FEATURE:
Army of Me
IN THIS PHOTO: Björk in 1995/PHOTO CREDIT: Jill Furmanovsky
Björk's Post at Thirty
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TWO huge albums…
turn thirty on Friday (13th). Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill is one that will get a lot of celebration and spotlight. No doubt one of the biggest albums of the 1990s. Another massive album turning thirty on Friday is Björk's Post. The second album from the Icelandic icon, for this anniversary feature, I want to bring in a couple of interviews from 1995. It was such an important year for Björk. I will end with a review for one of the greatest albums ever released. Jon Savage spoke with Björk in 1995 for The Quietus. There are some really interesting exchanges. Among them is where Björk is asked about moving from Iceland to London. How the sea and its pull makes its way into her music. And how London does not have sea:
“Björk has been performing since age 11, when she made a record in her native Iceland. Raised by what she calls hippie parents, she rebelled on her teens and formed a punk band called Kukl; they recorded for the label run by the hard-core British anarchists Crass. It was a key moment: "I’m still definely obsessed with the spontaneity of punk. I’m a sucker for energy. Just put all the energy in the world into my ears." Subsequently, Björk’s voice shone through the guitar rock of the Sugarcubes, a group that, like many punk bands, was formed as a joke and ended up an unhappy career. In Iceland, in the early 1990s, with the Sugarcubes disbanded, Björk wrote and recorded much of her Debut album — "songs I had written in the evening when my kid was asleep, almost like a domestic housewife album". It was her two guest appearances with dance maestros 808 State that had opened up a whole new world for the former punk and paved the way for her collaboration with Nellee Hooper, the producer who, with his connections to Bristol trip-hoppers Massive Attack and Tricky, was in at the ground level of this year’s dance-floor boom. He provided the state-of-the-art sheen that made Debut so attractive. The CD was a winning mixture of club savvy and more reflective songs that explored nature’s mysticism.
Björk’s new record, Post, develops this fresh mixture. There are the up-to-the-minute dance beats, fused with sharp lyrics in songs like ‘Army of Me’ and ‘Hyper-Ballad’. There is the cover of a vintage show tune, ‘Blow a Fuse’. And there are spooky tunes that play with perception: the odd scratchings at the end of ‘The Modern Things’, with Björk whispering "no one sees me" in Icelandic, and the psychoactive assault of her collaboration with Tricky in ‘Headphones’. Her audacity is one of the most powerful things about Björk. She embodies the sense that anything is possible — in lyrics, in appearance, in gender, and in the very sound of her voice.
JOHN SAVAGE: When were you born?
BJÖRK: 21 November 1965.
On the cusp of Scorpio and Sagittarius.
My mum is heavily into these things, and apparently I’m as much Scorpio as one can be. To me, whether it means something or not — fuck that, I just love the symbolism of it. It’s pretty, like Greek and Nordic mythologies. I’m supposed to be run by Pluto. It’s like a fairy-tale, it simplifies things.
Is Nordic mythology similar to Greek?
It isn’t a copy, but it’s got the same characters. In mythology wherever you go, you’ve got the strong guy, the wise woman, the winners and the losers, the travellers and the domestic people. I always like the animals in mythology, like the ravens on Odin’s shoulders.
Scorpio is all about life, death and sex.
That doesn’t surprise me. My three fucking obsessions.
Have you ever had your chart done?
My mum did it. I think she took me to all the occult creatures of Iceland, from the age of zero until I was 18, when I became a rebel anti-hippie. I got my fortune told and everything. I think I probably believe most of it, actually. I’ve got Pluto in a very important place, and that’s what I’m about. I have to re-create the universe every morning when I wake up. And kill it in the evening, which is a bit outrageous, but there you go.
Hard work.
