WEBVTT NOTE This file was generated by Descript 00:00:00.180 --> 00:00:00.680 Hey y'all! 00:00:00.700 --> 00:00:02.599 Welcome back to The Vocal. 00:00:02.870 --> 00:00:06.500 I got a great text message from one of my very best friends recently, kind of 00:00:06.500 --> 00:00:10.910 out of the blue, and he said, I think I'm ready to go to level two of Björk. 00:00:11.069 --> 00:00:14.999 You know, I've been vaguely aware of her my whole life, for the big things 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:18.419 that she's done, if she's been on the radio or in the media or whatever, but 00:00:18.419 --> 00:00:20.139 I think I'm ready to like, explore. 00:00:20.179 --> 00:00:24.000 And I took this as A book report project. 00:00:24.010 --> 00:00:27.800 I immediately said, I'm going to do this in voice memos because 00:00:27.820 --> 00:00:31.470 there's no words only format that's going to be able to communicate. 00:00:32.184 --> 00:00:37.095 Her to you in the way that I think I can communicate her to you And then of course, 00:00:37.095 --> 00:00:41.805 I thought this would make a really great series Bjork is someone that I have looked 00:00:41.824 --> 00:00:47.664 to for a really long time Just as someone that i'm glad exists at the same time 00:00:47.664 --> 00:00:51.424 that I am on this earth, you know She goes through so many different chapters. 00:00:51.424 --> 00:00:56.745 She's Such an artist with a capital a she's done so much It's pretty astounding 00:00:56.745 --> 00:01:02.150 to watch an artist like that work and be received During her lifetime, you know, 00:01:02.150 --> 00:01:06.250 not to get too dark, but so much of the time, some of our most profound artists 00:01:06.250 --> 00:01:10.429 and the legacies that they leave are only realized once they leave the earth. 00:01:10.460 --> 00:01:14.089 And Bjork is here still she's out there doing her thing. 00:01:14.089 --> 00:01:18.389 And she's been doing her thing truly like her whole life being received, 00:01:18.539 --> 00:01:24.329 maybe not at the level of complexity that she's putting out, but she hasn't. 00:01:24.580 --> 00:01:29.160 audience for some very avant garde work that she has been called to do, 00:01:29.279 --> 00:01:30.490 which I think is really remarkable. 00:01:30.499 --> 00:01:36.499 I thought I would walk y'all through my story arc with Bjork, the way that 00:01:36.559 --> 00:01:41.089 I see her career, the way that I, um, have internalized the chapters of her 00:01:41.090 --> 00:01:45.940 work, the things that have inspired her, the sounds of her music, as 00:01:45.940 --> 00:01:48.179 well as her treks into technology. 00:01:48.179 --> 00:01:49.669 She's She's so many things. 00:01:49.679 --> 00:01:53.509 She's a singer, a writer, an artist, a visual artist. 00:01:53.509 --> 00:01:54.860 She is a technologist. 00:01:54.889 --> 00:01:57.080 She's an avant garde performer. 00:01:57.139 --> 00:01:58.499 She's a fashion icon. 00:01:58.499 --> 00:02:00.039 She's a style maven. 00:02:00.039 --> 00:02:05.589 She's someone that is known for wearing extraordinarily button pushing, um, 00:02:05.619 --> 00:02:07.189 outfits and designs and headpieces. 00:02:08.009 --> 00:02:12.530 She is really someone that I think brings art to people. 00:02:12.530 --> 00:02:14.829 Whether or not they receive it is up to them. 00:02:14.919 --> 00:02:18.870 I should take a step back and say, I don't call myself a Bjork scholar. 00:02:19.040 --> 00:02:22.700 I have my own read, um, and my own understanding and my own 00:02:22.700 --> 00:02:23.710 relationship with her work. 00:02:23.710 --> 00:02:26.900 But I, by no means think that I have the definitive approach to Bjork. 00:02:26.910 --> 00:02:28.960 This is just one approach. 00:02:29.140 --> 00:02:31.680 So the way that I see it, her career can really be broken up 00:02:31.700 --> 00:02:34.110 into three or four chapters. 00:02:34.259 --> 00:02:38.970 In this episode, we're just going to be focusing on what I see as chapter one. 00:02:38.980 --> 00:02:42.930 This takes us through solo albums, one, two, and three. 00:02:42.940 --> 00:02:43.720 That's debut. 