Björk Album 2022

[Lorin Cupples]

Severalof Bjrk's albums have reached the top 20 on the US Billboard 200 chart. Thirty-one of her singles have reached the top 40 on pop charts around the world, with 22 top 40 hits in the UK, including the top-10 singles "It's Oh So Quiet", "Army of Me", and "Hyperballad" and the top-20 singles "Play Dead", "Big Time Sensuality", and "Violently Happy".[4][5] Her accolades and awards include the Order of the Falcon, five BRIT Awards, and 16 Grammy nominations. In 2015, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.[6][7] Rolling Stone named her the 64th-greatest singer[8] and the 81st-greatest songwriter[9] of all time in 2023.

Bjrk starred in the 2000 Lars von Trier film Dancer in the Dark, for which she won the Best Actress Award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival,[10] and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "I've Seen It All". Bjrk has also been an advocate for environmental causes in Iceland. A retrospective exhibition dedicated to Bjrk was held at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 2015.[11]

During her teens, after the diffusion of punk rock music in Iceland, Bjrk formed the all-girl punk band Spit and Snot. In 1980, she formed a jazz fusion group, Exodus, collaborated in another group, JAM80, and graduated from music school.[12] In 1982, she and bassist Jakob Magnsson formed another group, Tappi Tkarrass ("Cork the Bitch's Ass" in Icelandic), and released the EP Biti fast viti ("Bite Hard Into the Mind" in Icelandic), in August 1982. Their album Miranda was released in December 1983. The group was featured in the documentary Rokk Reykjavk, with Bjrk being featured on the cover of the VHS release.[12][18] Around this time, Bjrk met guitarist r Eldon and surrealist group Medusa, which also included poet Sjn, with whom she started a lifelong collaboration and formed a group, Rokka Rokka Drum.[19] She described her time as part of Medusa as "a gorgeous D.I.Y. organic university: extreme fertility!"[20] Bjrk appeared as a featured artist on "Afi", a track from the Bjrgvin Gslason 1983 record rugglega.[16]

Kukl's second album, Holidays in Europe (The Naughty Nought), came out in 1986. The band split up due to personal conflict, with Bjrk keeping a collaboration with Gulaugur, which was named the Elgar Sisters. Some of the songs they recorded ended up as B-sides to Bjrk solo singles.[12][22]

Bjrk had her first acting role on The Juniper Tree (filmed in 1986, released in 1990), a tale of witchcraft based on the Brothers Grimm story, directed by Nietzchka Keene. Bjrk played the role of Margit, a girl whose mother has been killed for practising witchcraft.[12] That summer, former band member Einar rn and Eldon formed the arts collective Smekkleysa ("Bad Taste" in Icelandic), created with the intention of being both a record label and book publishing company.[12][22] Various friends, namely Melax and Sigtryggur from Kukl, along with Bragi lafsson and Fririk Erlingson from Purrkur Pillnikk, joined the group and a band coalesced in the collective solely to make money.[22] They were initially called ukl, but they were advertised as Kukl (the name of the previous band). At a later concert supporting Icelandic band Stumenn, they referred to themselves as Sykurmolarnir ("Sugarcubes" in Icelandic). Their first double A-side single, "Einn mol' mann", which contained the songs "Ammli" ("Birthday") and "Kttur" ("Cat"), was released on 21 November 1986, Bjrk's 21st birthday.[22]

At the end of that year, the Sugarcubes signed with One Little Indian.[22] Their first English single, "Birthday", was released in the United Kingdom on 17 August 1987; a week later, it was declared single of the week by Melody Maker.[22] The Sugarcubes also signed a distribution deal with Elektra Records in the United States and recorded their first album, Life's Too Good, which was released in 1988.[23] After the release of the album, Eldon and Bjrk divorced soon after the birth of their child despite being in the same group.[24] The album went on to sell more than one million copies worldwide.[23] Bjrk contributed as a background vocalist on 1987 album Loftmynd by Megas, for whom she provided background vocals also on his subsequent album Hfulausnir (1988) and Httuleg hljmsveit & glpakvendi Stella (1990).[16]

In the last quarter of 1988, the Sugarcubes toured North America to positive reception.[23] On 15 October, the band appeared on Saturday Night Live. Bjrk alone contributed a rendition of the Christmas song "Jlaktturinn" ("The Christmas Cat") on the compilation Hvt Er Borg Og Br.[16] The band went on hiatus following the lack of reception of Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week! (1989) and a lengthy international tour.[24] During this time, Bjrk started working on her solo projects. In 1990 she provided background vocals on Gums by Bless.[16] In the same year, she recorded Gling-Gl, a collection of popular jazz and original work, with the jazz group Tr Gumundar Inglfssonar, which as of 2011[update] was still her best-selling album in her home country.[12][23] Bjrk also contributed vocals to 808 State's album ex:el, with whom she cultivated her interest in house music. She contributed vocals on the songs "Qmart" and on "Ooops", which was released as a single in the UK in 1991.[16] She also contributed vocals to the song "Falling", on the album Island by Current 93 and Hilmar rn Hilmarsson.[16] In the same year she met harpist Corky Hale, with whom she had a recording session that ended up as a track on her future album Debut.[12]