Heee! Well, maybe not every morning, but maybe twice a year I have to destroy everything. I’ve also got my moon in the twelfth house, in Scorpio, and my son in Scorpio in the first house, and also Neptune. Then on my other half, my generational picture, I’ve got Pluto and Uranus in Virgo, and my midheaven is in conjunct with those two. Virgo is the sign of the nurse, so this means I was born to nurse my generation. I’m still 50-50 about whether this is true, but I was breast-fed on it.
In your lyrics, you seem obsessed with the sea.
I am, very much. It’s a combination of things — being born on a small island and always having the ocean. It makes your head function completely differently. If I travel, as long as I’m by the ocean, I’m fine. If I’m not, I get claustrophobic.
What do you exactly get from the ocean?
First of all, a sense of well-being, like I’m home. I had a really wild upbringing, which I think is the best upbringing anyone could have. My home was by the sea. If I walked down to the sea and sat down by the shore, I was home. That’s my mother, the ocean. Nothing can go wrong. I love swimming, another hippie thing. My mum says it’s because I’m a water sign. And the sense of space and boats. I’m obsessed with boats. It’s freedom.
Do you feel the lack of sea in London?
Yeah, it really does my head in. I tried to stay by Little Venice, but it’s a canal, so the water doesn’t move. I’m only here for work. It’s just two hours on an airplane; my kid [eight-year-old Sindri] can go back home when he wants to. I’m only here for a period, to get my little mission done, and once it’s finished, it’s finished. But after this little job is over, I’m living by the ocean. It doesn’t matter where it is.
What do you think your mission is?
It took me ages to reason it to myself. I find it very hard to be selfish. I just decided, I’m going to move to London, I’m going to be really selfish, I’m going to get all the instruments I want, all the noises and lyrics I like, and make all the music I can, because everybody’s got to express their vision, and no two people are the same. I could happily go and die if I could say, "I did my best, I made my sacrifice." It’s as basic as that. If I hadn’t done this, I would sit in my rocking chair at 85 with my grandchildren on my lap, and say, "Sorry, I didn’t have the guts." I’ve become selfish now, believe me. I’ll go out to the flower shop and buy flowers just for myself. It’s outrageous, isn’t it?
What do you feel about moving to London from Iceland?
It’s a cosmopolitan city. That’s the reason I’m here. If I want a dulcimer player, I can get one. If there’s a certain photographer I want to work with, more than likely he’s going to come through London. I can appreciate London from above, all the rooftops, maybe because I’m a kid and I like Peter Pan. I’m starting to appreciate aimlessness and eccentricity. I’ve realized that Englishness is about people who have to behave politely all day, and the clothes have to be all proper, but that doesn’t mean they’re not mad. You have to focus on it, but once you find it and focus on that energy, then you can stay sane. Compared to the English, Icelanders are like people from Sicily or somewhere. "I’m upset!!!" Like a volcano, they break things, and two hours later, they’re happy. There’s a volcanic eruption in Iceland once a year, on average.
Do you think that environment influences behaviour?
Very much so. What happens in Iceland is that you get the blizzard in your face, you have to fight the weather all the time, and you stay very alert, you never fall asleep. Your head is always working. People who go there think the Icelanders are really stressed out. They’re not, but their energy is on 10. We’ve got this awkward thing, which is 24-hour darkness in the winter, and 24-hour daylight in the summer. There is snow from October or November until mid-March. It means that in the winter you’re just inside and you write all the books you were going to write and get everything done on your own, and then in the summer you go absolutely mad. Like bears after hibernating.
There’s a great lyric on ‘Big Time Sensuality’: "It takes courage to enjoy it." Do you have that courage?
I’ve got a lot of courage, but I’ve also got a lot of fear. You should allow yourself to be scared. It’s one of the prime emotions. You might almost enjoy it, funny as it sounds, and find that you can get over it and deal with it. If you ignore these things, you miss so much. But when you want to enjoy something, especially when it’s something you’ve just been introduced to, you’ve got to have a lot of courage to do it. I don’t think I’m more courageous than most people. I’m an even mixture of all those prime emotions.
