I’m counting down my 100 favourite songs of all time. To keep this from becoming a Bob Dylan / Tom Waits love-in, only one track per artist is allowed.
Go to 90: Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet by Gavin Bryars
Go to 92: Concrete Schoolyard by Jurassic 5
You might assume that 1993’s aptly titled Debut was Bjork’s first album as a solo artist. However, prior to her stint with The Sugarcubes and even before her teenage years in various Goth, punk rock and jazz-fusion bands, the Icelandic singer was a solo star in her home country at the tender age of 11.
When one of her classical piano instructors sent a tape of her singing to a radio station, a local label gave Bjork a record deal. The resulting self-titled album contained cover versions alongside songs written by her stepdad and sold enough for the label to offer her the chance to make a follow-up. She turned it down, bought a piano with the royalties and set out on musical journey of her own, through those formative years of genre exploration to a group called KUKL where she developed her signature vocal shrieks and howls.
KUKL eventually morphed into The Sugarcubes, probably the first alternative Icelandic band to find a wide audience outside of their native land. The group sparked international interest in 1988 when the single Birthday was played by legendary BBC Radio DJ John Peel and named single of the week by indie magazine Melody Maker.
The band’s subsequent UK and US success meant more record deals being turned down as The Sugarcubes rejected major label offers in favor of retaining creative control at One Little Indian—an Icelandic independent run by a friend of the band.
Meanwhile, Bjork continued to pursue music in all its diversity, recording with a jazz band and electronic group 808 State—the first of many partnerships with producer Graham Massey. When The Sugarcubes disbanded in 1992, she moved to London to work with Massive Attack producer Nellee Hooper on the album that was a debut in name only. But this title was important in signifying a fresh start for Bjork’s career. Though The Sugarcubes’ split was amicable, the band’s history suggests things were not always sweet.
Aside from having been married to The Sugarcubes’ guitarist Por Eldon (after the couple divorced, Eldon married the band’s keyboardist), Bjork’s talent caused tension with the group’s other singer Einar Orn, whose vocals were often criticized. Leaving behind such complex personal and professional situations must have lifted a lot of weight from her elfin shoulders.
The opening track and lead single from Debut was Human Behaviour. It’s the perfect introduction to Bjork, as the faux-anthropological lyrics make it clear that she is someone who looks at the world from an unusual vantage point. Indeed everything about her was different: her voice with its yelps and screeches, breathy phrasing and tender yells; her abstruse prettiness dressed in stylishly ragged castoffs; and her slinking mannerisms usually described as “pixyish”, but really more mischievous and goblinesque.
Debut too was distinctive, veering from dance-tinged pop hits to ice-flecked torch songs, but always incorporating unexpected elements like the angular breakdown of Crying or the trip to the toilet on There’s More to Life Than This. Even when you think you’ve got Bjork pegged as the purveyor of gorgeously glacial downtempo after the mid-album triptych of One Day, Aeroplane and Come To Me, she unleashes Violently Happy—an unsettling techno track that takes a trip to the dark side of her seemingly amiable quirkiness. The song is a signpost for where her music was heading: more “daring people to jump off roofs with me”, more staring into the abyss and roaring back.
In 1995 she returned to the studio to record her second album Post, this time expanding her team of collaborators to include Massey, Tricky and Howie B, alongside Hooper. The lead track and first single was Army of Me, which took the abrasive sound of Violently Happy to a new level of belligerence with crunching industrial beats and an anti-melodic chorus. It’s a divisive track (which I don’t like) that raised questions about what kind of record Post would be. But any concerns were quickly alleviated by the album’s second cut.
Produced by Hooper, Hyperballad opens with a humming synth and bass line rumble before the introduction of shaky, shuffling percussion. Bjork’s voice enters, in storytelling mode, describing a home on a mountain and an early morning ritual of throwing random objects off a cliff, against a background of chiming electronica. This leads to a burst of measured house beats as she cries the chorus:
“I go through all this / before you wake up / so I can feel happier / to be safe up here with you”.
Already it’s a fascinating song, both musically and lyrically an obscure invitation to Bjork’s particular perspective—a view of love that eschews simple romanticism in favor of an insightful, if idiosyncratic, interpretation of the compromises, obfuscations and oddities of being in a relationship. The singer herself has described it as about how being in love can mean “giving a lot of parts of you away”, while obscuring, yet still venting your “horrible and destructive” side.
The contradictions are embraced in the same way that the beautiful mountain can be littered with “car parts, bottles and cutlery” and she can so wantonly toss them about in what you assume to be pristine wilderness. So too with the music, which is delicate, pretty and composed, while feverishly embracing glitchy wibbles, frantic cymbals and faster beats. It is, as the title explains, a hyper ballad.
