How to Listen to Björk, According to Björk
One common way of viewing Björk’s career is as a long descent into the bizarre. After the eclectic earworms of her first three solo albums (Debut in 1993, Post in 1995, and Homogenic in 1997), she moved through surprising phases, ranging from soft murmuring (2001’s Vespertine) to splattering noise (2017’s Utopia). These days, her work can seem less like pop than, as The Guardian’s Chal Ravens recently put it, “surreal opera.”
Björk doesn’t think in these terms. When I met with the 56-year-old musician in Iceland for The Atlantic’s recent profile of her, she expressed mystification at people who say her ’90s stuff was more fun. “Maybe they remember themselves in some club doing ecstasy and there were three remixes in a row,” she said. “Overall, the BPM, or the amount of chill, or the amount of experimental, or the amount of pop sugar, or the amount of self-reflective, serious moments—I think it’s actually sort of been the same throughout my albums.”
That interpretation makes some sense once you’ve tuned your ears to Björk’s frequency and absorbed her, her tenth solo album (out today), certainly takes some getting used to. That’s not just because it features clarinets, brass, and strings juxtaposed with the stormy electronic dance style known as . Björk’s defining instrument, her voice, remains a challenge—and a wonder. She wails and exhales in meters and melodies of unpredictable shape. But, and this is crucial, they have a shape.