Sex does take courage sometimes.
I think so, because if it lacks that sensation of jumping off a cliff it would just miss so much. Then again, it has to be pleasurable and enjoyable and lush and all of that. But ‘Big Time Sensuality’ was actually about when I first met Nellee Hooper. I think it’s quite rare, when you’re obsessed with your job, as I am, when you meet someone who’s your other half job-wise and enables you to do what you completely want… so it’s not a sexual romance.
Are you currently in a stable partnership?
No. I split with my boyfriend at the beginning of last November, and at that point I’d been with a stable boyfriend since the age of 16, though in different relationships. When we broke up, I thought I might as well enjoy this, which I do and I don’t. It’s scary at times. The best bits is that you’re kind of skinless, you’re more vulnerable and emotional and on the edge. There’s also that silly thing that I had when I was 15 and 16 — looking around and wondering who it will be! So I’m sitting there on the subway thinking, will you have a long nose or a short nose? Will you enjoy this or that film? It’s like a little party game.
There’s something really stupid and romantic, thinking that it’s just going to be one person. Even though both of us might have five partners before we die, we always think of that one. Then there are all these things saying how brilliant it is to be self-sufficient and not needing anything or anybody and getting all these tools so that you can do everything yourself. It’s like you’re a little warrior armed with your Walkman and your video and all this technology. Everything’s geared toward self-sufficiency. Fuck that. For me, the target is to learn how to communicate with other people, which is the hardest thing, after all. What you should be doing is learning how to live with other human beings.
Do you have visual ideas in your mind when you’re writing your songs?
Definitely. It’s natural for me to express thing first musically, then visually, and third, with words. So the words are like a translation of noises and pictures.
‘Army of Me’ is a heavy song. Did you have a picture in your mind when you wrote it?
I’m a polar bear and I’m with 500 polar bears, just tramping over a city. The lyric is about people who feel sorry for themselves all the time and don’t get their shit together. You come to a point with people like that where you’ve done everything you can do for them, and the only thing that’s going to sort them out is themselves. It’s time to get things done. I identify with polar bears. They’re very cuddly and cute and quite calm, but if they meet you they can be very strong. They come to Iceland very rarely, once every 10 years, floating on icebergs.
Can you tell me about ‘Hyper-Ballad’?
That’s a lyric about being in a relationship, and after a while, say three or four years, you repress a lot of energy because you’re being sweet all the time. So I wanted to set it up like a fable, something that happens over and over again. It’s about this couple who live on a cliff in the middle of the ocean, and they live in this house, just the two of them, and she wakes up really early, about five in the morning, before anyone else wakes up, and sneaks to the edge and throws a lot of things off: old rubbish, car parts, bottles and cutlery. And she imagines what it would look like if she herself were to jump off. Then she sneaks back into the house, back into bed, then her lover wakes up and it’s "Hello! Good morning, honey!" And she’s got rid of all the aggressive bollocks. The chorus goes, "I go through all this, before you wake up, so I can feel happier to be safe up here with you."
Do you sing from your stomach or your chest?
My stomach. Most engineers find it quite difficult to deal with me, because most of the singing I did as a kid was when I was walking outside, completely on my own. This is absolutely impossible in London. There is no privacy here. I started singing with the whole of my body, which is both good and bad. The engineers usually end up using the same kind of microphones as they put on a stand-up bass, because it’s got a big body.
You’ve said that you recorded a lot of your vocals on the beach.
It was a very sentimental thing. I wanted to sing outside, because I knew everything would fall into place. Nellee made it happen. Compass Point Studio [in Nassau, the Bahamas] was right by the beach. I’d have a very long lead on the microphone and a long lead on the headphones and I’d just sit there at midnight. All the stars would be out, and I’d be sitting there under a little bush. I’d go running into the water and nobody could see where I went. In the quiet bits, I’d sit and cuddle, and for the outrageous bits, I’d run around. It was the first time I’d done a song like that in about 20 years. I was crying my eyes out with joy, because it was something I so deeply wanted all those years. Almost like you had sex lots of times, and it’s gorgeous, and then you couldn’t have it for 20 years, and then suddenly you have it. It was completely outrageous”.