The second verse sees Bjork imagine throwing herself off the cliff and the sound of her body “slamming against those rocks”. But this teetering on the precipice is a like a protective rite and the beat that really kicks in for the second chorus intensifies the message of “safe up here”, which she repeats over and over like a siren.
Rather than announcing terror, this wailed warning signal reassures that danger has been spotted. The swift and decisive emergency response takes the form of a broken beat breakdown over which glides a glorious string loop. The beats grind to a halt leaving just the quiet contentment of majestic, multi-faceted, mature amour as the strings slowly fade.
Hyperballad is a breathtaking piece of music, like nothing else ever recorded, not even by Bjork herself. Yet, she could easily sustain this creative peak. The rest of Post contains many outstanding moments of wild diversity, like the preposterously brilliant big band romp of It’s Oh So Quiet, the intense atmosphere of Isobel or the uncertain beauty of Possibly Maybe.
The album increased Bjork’s worldwide fame, which included the unwanted attentions of an obsessed fan who sent her a letter bomb before killing himself. Fortunately, police intercepted the acid-filled package but Bjork was profoundly influenced by the incident. The side of her that was driven by recognition and success now seemed relieved to hand control over to the artist.
Her third record, the stunning Homogenic is the pinnacle of this alliance between the mainstream and avant-garde. Subsequent releases are less pop records and more musical explorations, yet her popularity has scarcely waned. Beyond music she sought out new experiences, including her role in the Lars Von Trier film, Dancer in the Dark for which she won the Best Actress award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.
Bjork has also been an innovator in the world of music videos, especially through her work with filmmaker Michel Gondry. The video for Hyperballad is a perfect example of how the pair has pushed the boundaries of the pop promo.
True to Gondry’s taste for analogue, none of the special effects in the video were added in post-production, but were achieved by re-exposing the film and physically layering images on top of one another. Yet Bjork is not adverse to digital technology and her 2011 album Biophilia was also released as an interactive iPad app.
Inventive, experimental and forever following the same singular path that made a prepubescent Icelandic girl decline a record deal, Bjork must be considered one of the truly great artists of her generation. And as the public vote to decide which tracks should appear on her 2002 Greatest Hits makes clear, most Bjork fans (this one included) consider Hyperballad to be her masterpiece.
Follow me on Twitter
If you like this, try:
Play Dead
Isobel
Bachelorette
Jóga
Crystalline
Birthday - The Sugarcubes
(Or simply spend some quality time at Bjork's official YouTube channel)
Go to 90: Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet by Gavin Bryars
Go to 92: Concrete Schoolyard by Jurassic 5
Go to 90: Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet by Gavin Bryars
Go to 92: Concrete Schoolyard by Jurassic 5
You might assume that 1993’s aptly titled Debut was Bjork’s first album as a solo artist. However, prior to her stint with The Sugarcubes and even before her teenage years in various Goth, punk rock and jazz-fusion bands, the Icelandic singer was a solo star in her home country at the tender age of 11.
When one of her classical piano instructors sent a tape of her singing to a radio station, a local label gave Bjork a record deal. The resulting self-titled album contained cover versions alongside songs written by her stepdad and sold enough for the label to offer her the chance to make a follow-up. She turned it down, bought a piano with the royalties and set out on musical journey of her own, through those formative years of genre exploration to a group called KUKL where she developed her signature vocal shrieks and howls.
KUKL eventually morphed into The Sugarcubes, probably the first alternative Icelandic band to find a wide audience outside of their native land. The group sparked international interest in 1988 when the single Birthday was played by legendary BBC Radio DJ John Peel and named single of the week by indie magazine Melody Maker.
The band’s subsequent UK and US success meant more record deals being turned down as The Sugarcubes rejected major label offers in favor of retaining creative control at One Little Indian—an Icelandic independent run by a friend of the band.
Meanwhile, Bjork continued to pursue music in all its diversity, recording with a jazz band and electronic group 808 State—the first of many partnerships with producer Graham Massey. When The Sugarcubes disbanded in 1992, she moved to London to work with Massive Attack producer Nellee Hooper on the album that was a debut in name only. But this title was important in signifying a fresh start for Bjork’s career. Though The Sugarcubes’ split was amicable, the band’s history suggests things were not always sweet.
Aside from having been married to The Sugarcubes’ guitarist Por Eldon (after the couple divorced, Eldon married the band’s keyboardist), Bjork’s talent caused tension with the group’s other singer Einar Orn, whose vocals were often criticized. Leaving behind such complex personal and professional situations must have lifted a lot of weight from her elfin shoulders.
The opening track and lead single from Debut was Human Behaviour. It’s the perfect introduction to Bjork, as the faux-anthropological lyrics make it clear that she is someone who looks at the world from an unusual vantage point. Indeed everything about her was different: her voice with its yelps and screeches, breathy phrasing and tender yells; her abstruse prettiness dressed in stylishly ragged castoffs; and her slinking mannerisms usually described as “pixyish”, but really more mischievous and goblinesque.
