face , but with vespertine i wanted a introvert absent minded effect , daydreaming . it took me a month to sort out the order , i made many many cdr-s and didn’t give up until it was right . i was stubborn . warmth , björk.
It was a tribute to Hollywood, the musicals, Busby Berkeley, that sort of thing. The egg was just for the red carpet. I had several eggs under my dress. I kept trying to drop them, but bodyguards kept passing them back to me. That was quite funny : ’Hey man, dropped something ?’
They didn’t get it. They actually thought that I was trying to look like Jennifer Aniston but got it wrong." She had in mind a playful, Busby Berkeley look, inspired by his aerial shots of synchronised swimmers, but it didn’t quite work out. "I probably wore a more eccentric dress for Cannes [in 2000], but nobody noticed. I think Europeans can stomach things like that more easily. I think Michael Jackson should settle in Switzerland or something. He’d be fine.
People didn’t find it very funny. They wrote about it like I was trying to wear a black Armani and got it wrong, like I was trying to fit in. Of course I wasn’t trying to fit in !
For me, going to the Oscars, it just felt ridiculous. It was just so tacky. Maybe tacky’s not the right word but because I’m not an actress… The songs that win the Oscars are like Phil Collins doing jungle music for a Disney cartoon. It’s like, respect but it’s got nothing to do with me so I really didn’t feel I fit into this world and I guess it sort of backfired on me. I was trying to be a bit tongue-in-cheek with that dress. I brought these six ostrich eggs and I was placing them on the red carpet and all these lifeguards [bodyguards] for the stars kept running up to me and going, ‘Excuse me ma’am, I think you dropped something.’ And I just thought the whole thing was really funny. If I’d gone to the BAFTAs and on the red carpet I’d left these six eggs, they would have just taken the piss out of me, obviously, because I’m an easy target. The joke’s on me. But you should have a sense of humour about yourself.
Come on - it was six years ago, and people are still talking about it. It was just a joke that nobody got. Everything is so prescribed and critical now, and women get punished for how they look. What would happen if Janis Joplin, or Jimi Hendrix or George Clinton walked down the red carpet now ? They would just get executed.
I think in Hollywood, if you don’t wear black Armani, you get executed immediately. But mostly er, I’m surprised it’s still a big deal. I’m surprised journalists are still talking about it.’
Wearing the swan dress to the Oscars was perhaps the most provocative and controversial fashion statement of all time. Do you sometimes feel that your visual side takes away from the musical, at least in the minds of the masses
It is a little annoying. I have worn more "outrageous" things in Europe and no one said a thing. For example what I wore at Cannes. I guess there is space in Europe for "eccentrics" there just isn’t in (the) U.S.A. at the moment. It is really sad. If Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Boy George, George Clinton or some of those people would arrive today, (the) U.S.A. wouldn’t be able to handle it. The Bush years have made this place really, really conservative. But perhaps it is also the hidden control thing Hollywood has. It is so sacred to people here. I didn’t know. I thought they could take a little bit of humour. If you make fun at Hollywood you will be punished for seven years (that’s how long ago that is, can you believe it ?). But to be honest with you I’d rather put my energy into what is happening now. In 2007 ...
Are you secretly pleased to have gone down in Oscars history for wearing the most memorable dress ever ?
Um, a little bit. From my point of view if was a joke, you know. That nobody got ! Well, three of my mates pissed their pants ; they got it. I’m a bit surprised that they never write about the fact that I brought six eggs made out of Styrofoam, the size of ostrich eggs, and I kept leaving them on the red carpet and these Hollywood star’s bodyguards with walkie-talkies kept bringing them to me, like [affects yank accent] "Excuse me ma’am, you dropped something". And I thought il was hilarious, but that’s just my sense of humour. Perhaps I was a bit cocky and if sort of backfired in my face a bit. I just find it amazing that people look at the images of that picture of me in that dress, and next to it some Hollywood actress in a black Armani dress, and they actually think I was trying to fit in and got it wrong. Does this woman look like she was trying to fit in ? [laughing]. I do love humour in the way people dress. Self-parody was definitely part of it. I think people in Hollywood aren’t used to that - to take the piss out of yourself. It’s the sixth fucking year and they’re still writing about it ! It was funny, but not that funny. But I think that had I done it at Bafta and left those eggs around it would have been perceived in such a different way. I think that situation is so abstract anyway, it’s just like a red carpet and there’s the ’Gods of the Universe’ and everybody else should go on their knees and bow. I just don’t agree with that ; l’m too much of a punk.