I am going to move to another classic interview. This one is from Dazed. It is interesting reading the introduction of the interview. Getting some background. Björk touring the U.S. Whilst it was a huge occasion, there were also some issues. She crashed for several days: “There was panic in camp Björk. After a back to back schedule of interviews, gigs and promotional chores she crashed for three days. A specialist was brought on tour. She had to cut her live set a little short, leaving out the encores at some of the less important shows”:
“This year, Post shone new light onto planet Björk, after the clouds begun to settle on the peaks of the mighty but now overfamiliar Debut. Post spans a similar emotional radius, but the musical production breaks with any sense of the fluidity of its predecessor. While Debut appears carved by water and ice, Post seems shaped by fire and volcanic action; the lows are much more precarious, the highs more jagged and steeper to climb. Individually co-produced with Nellee Hooper, Graham Massey, Howie B and Tricky, the songs reflect the personalities of Björk's male counterparts. These are her collaborators in the sexually charged, creative act of making beautiful music. Björk takes liberties with melodies and form is avoided in favour of impression. You can imagine Björk still gasping at her own reflection in water, still seduced by the sound of the echo of her own voice.
Björk is now back on form, after a strict diet, rationed talking and plenty of rest. Last night she broke with convention and went on a binge, end-ing up back at her house with some friends, drinking and talking until five in the morning. Tonight she's in an hotel room in Liverpool, with a four poster bed and a four poster bathtub, “dead princess-like”. She describes the telephone she's talking to me on as being gold with roses painted on it, “Jeff Koons would love it”. It sounds like they knew Björk was coming.
You've become very good at analysing your own psychology, working out what makes you tick. Have you ever been to see a psychiatrist?
Björk: No. 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.
When was the last time you cried?
Björk Gudmundsdottir: Listen, I cry all the time. I cried this morning. I'm over-emotional.
What was that all about?
Björk: Well after my binge last night, we ended back at my house and I ended up in a one to one talk with one of my oldest friends and we were just crying, not because of sadness, but because (laughs), it sounds so wack now, we were being fragile, we weren't on drugs just fragile, and when you feel too much in a happy way.
Close your eyes for a minute and tell me what you hear inside your head.
Björk: 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.
So you're happy at the moment.
Björk: You know this touring thing is definitely one of the most difficult things I've done, like an Indiana Jones thing, and me dealing with my body, like ‘time's out, Björk’.
What were the overriding emotions you felt during this tour?
Björk: Goldie was with us, and all of Goldie's crew and our crew got on and it was the best vibe on tour.
So how come you didn't ask Goldie to coproduce any of the songs on Post?
Björk: I don't know really. It wasn't like I was trying to get the whole world on the album.
Yes it was...
Björk: (laughs) Yeah, I know, it looks a bit like that. I'm very much a person who has intimate musical relationships with people and they are almost like love affairs, you see. But I'm very loyal. So me and Nellee got through half the album and then we just stopped turning each other on. We remained friends, but we would just kind of know each other's taste too much for it to be a surprise. And at that point I met Tricky, so we did those tunes, half of which have come out on my album, the other half is coming out on Durban Poison.
And Graham Massey and Howie B, how did your personal relationship with them affect the music?
Björk: The tunes I wrote with Graham, I actually wrote before Debut, and I saved them for this. I met him in 1990; that was when we were really sparking big time off each other, and for a few years we sent each other tapes, and then when I started doing Debut with Nellee it just became very obvious that it would end up as a very musical affair between me and Nellee. So I talked to Graham and decided to keep the other songs because they were just too different. So I saved ‘Army of Me’ and ‘The Modern Things’ for this album, and then Howie has been one of my closest friends in England for over three years and that just kind of happened one afternoon. That song we wrote in an hour.
