Navigating the art-pop waters of Björk’s catalog is an exploration of wonder and color. Like her visuals, her music is sprawling and complex. She’s like a great jazz singer who isn’t interested in nostalgia. She doesn’t fit into neat boxes of genre. Her music can be beautiful and delicate, or intense and brutal. She sounds earthy and alien while binding personal experience to cosmic questions.
Videos by American Songwriter
From Iceland, Björk began her career with The Sugarcubes. The alternative rock band introduced Björk’s giant voice to the world before she came to prominence as a solo artist, starting with Debut in 1993. Her music draws from Icelandic folk, pop, electronic, avant-garde, jazz, and classical music. At an early age, she was influenced by punk and new wave bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees. Like David Bowie, her music and accompanying visuals have continuously evolved.
Björk’s music and fashion are multicultural. She also sounds intergalactic. Few people would be surprised if a record landed on Earth from outer space and it resembled Björk’s fantastical Biophilia. The music is equally at home in a club or a David Attenborough nature documentary.
Most avant-garde music doesn’t feel nourishing. Deconstructing or obliterating convention is, by definition, destabilizing. But Björk’s deconstruction is spirit-building. It’s hard to dress a wound you cannot see. Her music is like a quest for light in the darkness. It also appeals to the part of the human experience yearning for something bigger than self.
The baroque arrangements of Björk’s songs give way to romantic sentiments. She often pulls back the poetry to reveal instinct at its most visceral level. It’s what makes dirt “dirty,” and life-sustaining. Below are Björk’s top five essential songs.
5. “Big Time Sensuality” from Debut (1993)
Listening to Debut is like time-traveling straight back to a ’90s dancefloor. To a time and place where many significant moments happen in one massive night out. On “Big Time Sensuality,” a stabbing organ cuts to the chase. No one is thinking about tomorrow tonight. It’s all hedonism and strange bedfellows under flashing lights and throbbing synth bass. Björk sings what many ravers were thinking at the time: I don’t know my future after this weekend, and I don’t want to.
4. “Hyperballad” from Post (1995)
Björk battles personal demons in the morning to make space for her partner in the day. “Hyperballad” is an aptly titled and straightforward work by Björk’s standards. The track opens with a looming bass line. Björk is teetering on the edge of a cliff. By the second verse, she delivers a gutting line, imagining her body slamming against rocks. Then, there’s the emotional release of the house beat in the second chorus.
I go through all this before you wake up
So I can feel happier to be safe up here with you
[RELATED: Behind the Name: Björk]
3. “Human Behaviour” from Debut (1993)
One of Björk’s best-known songs dates back to her time in The Sugarcubes. She chose not to record it with the group and saved it for her first solo album. Reason supposedly separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. But anyone paying attention to the human species might agree with Björk when she sings, There’s definitely, definitely, definitely no logic to human behavior. “Human Behavior” is another example of Björk’s duality of sounding like an observer from outer space and a deep forest inhabitant. The main riff comes from “Go Down Dying” by the Ray Brown Orchestra.
2. “Army of Me” from Post (1995)
A snaking and sinister bass line opens “Army of Me.” Björk spits venom toward her brother for his destructive behavior. She’s had enough.
You’re on your own now
We won’t save you
Your rescue squad
Is too exhausted
“Army of Me” was written during the Debut sessions, but she saved it for her second album, Post. The industrial track samples Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks.” The dam has broken, and “Army of Me” is where the rain becomes the flood.
1. “Jóga” from Homogenic (1997)
“Jóga” is Björk’s best vocal performance. It is pure, emotional magic over gorgeous strings. The scattered beats propel the track—sputtering and fragmenting like asteroids bashing through the galaxy. Björk tackles the riddles of personal relationships like the mysteries of the universe. She’s at her best when she ties Earth’s dirt to the cosmic. The middle section’s chaotic dubstep break may symbolize the dangerous reality of Mother Nature. In 1997, it also foreshadowed dubstep’s becoming mainstream music.
Emotional landscapes
They puzzle me, confuse
Then the riddle gets solved
Photo by Mirek Towski/FilmMagic