I think because it happened just a month after the Bush election, it made people think they really had a say in rebuilding things, that they could make a difference. For the first time since the Vietnam War there seems a universal feeling among common people that they don’t agree with the people who are ruling the world.
I’ve heard rumours about a cave concert hall in the Canary Islands, and it’s got albino crabs crawling in the water at the bottom - that sounds pretty lush, right ?
People like me who don’t follow the news that much, suddenly I was looking online every day, just to see what was going on. I don’t know about you, but whatever I was doing, having dinner with music people or plumbers (a lot of my family are electricians and carpenters), everyone was talking about the war and how they disagreed with it - or agreed with it, but everyone had a position. So although it has been destructive and disastrous, the good thing is that people actually want to have a say.
A lot of the time I get obsessed by little nerdy things in my corner that no one else is interested in. I have that nerd factor in my character. So for once I was interested in something everyone else was interested in. I’m not going to talk like I know about politics, because I’m a total amateur, but maybe I can be a spokesperson for people who aren’t normally interested in politics.
It’s a Thai soup. It’s really nice. Soup has changed a lot of people’s lives. you know ? It’s the most popular one. What’s in it ? Lime juice, coconut and chicken. Why does it change people’s lives ? Well, food is pretty important. You’d be dead without it.
I love singing live, that’s the ultimate... but you sing one hour and you have to hang around two or three days to do it. Then you come off a three-month tour and realise you’ve spent all that time for maybe having done 30 hours of singing.
Touring gives you the freedom to go to extremes. Sometimes you have tours where you’re just drunk the whole time, and you keep really high because you don’t eat and you just go to clubs and meet lots of unhealthy people. Then you get a natural high for the next tour and eat lots of celery, and for the next you only listen to jazz.
Last time, because it was Europe and I know a lot of people, I was getting drunk a lot. On this tour, though, I’m leading a very different life. I know fewer people, so I get up early, run into the ocean and read a lot of books.
Because I’ve been touring for years I can go to 20 gay clubs in 20 different cities, but for the first two years I was completely disorientated and I’d have to sit in a chair, eat a lot of bread and cheese and say : ’OK, you’re in London, your name is Björk, you come from Iceland,’ and keep myself on the ground like that.
To be true to myself, if I could choose while touring, I’d sing once a week, two weeks a month, like on a Friday night to explode and come out of yourself, rather than tour day after day.
Sometimes the recording of the album is just the beginning. You don’t know which song is going to grow and change after being played very, very many times.
And now, how do you balance your family life with touring, because the touring, you know, you’re in Mexico now, you’ve been in South America. How do you balance it ?
Oh, you just bring your family with you and if they can’t come they can’t come, and if they can come they can come. It also means that when I’m not touring I’m really flexible. And that’s not really—a lot of jobs don’t have that, you know ? So I toured with my young son at the age of twenty and I’ve always just been doing it with kids and people, and I guess I decided really early on that I’d just take it on. It’s got a lot of advantages and got a lot of disadvantages and you just try to even them up.
For the first five years I toured with my kid. That was brilliant, because we were just looking for waterslide parks. I became an expert on those things... where to find nappies in various cities around the world ! I could write a book on where to find second-hand baby clothes.
I knew a year ago that I had to be away for 2 months. The rest of the year we’ve been together. I’ll see him in 3 days and I can’t wait. I saw him last four weeks ago. But I’ve planned next year that we will be together for the whole year. He’s coming with me to Asia on the tour and is doing his homework through the Internet.
Does some kind of collaboration or teamwork evolve within the group that’s touring ? Or are the artists you choose session musicians who don’t have any creative effect on the real concert version or your music ?
Yes, that might be one thing I’ve retained after being in bands for so long : when you’re up on stage, everyone’s equal. I could have called in good session musicians who go on stage and do what they’re told. I wasn’t interested in that and I’ve generally tried to select people who need to play my music of course but can add theirs, something from themselves I mean. They have the chance to take part in situation that hopefully brings out the best in them, so they can be as strong as me on stage, even though it’s my music. But the outcome has varied.