It's a very spontaneous-sounding song.
Björk: I'm just going bonkers now, I had a three hour conversation with Nellee yesterday. 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 don't think you have.
Björk: But do you know what mean?
No. But you've probably achieved more than what you think is possible...
Björk: That's true...
But I don't believe that you've given as much as you're ever going to give.
Björk: (sighs) And the band as well; when I went through my monk tip, they developed this amazing way to tell me jokes without making a noise, they worked their way around it.
It's funny because, when you're more serious, your accent is more British, and when you're speaking more emotionally it's more Icelandic.
Björk: It's definitely that. 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.
Do you feel like you have multiple personalities you can switch into at any time to suit the mood or occasion? Like when you do interviews, or when you're with friends or when you're performing. Or do you feel a lot more sorted than that?
Björk: I think I'm learning to combine them. And that's kind of what Debut and Post are all about. Like, I would love to do one experimental electronic song with Graham and the next day I would love to be a diva walking down the staircase being a drama queen. The day after, I would love to do a punk song, and that's very much how I've done my music so far, but I can feel very much that I'm starting to become more everything at once. Like I have one friend who I'm very humorous with and another friend whom I'm very sexy with; and another friend that protects me and another friend that I protect; but now I can see it, I'm not planning it or anything, I can just see myself being able to be everything with each person and just being more spontaneous about it, and just let it flow. But I think everyone is a bit like that and that is kind of the target; combine all those things without leaving any of them out. Because it's very tempting, as we grow up, to leave one of them out.
Are you in love at the moment?
Björk: (pause) I am, actually. I haven't eaten or slept for two weeks.
And there's me thinking that's because you've been working really hard, not shagging.
Björk: But it doesn't really bother me. I just look at a plate of food and I just think it's rubbish. It looks like wood to me or coins. It's just impossible to put it inside my system - it's got nothing to do with me.
But you seem to fall in love very easily.
Björk: I think my reputation has gone a bit funny, because I've got a lot of friends, but I get very precious when it comes to love things, you know?
“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” – Björk
What do you think your reputation is?
Björk: I dunno, I guess everyone thinks I fall in love every five minutes, and I have nine boyfriends.
Yeah, they probably do.
Björk: It's not true.
So you've just got one on the go?
Björk: This is definitely the strongest, though for many, many years. I'm on natural E; I don't even want to drink, because that will make the feeling go away. I just have to drink one glass and push me a little bit up, and I'm ecstatic.
What's he like? Does he work in the same industry as you?
Björk: Don't ask me please. 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.
Or psychotherapists.
Björk: Not in my line of work.
With you and Tricky. Why was it so short-lived?
Björk: With me and Tricky I don't think we ever knew if we were going out together or not. I mean, we were going out together and then we weren't. Because, basically, the way our relationship functioned was that we were a support mechanism for each other, and we still have this kind of, like, permission to call each other in the middle of the night, when I'm in fucking Munich and he's in fucking Tokyo. It's a very strange job we've got, and we don't have to explain it: we know. And we know the pressure. So that's more what our relationship is like and still is. And I think it didn't last a long time before we realised that that is why we'd met and sucked like a magnet to each other.
Tell me about one song. Have you got one in your head at the moment? Apart from cream?
Björk: It's very happy, very simple and very poppy. I usually have two at the same time. And they are usually opposite to each other. It's like that mood and that mood, black and white. I've got about five songs that I could go and record tomorrow. Basically, what happens to me is I write the melody first and then, if I work with someone, then the other person adds the other half.
So who's next on your hit list?
Björk: I think I have to start being a bit self-sufficient”.