00:02:44.105 --> 00:02:48.455 Post and Homogenic from 1993 to 1997. 00:02:48.725 --> 00:02:52.235 Um, first let's hear from the Sugar Cubed, which is the group that Bjork was 00:02:52.240 --> 00:02:53.735 in before she launched her solo career. 00:02:57.015 --> 00:03:00.285 So you can hear some electronic programming, probably some 00:03:00.285 --> 00:03:02.085 real analog instruments. 00:03:02.145 --> 00:03:06.285 So I hear this and I hear not necessarily prototypical nineties, but I hear the 00:03:06.285 --> 00:03:08.265 nineties, the first chapter of her career. 00:03:08.265 --> 00:03:09.285 She's pulling from. 00:03:09.679 --> 00:03:13.040 references of the sonic landscapes that she's occupied previously, 00:03:13.059 --> 00:03:16.049 and she's packaging them in ways that are pretty familiar to us. 00:03:16.299 --> 00:03:20.910 So a pretty standard song structure, a pretty standard kind of conventional 00:03:20.970 --> 00:03:24.600 album format, and the, the kind of the lyrical content on these 00:03:24.600 --> 00:03:26.479 albums were pretty self centric. 00:03:26.479 --> 00:03:30.540 In that way, the standard fare for a solo recording artist, she writes 00:03:30.559 --> 00:03:34.809 songs, she pulls sonics and, you know, instruments and compositional 00:03:34.820 --> 00:03:38.524 structures from the genres that she's trained in and she's familiar with. 00:03:38.575 --> 00:03:40.935 She puts albums together, she delivers them to us. 00:03:40.995 --> 00:03:44.095 Uh, by that logic, this wasn't necessarily the most boundary pushing 00:03:44.095 --> 00:03:47.725 part of her career, but what she was doing was already very boundary pushing. 00:03:47.735 --> 00:03:51.884 Bjork was someone that was trained in jazz, she was also coming up in an 00:03:51.895 --> 00:03:57.310 age where grunge Punk and kind of like counterculture movements were meeting 00:03:57.350 --> 00:04:02.590 music and electronica was really entering its new era as well What I think is kind 00:04:02.590 --> 00:04:06.539 of tantamount to understanding why she became such kind of a cultural icon even 00:04:06.540 --> 00:04:12.190 in her early Not as boundary pushing days in the early 90s were so male dominated 00:04:12.200 --> 00:04:17.390 and they were very group dominated She was a solo woman stepping out on her own which 00:04:17.400 --> 00:04:21.830 in and of itself was pretty Anti kind of in the spirit of those genres to begin 00:04:21.830 --> 00:04:27.450 with the next level Those genres, many of them were genres meant to be against the 00:04:27.450 --> 00:04:32.030 mainstream or forked off of the mainstream as others to the mainstream and what she 00:04:32.030 --> 00:04:37.239 kind of, I don't know if she was, um, aware in, in her doing, she was actually 00:04:37.249 --> 00:04:39.229 bringing elements of those genres. 00:04:39.520 --> 00:04:42.940 To the mainstream, which was kind of also in the spirit of 00:04:42.940 --> 00:04:44.360 those genres, kind of anarchic. 00:04:44.360 --> 00:04:48.050 She was like taking the anti structures and anti anti ing them and bringing 00:04:48.050 --> 00:04:49.880 them to greater masses of people. 00:04:49.929 --> 00:04:53.290 In those ways, Bjork was really doing something that wasn't meant to be done. 00:04:53.299 --> 00:04:56.099 So even if she didn't do all that much more than that, 00:04:56.099 --> 00:04:57.339 it already was a statement. 00:04:57.380 --> 00:04:59.340 1993 was when Debut came out. 00:04:59.350 --> 00:05:02.210 You'll probably recognize if you were to look at the album artwork, she's 00:05:02.210 --> 00:05:03.560 like covering her hands like this. 00:05:03.560 --> 00:05:06.810 She's kind of playing kind of like a meek young female kind 00:05:06.810 --> 00:05:08.520 of like East Asian archetypal. 00:05:08.685 --> 00:05:12.265 character in a way, and a lot of the songs had some like humor 00:05:12.265 --> 00:05:14.285 or tongue in cheek ness to them. 00:05:14.445 --> 00:05:17.205 So a couple of the big songs from this album, the ones that I 00:05:17.214 --> 00:05:20.355 think became iconic, one was the first song called Human Behavior, 00:05:22.295 --> 00:05:23.104 which sounds a little like this. 00:05:23.995 --> 00:05:28.084 So you can hear some of the genres that she had been working in. 00:05:28.094 --> 00:05:32.465 You hear a little bit of jazz, a little bit of like, like shuffle drums. 