After ’Debut’ was released I did the first concerts in kind of emergency situation, because everyone was so surprised at how the album did well. The idea wasn’t to perform in concert, the concert version hadn’t been thought out. The band was put together at last moment. Everyone just played what was on the album. After the experience of that tour, I promised myself never to do that again.
The setup for ’Post’ tour was completely different. For instance, I changed all the string arrangements into accordion arrangements, to give the musician, in this case the accordionist, the scope for presenting his own personality and own power too, there was room for the ego on stage.
On the ’Homogenic’ tour I went the whole way. With the experience of the ’Post’ tour behind me, I promised to go even further with the ’Homogenic’ tour. But the ’Post tour was brillant all the same. Lost of strongs characters on stage like Guy, Leila, Koba, Trevor, Ed and Andy, who had all their own fields. People on ’Homogenic’ tour had played on the album, so it was the same people, maybe we’ve come full circle then. Back to being more a band.
Do her physical surroundings influence the music she makes ?
A little bit, but I’m so used to travelling all the time that it’s more of an emotional state,’ she says. ‘In my introvert phases I could be in a glamorous hotel or in a log cabin or wherever, but when I am in my extrovert periods, I’m probably more aware of my surroundings. I made Debut and Post when I lived in London, and they’re very London albums. Whereas with Vespertine and Medúlla I was living half in Iceland and half in Manhattan, and you can’t really hear a lot of Manhattan there because I was quite introvert at the time and it was a bit of a domestic bliss period for me, so I could have done them anywhere.
As someone who’s known for her affinity for nature, it’s interesting that you didn’t see a tree until the age of nine. Do you remember the first time you saw one ?
There are trees in Iceland, but they’re just very small. I saw a tree before, but I didn’t see, like, a forest, you know.
Where were you when you saw a forest for the first time, and what did you think ?
I thought it was quite magical. I was on a train with my grandfather. We were on a nine-hour train journey in Norway, and we felt uncomfortable that we couldn’t see the mountains. We both said it felt a bit claustrophobic.
I just find it quite funny that when you love someone - whether it’s a child or a boyfriend or whatever it is, a friend - it becomes so precious that you hide your ugly sides. Which I think is very funny because when my friends show their ugly sides to me, I’m almost honored. That means you’re very intimate with the person.
It’s a shame elevator music has got that title. It’s lost evervone’s respect. You should have music for Interviews, music for train rides. Music doesn’t have to want all your attention, not at all. I think music is even stronger when it’s unconscious.
It was like wherever you stood, you would turn your head looking from left to right and you’d see at least 27 flags. It was just so scary. Being from somewhere else, it kind of reminded you of Nazi time.
Most music makers just want to play songs to the people who would like to hear them. It is that simple. That is the core of people like me, the drive behind everything I do, so a path that makes that simpler and easier - to play a song for a listener and bypass the whole industry, the politics, the "machine" is very tempting. I confess though that it is possibly utopian, possibly too good to be true...
Je fais ce métier depuis que je suis toute jeune et j’ai appris à ne pas mélanger ma vie privée et ma vie publique. Cela ne veut pas dire que tout ce que je raconte pendant les interviews est faux, mais ce ne serait pas honnête si je vous disais que je vais vous raconter des choses dont je ne parle qu’à mes proches.
À un journaliste anglais trop curieux : J’aurais honte de répondre à vos questions dans ma langue natale. Mais j’accepte de le faire en anglais parce que c’est la langue des clichés et des propos superficiels.
Scientists haven’t discovered it yet, but the human nerve system-which is basically our soul-is very similar to a violin string, ’cause when you hear strings it’s like you get all mushy. It’s not a coincidence it has the same effect on everybody.
Sometimes when I write lyrics there are images in them, usually on a quite simplistic level, like colours. But most often music comes first and then later I sit down with visual people and we chat about what we want to do. I don’t look at myself as a visual artist. I make music."
I only started a few years ago. I have developed my own techniques, it does help. There are sixty different things in the throat that you sing with, it’s very complex. Basically I try to fool it that it’s evening, when it’s actually morning. It works somehow.
No, I never train. I hate rehearsing. You can only do each thing once. If my voice isn’t good I’d rather go out running in the mountains, or read a story to my kid, do something that’s for real, and then go and sing. If you rehearse for the sake of it it’s like rehearsing sex, before you have sex. You don’t go to your partner and say, "Let’s rehearse a bit and then we’ll fuck after one hour." It doesn’t make any sense.