I am going to finish with a review for Post. Released on 13th June, 1995, it is one of the most important albums ever. Björk is this hugely influential album who sounds like nobody else. She is so distinct. In 2020, Pitchfork took an in-depth look at a pioneering album. One that was groundbreaking. The world had not seen anything like Björk. Following her 1993 debut album, Debut, Post was this step forward. Another bold step from this legendary artist:
“Of course, Björk’s music is a testament to what is possible when logic and practical sense are not guiding principles. But she hardly withdrew. Björk said she had a total of three days off in 1993 and 1994 combined—she had become a legitimate star. In the face of the chaos of fame, “Army of Me” summons resilience, as if Björk knew exactly what she would be up against in the years to come. (In 1996, a fan tried to mail a bomb to her house.) She said “Army of Me” was written as an ultimatum to her own brother, to regain control of his life, lest he “meet an army of me.” Björk scratches at the depths of her voice, and the industrial backbone of the song, the crashes and shrapnel, fortify the task. “Army of Me” is proof that being the most obvious misfit in the room often requires being the toughest, too.
The double-time techno of “Hyperballad” begins with a glint. But it hones its strength. It’s a work of surrealism, narrating the tale of a woman who wakes up early at the top of a mountain, and throws “car parts, bottles, and cutlery” off its edge. She wonders what it would be like to throw herself off, too, her body slamming against the rocks, her eyes open all along—as a kind of catharsis, an emotional purging, in order to deal with people later: “I go through all this/Before you wake up/So I can feel happier/To be safe up here with you.” Her melody rises and tumbles, a slow spiral; the suspended rapture of the beat catches her in air.
If Debut’s “Human Behavior” was an ultimate outcast anthem—“If you ever get close to a human and human behavior, be ready, be ready to get confused”—then “Hyperballad” feels like a triumphant appeal to exist cooperatively alongside other people. Björk did this not only in her hyper-collaborative albums but in her entire project of making pop music, trying to reach all kinds of people at once. “Everything’s geared toward self-sufficiency. Fuck that,” Björk told punk historian Jon Savage in Interview. “For me, the target is to learn how to communicate with other people, which is the hardest thing, after all. What you should be doing is learning how to live with other human beings.” Car parts, bottles, cutlery, technology, and political superpowers are no match against this outreaching feeling, this ethos of interconnectedness that lives inside “Hyperballad,” inside of Björk in general, and it is an instinct inherent, ever crucially, in the survival of humanity.
“All the modern things/Like cars and such/Have always existed,” Björk sings on “The Modern Things.” “They’ve just been waiting in a mountain/For the right moment.” Not unlike the 23-year-old who dissected a television with love and awe, there’s a fantastic tinge of hope to this idea and to the whole of Post, an invitation into her profound exploration of places not yet traveled, to acknowledge the magic in the fact that there are sounds you might love that you can’t currently fathom. Twenty-five years later, you don’t need to scroll far through Björk’s Instagram feed to find the most audacious young popular artists alive, the likes of Arca and Rosalía, heeding that call, crowning her “queen.”
With Post, Björk set the bionic foundation for one of the most consequential careers in pop history. Here is where Björk became a perennial gateway drug, not to one sound but to the unknown, which is to say the future. She would soon leave London for the south of Spain and then New York, recording her two towering masterpieces—1997’s Homogenic, which Missy Elliott once gleefully likened to “Mozart at a rap show,” and the introverted microbeats of 2001’s Vespertine—crystallizing the totality of her vision. What other artist could successively collaborate with Wu-Tang Clan, interview Estonian minimalist legend Arvo Pärt, and appear on “MTV Unplugged” accompanied by a man playing a table of drinking glasses? In another era, maybe Bowie, which is just right—it was Bowie, after all, who inspired Björk’s immortal swan dress. By the end of the ’90s, the world would know the only answer: Björk”.
The incredible Post turns thirty on 13th June. After all of these years, the album still keeps revealing things. It is such a stunning album. Everyone will have their favourite songs from the album. Perhaps the opener, Army of Me, is the standout. Such an epic and evocative way to kick off the album! Björk delivered a masterpiece in 1995. There are few albums as beguiling and impactful than…
THE majestic Post.