Debut too was distinctive, veering from dance-tinged pop hits to ice-flecked torch songs, but always incorporating unexpected elements like the angular breakdown of Crying or the trip to the toilet on There’s More to Life Than This. Even when you think you’ve got Bjork pegged as the purveyor of gorgeously glacial downtempo after the mid-album triptych of One Day, Aeroplane and Come To Me, she unleashes Violently Happy—an unsettling techno track that takes a trip to the dark side of her seemingly amiable quirkiness. The song is a signpost for where her music was heading: more “daring people to jump off roofs with me”, more staring into the abyss and roaring back.
In 1995 she returned to the studio to record her second album Post, this time expanding her team of collaborators to include Massey, Tricky and Howie B, alongside Hooper. The lead track and first single was Army of Me, which took the abrasive sound of Violently Happy to a new level of belligerence with crunching industrial beats and an anti-melodic chorus. It’s a divisive track (which I don’t like) that raised questions about what kind of record Post would be. But any concerns were quickly alleviated by the album’s second cut.
Produced by Hooper, Hyperballad opens with a humming synth and bass line rumble before the introduction of shaky, shuffling percussion. Bjork’s voice enters, in storytelling mode, describing a home on a mountain and an early morning ritual of throwing random objects off a cliff, against a background of chiming electronica. This leads to a burst of measured house beats as she cries the chorus:
“I go through all this / before you wake up / so I can feel happier / to be safe up here with you”.
Already it’s a fascinating song, both musically and lyrically an obscure invitation to Bjork’s particular perspective—a view of love that eschews simple romanticism in favor of an insightful, if idiosyncratic, interpretation of the compromises, obfuscations and oddities of being in a relationship. The singer herself has described it as about how being in love can mean “giving a lot of parts of you away”, while obscuring, yet still venting your “horrible and destructive” side.
The contradictions are embraced in the same way that the beautiful mountain can be littered with “car parts, bottles and cutlery” and she can so wantonly toss them about in what you assume to be pristine wilderness. So too with the music, which is delicate, pretty and composed, while feverishly embracing glitchy wibbles, frantic cymbals and faster beats. It is, as the title explains, a hyper ballad.
The second verse sees Bjork imagine throwing herself off the cliff and the sound of her body “slamming against those rocks”. But this teetering on the precipice is a like a protective rite and the beat that really kicks in for the second chorus intensifies the message of “safe up here”, which she repeats over and over like a siren.
Rather than announcing terror, this wailed warning signal reassures that danger has been spotted. The swift and decisive emergency response takes the form of a broken beat breakdown over which glides a glorious string loop. The beats grind to a halt leaving just the quiet contentment of majestic, multi-faceted, mature amour as the strings slowly fade.
Hyperballad is a breathtaking piece of music, like nothing else ever recorded, not even by Bjork herself. Yet, she could easily sustain this creative peak. The rest of Post contains many outstanding moments of wild diversity, like the preposterously brilliant big band romp of It’s Oh So Quiet, the intense atmosphere of Isobel or the uncertain beauty of Possibly Maybe.
The album increased Bjork’s worldwide fame, which included the unwanted attentions of an obsessed fan who sent her a letter bomb before killing himself. Fortunately, police intercepted the acid-filled package but Bjork was profoundly influenced by the incident. The side of her that was driven by recognition and success now seemed relieved to hand control over to the artist.
Her third record, the stunning Homogenic is the pinnacle of this alliance between the mainstream and avant-garde. Subsequent releases are less pop records and more musical explorations, yet her popularity has scarcely waned. Beyond music she sought out new experiences, including her role in the Lars Von Trier film, Dancer in the Dark for which she won the Best Actress award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.
Bjork has also been an innovator in the world of music videos, especially through her work with filmmaker Michel Gondry. The video for Hyperballad is a perfect example of how the pair has pushed the boundaries of the pop promo.
True to Gondry’s taste for analogue, none of the special effects in the video were added in post-production, but were achieved by re-exposing the film and physically layering images on top of one another. Yet Bjork is not adverse to digital technology and her 2011 album Biophilia was also released as an interactive iPad app.
Inventive, experimental and forever following the same singular path that made a prepubescent Icelandic girl decline a record deal, Bjork must be considered one of the truly great artists of her generation. And as the public vote to decide which tracks should appear on her 2002 Greatest Hits makes clear, most Bjork fans (this one included) consider Hyperballad to be her masterpiece.
Follow me on Twitter
If you like this, try:
Play Dead
Isobel
Bachelorette
Jóga
Crystalline
Birthday - The Sugarcubes
(Or simply spend some quality time at Bjork's official YouTube channel)
Go to 90: Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet by Gavin Bryars
Go to 92: Concrete Schoolyard by Jurassic 5
Comments
Post a Comment