Björk Belts, ca. 1988

Mamma: This is the song that made me fall in love with that voice. (Later, I fall in love with the rest of her but it started here.) My girlfriend at the time and I were playing the first Sugarcubes album in regular rotation. Both of us agreed that the guy screaming from his knees in the vid, Einar Örn, needed to be strung up by a mic cable. (After The Sugarcubes, he’d be elected to the Reykjavík City Council.) This, no doubt, would make her decision to leave the ’Cubes that much easier. (The guitarist would father her first child.)

You’ll need to tune Örn out to fully drink in the pleasures of Björk’s (pronounced B-yerk) prodigious tone and growl. A sound as smooth and biting as the finest single malt you’ll ever sip. Watch for when that mouth goes full wide-open. Whatever comes out will completely humble you. It’s a voice that digs straight into your pink juice. Or call it synchronized vibrations – whichever. But know that your consciousness can only submit. (This is an actual thing: Find the receipts here.)

Sure, maybe I’m little starry-eyed for the diminutive Icelandic Giant. And I’ll confess, while I’ve always respected her voice, her viking confidence and courage, and that steadfast and telescopic artistic vision, I haven’t always found her music easy. Some of it can be a slog. And full disclosure, I haven’t really paid that much attention to her after those early albums. Never mind: I still love her.

It shouldn’t be hard to see why.



Birthday: Maybe not for you but this one brings fat bitch tears to my eyes. Just so you know, she’d an an album of jazz released in Iceland – and later worldwide – when she was 12. This isn’t just gush: The pixie is a genius.



The above is good, but it’s the album version that’ll break your heart.



And this, a snippet from an interview in Icelandic before the release of Debut, her first solo release. In it you’ll hear her pronounce her name and say everything exactly as she should.



Question: Will the album he as successful as The Sugarcubes? 

She says (and I paraphrase, loosely): Probably by only a fraction. I don’t care. This is music I have to do. This isn’t a fashion show. I won’t worry if people don’t buy it. I’m not here for the musical salt licks.

Love her.

The Abstract Sexy of Björk

I love Björk (pronounced something like B-yerk). She being that rebelliously creative, adorably gifted singer-songwriter from the land of ghosts, elves and various huldufolk. She the ruler of an untouchable realm whose greatest natural resource is that voice. I love how she's at once beautiful and delicate as a flower and yet as rough and impervious as rhino skin. To my eye she's also spectacularly sexy and mysterious in that cold clime, northern hemisphere kind of way. I love that she's a mom. I love her cool website, her technophilia, that her new album is called Biophilia, and her heartbreaking performance in Dancer in the Dark. (I love that she streams her new multimedia remix album. Hear it here and other places.)

I'll admit I haven't listened to her in some years. I love her first two albums but for all the reasons listed above her music can also be difficult––a little too heady when a little more heart would do. Not that we shouldn't envy what that head can do. And that's not to say her songs aren't created with enormous passion––her passion is all over the place. It would have to be to follow a muse so otherworldly and personal as hers. She could've easily pandered a career from star producers wanting to trade up her fame and fortune by churning out mainmstream techno-ditties. Instead, she chose a more challenging path, an aspect that only adds more bonafides as to why she's so bitchin'. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe I'm too western hemisphere, too Southern California to at times find her work nearly as cold and remote as her native Iceland. She's kind of like William Burroughs of icy alt-pop: Highly respected by legions, understood by few.

Whatever. I still love her. Here's her latest video. It's sexy but in a very imagistic and abstract way. It's throbs with tumescence and glistens with fiery fluids. Writhing and pulsating thingies float and erupt in loin provoking ways, like a Westside Story dance sequence choreographed for spermatozoa. See if it doesn't stimulate your nethers to oozing as well. But in that northern hemispheric, Eyjafjallajökull-fearing kind of way.



Just discovered this: Here, Björk gets gushingly busy with herself with help from machine enhancements. Whew!