![]() ![]() ![]() The location’s mix of untamed exterior and orderly interior came to feel very Björk too. But to Björk, it was layered with history: Masterworks had been made here friends had slept here birthday and Christmas parties had been thrown here. This was, to my eye, a neat-and-tidy lunch spot for science-class field trips. Her assistant unlocked the door, revealing a tall-ceilinged meeting room with blond-wood beams and a blue-tiled kitchenette. Our destination turned out to be not the actual lighthouse, but a building near its base. As we approached a stout white tower, Björk let out a sigh: “Ah, yes! The feeling.” But the wind blew ferociously, flattening the coastal grass, undulating the fronds of Björk’s coat, and contributing to my sense that we were marching to a portal at Earth’s end. The August day was typical for Icelandic summer-mid-50s and sunny. Her assistant drove us to the beach parking lot, and then we made a trek past volcanic pebbles and fragrant kelp deposits. “Sometimes you’re working on a song for a few hours, and it’s like, either I leave now or I work six more hours on it,” she said. She has periodically gone there to record music, and when the tide gets high, it becomes unreachable by foot-which is part of the fun. Björk’s secret plan was for us to head to the Grótta lighthouse, located on a black-rock point northwest of Reykjavík. In our four hours together, she described the workings of “matriarch music”-a term that defines both Björk’s ethos and a broader, now-strengthening current in pop culture.įirst, though, we had to talk about actual currents. As velveteen-sounding woodwinds respire amid hard beats, Björk examines her place in a lineage of nurturers, peacemakers, and problem solvers. Fossora addresses legacy and ancestry in a different way, with some of her most vivid songwriting and most daring arrangements to date. Her new podcast, Sonic Symbolism, revisits the creation of each of her albums. In Billie Eilish’s glamorous grotesquery and hyperpop’s chipper chaos, you can see a surging interest in Björk’s longtime quest: proving supposedly soft qualities-vulnerability, caring, wonder-to be forms of guts and brawn.ījörk’s new solo album is her 10th, and the round number is apt for a moment in which she’s taking stock of where she has come from and what she’s accomplished. Today’s forward-thinking female and queer stars-as varied as Rosalía, SZA, Solange, Perfume Genius, and Lizzo-tend to salute her as a foremother. Many observers have been confused by this brew, but for others, Björk is a comfort, an affirmation of their own inalienable originality. Starting with her 1993 solo album, Debut, and continuing through her acclaimed work of the past decade, she has carved a path with her guttural voice and counterintuitive melodies, her edgy instrumentation and wise lyrics, her surreal visuals and alchemical tech. ![]() Her influence is also inescapable worldwide. At a nearby bar, I got to chatting with a middle-aged man who said that Björk had babysat him when he was a kid. The Icelandic Punk Museum, a tiny labyrinth in a converted public bathroom, is partly a shrine to The Sugarcubes, the rock band that brought Björk to international fame in the late ’80s. When I checked into my hotel in Reykjavík-a city of 135,000 that blends the vibes of a mountain-climbing base camp and a bohemian port-a song of hers was playing in the lobby. Yet at age 56, having spent three decades as one of music’s most important figures, Björk has hardly gone unnoticed in her home country. “Icelanders,” Björk explained, “are too cool for school.” But she moved through the busy café unbothered, even un-stared-at, by the other patrons. The whole look read as fungal chic, reflecting the earthy aesthetic of her new album, Fossora, which will be out at the end of this month. Her Cleopatra hairstyle had been dyed with strips of white, pink, and mold blue, and the pendulous ruffles of her gown-like overcoat were patterned orange and gray-green. “We had to set our clock to the tide,” she said, brightly, as if I would know what that meant.ījörk looked very Björk, which is to say that she looked like no one else on this planet. Upon arriving at the plant-filled café where we’d agreed to meet, Björk thanked me for my flexibility. Just that morning, our interview had been rescheduled to an hour earlier than originally planned so that we could travel to a location unknown to me. M idday on a Monday in Iceland’s capital of Reykjavík, Björk walked into a coffee shop and gave me a riddle. ![]()
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