Have you ever considered returning to the synth-pop sounds of "Debut" and the since-remastered tracks of artistic collaboration that favored younger audiences of the ’90s ?
Well, from my point of view "Volta" was definitely looking a little back to the early ’90s. The 808 and 909 and sort of a trance thing. But the rest of that album headed forward hopefully. I think nostalgia ain’t that bad but it also has to have a lot of forward looking. We have like 10 remixes done already. I like them a lot. My fav is Matthew Herbert’s "Wanderlust" mix.
Overall my philosophy is not to confront stuff as you’ll get stuck in a quarrel. You know, I like to be a bit more Taoist about it ! But that can also be lazy, and if you do that long time, you’re taking a back seat. Volta was an exception to that. I had to say to myself : you don’t ignore it, you take it on. But then again, if I could pick the proportion of taking it on, I’d like to take it on 10% or 5%. Not because I’m a coward, but because I don’t think that’s how you solve things. I think you have to bring up positive stuff or new stuff, and think ahead. We all know how wrong things used to be, don’t we, so why should we get stuck ? For me, it’s all about switching on ; it’s about taking time to take things forward.
I’ve been walking outside in nature since I was a little child, singing a few hours a day. That’s still what I have to do. It’s as important for me as food or sleep. I’ve found a lot of good little routes here.
Do you walk by yourself ?
Yes. That’s kind of how I wrote most of my melodies.
Do you sing out loud ?
Yeah. For sure. This is probably one of the few cities where you can without getting locked up.
Do people recognize you when you’re singing ?
Yeah, but they don’t give a shit. I mean in London, there’s paparazzi following me around wherever I go. Here, people don’t care. They’re just like, ’So ?’
So, New Yorkers have heard most of the songs on Vespertine, whether the know it or not.
Yeah, that’s a nice thought. I guess I really believe in the 12 notes on the piano. It’s so magical. You kind of hit note two and you do note nine and note seven three times, and that’s a map to a certain emotional location. And if you do note seven and then note two five times, that’s a map to another emotional location. It’s my favorite thing in the world : the power of melody. For centuries, folk melodies have had a very symbolic meaning to human beings. It’s a map to our feelings that nothing else can map out. So I think I’ll always be a melody kind of girl, you know ?
The welfare system is very strong. From the age of 16 to 25, the government takes 25 per cent of your wages off you and puts it in a bank account with interest. You get the money either when you’re 25 or if you marry.
Basically, it’s to make sure you have money for a house. So if you marry, which I did at the age of 20, you get that money in cash, which is a lot of money.
I guess in my case it’s when you’re in a position when you can create either music or communicate with the people you love. And it’s so strong that it’s the same on the outside as it is on the inside... or same passion is maybe a better word... and then it’s sort of, it’s even... the flow is very even. And then I feel very very happy.
I think nature probably inspires me most, maybe that’s the relationship I had for longest. Until I was 27 that was about the only input in my song writing. Other than that it’s mostly places and friends, books and movies. Yeah, I guess apart from nature it’s friends, it’s emotional connections that I have.
I find it sometimes hard to be directly influenced by something that already has been made, like... It’s easier maybe with a film or a book because it’s not audio. But like, music, it’s not important for me, because it’s like eating your own tail. It’s recycling or something, it’s not starting on zero. Yeah, so I guess it’s nature and then just sort of people I love.
Orchestral stuff, Matmos, Oval…90 percent of the stuff I listen to is really obscure. Like, a guy who would make music with five insects and there’s only five copies of that CD in the world. I think I will always be into melody, but very rarely will I listen to vocal stuff. I listen to quite a lot of abstract music around my house. Most of it is noises with no narrative. Electronic textures. But I think my role is very much to be a narrator in abstract situations.
I think there’s a picture in everybody’s head of what is ordinary - It’s just like a model. You’ve got standards for so many things, for your typical business meeting, your typical rock concert, your typical meal, your typical love affair, your typical marriage, your typical wife. But it doesn’t exist really. It’s all very personal and all very up to you really
It’s some sort of movement similar to cream I think. You know when they squeeze the cream out of the gas thing. Like really pretty when It’s got a spike at the top, and it’s got a circle. Sort of slow circle movement in the same way whipped cream would move. Very still and very satisfied.