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:38.480 The bass line is a little bit punk and then the singular female vocal over it. 00:05:38.990 --> 00:05:44.119 So it kind of still sounds like a band, but in a way, it's more pop. 00:05:44.119 --> 00:05:46.080 She's bringing it into a pop market. 00:05:48.800 --> 00:05:53.090 Also some plays with key and chord changes that were a little irreverent. 00:05:53.350 --> 00:05:55.880 Um, which I can kind of hear some of her like jazz training in that. 00:05:55.880 --> 00:05:59.480 Another song that became kind of a big hit was called Big Time Sensuality. 00:05:59.710 --> 00:06:02.250 Um, which I think in and of itself may also have been a bit 00:06:02.259 --> 00:06:05.750 risque for her, because she was a pretty young woman in the 90s. 00:06:05.910 --> 00:06:08.080 She was also like in an, in an American market. 00:06:08.080 --> 00:06:11.574 She was an international woman kind of talking about sex and kind of like. 00:06:11.885 --> 00:06:15.445 Not super super descriptive ways, but in, um, overt ways. 00:06:15.445 --> 00:06:18.255 And I think that that also kind of allowed her to lean into 00:06:18.265 --> 00:06:19.525 being a little bit of a punk. 00:06:19.575 --> 00:06:23.994 But what's funny is that it's like a pretty light little song. 00:06:26.674 --> 00:06:29.645 Definitely can hear the 90s in the track. 00:06:30.234 --> 00:06:34.885 Now Bjork self describes her second album, her follow up called Post, um, just two 00:06:34.885 --> 00:06:37.145 years later in 1995 as her city album. 00:06:37.145 --> 00:06:38.674 It was when her life was really expanding. 00:06:38.674 --> 00:06:42.590 I believe she moved her Home base or one of her home bases to london. 00:06:42.810 --> 00:06:46.670 She's always worked out of reykjavik iceland She maintains really strong roots 00:06:46.670 --> 00:06:50.070 there and a home there But london became a place where she could access a wider 00:06:50.070 --> 00:06:53.899 international market and work and make music and I believe this may have been 00:06:53.900 --> 00:06:57.790 the album when she Maybe started renting an apartment or bought a place in London. 00:06:57.790 --> 00:07:01.240 And so she was surrounded by a much bigger city life. 00:07:01.250 --> 00:07:06.110 Post spawned a lot of the songs that folks, I think, still know of her. 00:07:06.329 --> 00:07:11.290 Post really did the work of like deepening and strengthening and codifying her sound. 00:07:11.709 --> 00:07:17.230 I think of it almost visually as like all the levels in the tracks were raised. 00:07:17.420 --> 00:07:22.820 Things were richer, deeper and clearer and crisper in a way, and just. 00:07:23.640 --> 00:07:26.969 Many people know Army of Me, which is the first song on this album. 00:07:27.159 --> 00:07:33.029 It's definitely a harder hitting, grunge style, also nuvo electronica kind of song. 00:07:33.229 --> 00:07:38.619 Lyrically, this song also is kind of defensive and, and also offensive. 00:07:38.619 --> 00:07:41.359 She is a, a woman that is saying, If you complain once 00:07:41.390 --> 00:07:43.419 more, you'll meet an army of me. 00:07:43.429 --> 00:07:45.289 She's saying like, don't fuck with me. 00:07:45.290 --> 00:07:48.498 If you complain once more. 00:07:48.498 --> 00:07:49.139 You 00:07:54.019 --> 00:07:57.690 almost see like 90s movies references, like I think this was before like 00:07:57.690 --> 00:08:00.380 the matrix came out But you can start to feel like kind of that like 00:08:00.500 --> 00:08:03.909 urban feeling of the 90s in this album and her voice is also getting a 00:08:03.919 --> 00:08:09.140 little bit Bigger and the complexity of her voice is starting to read. 00:08:09.149 --> 00:08:13.820 It's not as light not as delicate It's you can actually hear the fibers of her vocal 00:08:13.820 --> 00:08:17.540 cords starting to work and starting to do new kinds of work and she's putting more 00:08:17.630 --> 00:08:21.990 air through her lungs and everything about it is just kind of like more seismic. 