At this point, Bjrk had decided to leave the band to pursue her solo career, but their contract included the making of one last album, Stick Around for Joy (1992), with a subsequent promotional tour, which she agreed to do.[23] Bjrk was featured on two tracks of the soundtrack for the 1992 film Remote Control (known as Sdma Reykjavk in Iceland).[16] The Sugarcubes split up after they played one last show in Reykjavk.[23] Rolling Stone called them "the biggest rock band to emerge from Iceland".[25]

Bjrk moved to London to pursue a solo career. She began working with producer Nellee Hooper (who had produced Massive Attack, among others). Their partnership produced Bjrk's first international solo hit, "Human Behaviour", a dance track based on a guitar rhythm sampled from Antnio Carlos Jobim. In most countries, the song was not widely played on radio, but its music video gained strong airtime on MTV. It was directed by Michel Gondry, who became a frequent collaborator for Bjrk.[26] Her first adult solo album, Debut, was released in June 1993 to positive reviews; it was named album of the year by NME and eventually went platinum in the United States.[27] Debut was the leap Bjrk made from being in numerous bands during her teens and early twenties to her solo career. She named the album Debut to signify a start of something new. Debut had a mix of songs Bjrk had been writing since she was a teenager, as well as more recent lyrical collaborations with Hooper. The dance-oriented album varied in instrumentation. One single from the album, "Venus as a Boy", featured a Bollywood-influenced string arrangement. Bjrk covered the jazz standard "Like Someone in Love" to the accompaniment of a harp, and the final track, "The Anchor Song", was sung with only a saxophone ensemble for accompaniment.

At the 1994 Brit Awards, Bjrk won the awards for Best International Female and Best International Newcomer.[28] The success of Debut enabled her to collaborate with British and other artists on one-off tracks. She worked with David Arnold on "Play Dead", the theme to the 1993 film The Young Americans (which appeared as a bonus track on a re-release of Debut), collaborated on two songs for Tricky's Nearly God project, appeared on the track "Lilith" for the album Not for Threes by Plaid, and co-wrote the song "Bedtime Story" for Madonna's 1994 album Bedtime Stories. Bjrk also had an uncredited role as a runway model in the 1994 film Prt--Porter.

Although Bjrk continued to receive more mainstream attention for her videos than her singles, Post included several UK pop hits and was eventually certified platinum in the US.[27] Bjrk also contributed to the 1995 Hector Zazou collaborative album Chansons des mers froides, singing the traditional Icelandic song "Vsur Vatnsenda-Rsu".

Bjrk left London for Spain, where she recorded the album Homogenic,[36] released in 1997. Bjrk worked with producers Mark Bell of LFO and Howie B, as well as Eumir Deodato; numerous remixes followed. Homogenic is regarded as one of Bjrk's most experimental and extroverted works, with enormous beats that reflect the landscape of Iceland, most notably in the song "Jga", which fuses lush strings with rocky electronic crunches. The album was certified gold in the US in 2001.[27] The album was backed by string of music videos, several of which received airplay on MTV. The video for "Bachelorette" was directed by frequent collaborator Michel Gondry, while "All Is Full of Love" was directed by Chris Cunningham. The single "All is Full of Love" was also the first DVD single to ever be released in the US, which paved the way for other artists to include DVD video and other multimedia features with their singles. Bjrk began to write more personally, saying "I realised that I'd come to the end of the extrovert thing. I had to go home and search for myself again."[36]

In 1999, Bjrk was asked to write and produce the musical score for the film Dancer in the Dark, a musical drama about an immigrant named Selma who is struggling to pay for an operation to prevent her son from going blind. Director Lars von Trier eventually asked her to consider playing the role of Selma, convincing her that the only true way to capture the character of Selma was to have the composer of the music play the character.[37] Eventually, she accepted. Filming began in early 1999, and the film debuted in 2000 at the 53rd Cannes Film Festival. The film received the Palme d'Or, and Bjrk received the Best Actress Award for her role.[10] It was reported that the shoot was so physically and emotionally tiring that she vowed never to act again.[38] Bjrk later stated that she always wanted to do one musical in her life, and Dancer in the Dark was the one.[39] The soundtrack Bjrk created for the film was released with the title Selmasongs. The album features a duet with Thom Yorke of Radiohead titled "I've Seen It All", which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song and was performed at the 2001 Oscars (without Yorke), while Bjrk was wearing her celebrated swan dress.[40]

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