I don’t like in-between stuff.I love really, really sweet stuff like chocolate cakes and then I love curry, vindaloo, do you know what I mean ? I guess I’m an over emotional person. I’m very, very happy or I’m very, very this or very, very that. Always two verys.
But doesn’t she find this kind of big dipper existence a bit exhausting ? Are the highs worth the lows ?
Yeah, because even when I’m miserable it’s over in five minutes. It’s like (sticks out her chin, bulges the veins in her neck and clenches a fist) brraaaaaagh ! And, then it’s over, I go all the way to the bottom but then I go (the fist now soars skyward and she leaps off the chair for added emphasis) whooooooosh ! That’s a very Icelandic thing. A Viking, hardcore, don’t-feel-sorry-for-yourself attitude. When I laugh, I laugh really loud. You have to hurt yourself laughing or it’s no good.
I guess it was never planned, but it became a shortcut to my songs — if I am going to explain a certain character of a certain song, I need red. Or something. It became like a tool to my songs. And then I guess because I’ve been doing this for a while, it’s not only like i’m going out to search for those designers - a lot of them actually come to me now. And it’s exciting, you know, to share ideas and do stuff. It’s sort of a sideproject that never was planned. But essentially, it’s for the song.
I could run a record shop ! A real "Trainspotty" one.
I could have a radio program about music...
I could run a music school for children.
I WILL do that when I am 40 or 50.
I’ve always known that ...I have ideas on how to teach children
music... very personally, and with small groups of children, that’s
definitely part of my mission in life.
I think I would say 90% I go sort of happy drunk. I think it’s sort of to do with how I was brought up in Iceland ; It’s sort of a fireworks explosion sort of thing going. We aim for it. And then probly one sad moment from three to three thirty. And then you go to bed and you wake up next day and you’re fine.
When you’re 11, you’re not listening to Sesame Street any more. I wanted to write music about walking down the street, having visits, laughing, having a swim, the things you do every day.
I’ve always been a bit soft on scientists and men who can work miracles with their brains. And, oh yeah, my grandmother. She’s sixty-eight and she goes camping and paints and just lives life large. I want to be like her. I’m in a situation now that I’ll probably never be in again, I can go into a studio and I don’t have to worry about the bill. I bought myself a computer the other day that I can draw pictures on to siut the music. I don’t have to fight so hard for things now but I might again. And, when I do I pray that I’ll be as self-sufficient as my grandmother.
Let’s put it this way, I don’t meet a lot of people other than the people I work with. You know, it’s not like I hang out with shoe salesmen. Or gymnasts. Not in my line of work.
I never used to believe in words, and at first I didn’t sing in words, it was just noises and sounds. I used to be in an experimental band with my best friend when I was 15. She played the popcorn machine and miked it up, and I played the drums to it. We weren’t even trying to be funny. And my friend organised to record my grandfather snoring, and that was supposed to be our loop, our rhythm [she snores theatrically] to do a song to.
I have always been active and full of energy. When I was in my late teens in Iceland, I held down three jobs - working in a fish factory, a Coca-Cola bottling plant and a record shop - all at the same time.
One summer, she worked at Iceland’s Coca-Cola bottling plant.
I had pink hair at the time, and I was supposed to sit in a chair, watching the bottles as they passed to see if they were clean. Mostly, I just used to fall asleep. I never made the employees’ hall of fame.
Last year, Coca-Cola held a party, which the Sugarcubes were invited to. Among the employees were contemporaries of Björk who’d intended to leave after three months, like her. "They were still saying, `I’ll be gone by September,’" she shudders.
I think Matthew and Will [Oldham] are very similar in one way .They are roughly the same age and, as American males, they have a burden of guilt : Nagasaki guilt, global-warming guilt, the war and the oil and all this heavy stuff. If you are born a girl, you do not have that weight. There are not many girl dictators or executioners or generals. If you are a girl in Iceland, it is all nature and peace. So, I can see that Matthew’s work is essentially about being an American male. Both he and Will have not washed their hands of the problem, they are trying to negotiate it by being more ambiguous, trying to find a different angle on masculinity.
You’ve collaborated with Alexander McQueen a lot but who are the gay men that have Inspired you the most ?
Wow... that’s a tricky question, let me think, because I don’t usually think of people in terms of gay or not gay so I haven’t really categorised it in my brain but I have worked with a lot of gay people. Let me think who...Matmos [the beat maestros on Vespertine] and right now, [fashion designer] Bernard Wilhelm is doing my tour collection. I’ve also worked a lot with [fashion designer] Jeremy Scott and M and M who do my album design work... Eminem ? [Laughing] No no no, M and M ! They’re called Michael and Mathis. And before I worked with Paul White, so there are a lot of people. But I sometimes know people for a while before I even what they are. l’m not the sort of person who knows immediately. I haven’t worked with Alexander McQueen for a while now. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I was in living in London at the time so I was meeting him and bumping into him and most work relationships you start off knowing people and afterwards something comes out of it. It’s not like you’re thinking "Oh we have to do something !" It sort of just happens and the place [figuratively speaking] where we met I don’t think was in a fashion or pop world but in a more theatrical world and we had a similar pagan interest and thing about the animal world : nature. l’m not so into the kind of posh, aristocratic side of fashion, like if you’ve got this much money you can get this outfit. And I wouldn’t describe me as chic [cracking up] - other words would probably come first ! So that’s where we meet – animals and a love of nature rather than showing the power structure over animals, like "I control you !" It’s not that ; it’s more celebratory. So I have that feeling for him ; I think he’s amazing.
Is it possible to work with for someone after you’ve had a sexual relationship with them ?
On a day-to-day basis ? I think not. I’ve worked with two of my boyfriends for a long time afterwards. Thor, from the Sugarcubes, for example. If a person is precious to you, there’s no way you’ll sacrifice that relationship. I split up with Thor when I was 21 , after going out with him for five years, and we’re still working together, on our label and publishing company,
Asked if she gets bored working witht the same people, Björk claims she doesn’t really know.
I’m still trying to answer that one. But I’ve been very lucky. I’ve met and work with so many people. And 99 per cent of the time, it’s amicable when it begins and when it ends.
Volta brought out my love of world music – although I know ’world music’ is a ridiculous title. By world music, I mean not from Europe, not the USA, but the rest of the world. I’m not so into more commercial world music either because I’m such a nerd – I actually like looking for the rare thing, I’m a total snob for it. Something recorded on Japanese Biba in ’71 with amazing vocals, yeah ! But in world music, I’ve always been more into instruments than singers, really. Until Medulla I hadn’t even thought about singers. My big thing is rhythms and patterns, and a lot of African music and its relationship to rhythms just gets me crazy.
Since I was a child, singing and writing melodies have always been quite a solitary process. More and more, since I’ve become savvier on the computer, I spend perhaps 90 percent of the time working on the album alone. So, collaborations are the treat at the end of the stick.
Juergen Teller : You once mentioned to me that you and Thom Yorke decided that you both hated yoga and meditation. What was that all about ?
Björk : [laughs] Well, I’d always resisted meditation with a full-on defense mechanism, but I’d never understood why. I wouldn’t meditate-no way, ever,-and Thom felt the same way. He got angry just talking about it. We ended up laughing about the whole thing, but we figured that singing is a form of meditation, where you kind of go to an imaginary place that you’ve built over many years. It’s like a state of trance. So to go to a meditation class where somebody tells you, "Do this, feel this" like they’ve got an instruction manual on how to get to this place - it’s offensive. It’s like reading a sex guide before you are with the one you love, and then asking whether they wouldn’t mind moving their thigh, like, twenty centimeters to the left-and then measuring it with a stick.
Juergen Teller : Right, right.?
Björk : Everybody has a different method of getting to that place, because everybody needs it. Some people play golf, some people get drunk-one method isn’t better than another. But if I ever sat down and listened to a guru tell me how to meditate, I would feel like I was having an affair. I would feel disloyal to my own temple.
There was a radio show where everybody who did something well, did something. One did magic tricks and one did, er, what you call it ? Flick flacks ? And I sang. Because that is what I did. On the school bus I would sing. All the time. And some guy contacted my mum and wanted to make a lot of money and do a child record, and my mum said : "Yes." I can’t even remember being asked.
Was that fun ?
No ! I hated it ! I didn’t really like it. I think children should pick for themselves. They shouldn’t be pushed. I was too young.