00:08:22.059 --> 00:08:24.410 One of the biggest songs of her career was the second song on 00:08:24.410 --> 00:08:25.760 this album called Hyperballad. 00:08:26.040 --> 00:08:30.989 Hyperballad does a few things that I think became prototypes not just for future 00:08:30.990 --> 00:08:33.030 work in her career but for other artists. 00:08:33.039 --> 00:08:37.000 One of those is it's kind of pre loop loop. 00:08:37.460 --> 00:08:41.639 You can hear the structure of what's beneath her kind of like these 00:08:41.639 --> 00:08:45.565 just Circling drums, circling bass. 00:08:46.545 --> 00:08:49.115 We have like the synth cloud layer on the top. 00:08:49.675 --> 00:08:53.095 And then still keeping a foot in like pretty prototypical pop 00:08:53.095 --> 00:08:54.595 structure, here's the chorus. 00:08:58.375 --> 00:09:02.284 And by the end of the song, as you can hear, it's actually a dance track. 00:09:02.594 --> 00:09:03.944 So it's called Hyper Ballad. 00:09:03.944 --> 00:09:06.125 It's like the best of both worlds. 00:09:06.125 --> 00:09:10.085 It's storytelling of balladry with the kind of hard hitting 00:09:10.085 --> 00:09:12.735 dance nature of a pop song. 00:09:12.745 --> 00:09:15.905 One of the outliers I think from her, it's like a vestige of her earliest 00:09:15.905 --> 00:09:19.735 work, fell into this album called It's Oh So Quiet, which was this like almost 00:09:19.995 --> 00:09:27.374 camp, drag level, um, take on jazz and like almost, kind of a burlesque club 00:09:27.704 --> 00:09:31.915 or something more akin to a cabaret. 00:09:32.084 --> 00:09:35.555 Um, it's very over the top in such a way that you wonder, is 00:09:35.564 --> 00:09:40.964 she actually lampooning that genre by making it so campy? 00:09:41.795 --> 00:09:46.895 It's silly, it's theatrical, it's whimsical, it's weird. 00:09:51.745 --> 00:09:54.775 It's kind of the antithesis of other sounds that she was exploring at 00:09:54.775 --> 00:09:58.255 the time and we really never heard anything like this again in her career. 00:09:58.464 --> 00:10:03.350 This was kind of the last time that This form of like theatrical performative 00:10:03.420 --> 00:10:07.940 jazz and like silliness kept its kind of claws in her, her work. 00:10:07.950 --> 00:10:10.709 And I don't mean claws in a negative way, but showed up in her work. 00:10:17.609 --> 00:10:18.844 And then she's gonna take it to Björk. 00:10:20.445 --> 00:10:25.545 On the whole, Post is a really cool soundscape of an album, and it really 00:10:25.545 --> 00:10:27.765 paints the picture of evolving genres. 00:10:27.795 --> 00:10:31.905 We have some rock, some jazz, some electronica, and some like, 00:10:32.015 --> 00:10:34.254 lyric and solo female vocals. 00:10:34.425 --> 00:10:36.015 vocal driven pop music. 00:10:36.125 --> 00:10:40.175 That takes us to 1997, album three, Homogenic, which is by and large, 00:10:40.175 --> 00:10:43.875 to this day, considered some of, if not the best work of Bjork's career. 00:10:44.035 --> 00:10:45.824 It really was the capstone. 00:10:45.824 --> 00:10:47.874 It was like she had hit a core. 00:10:47.874 --> 00:10:51.225 She had hit a nodule that she was meant to find. 00:10:51.439 --> 00:10:52.920 and no one else could find. 00:10:52.930 --> 00:10:56.319 It was a new sound that was uniquely hers, and it was an 00:10:56.339 --> 00:11:00.980 exploration into the interface between electronica and pop music. 00:11:01.139 --> 00:11:04.480 It was a little more self serious, it was a little bit more intense, 00:11:04.730 --> 00:11:10.069 definitely progressive and pushing things forward, and also a little 00:11:10.069 --> 00:11:14.680 bit less of a gentle listen, um, but really rich and really compelling. 00:11:14.780 --> 00:11:19.139 What's cool at this time too, now that we're kind of past the mid 90s, is Bjork 00:11:19.139 --> 00:11:24.939 isn't the only figurehead out there kind of carving a new lane from the early to 00:11:24.939 --> 00:11:28.300 mid 90s punk and grunge and garage scenes. 00:11:28.870 --> 00:11:34.949 I think of someone like Moby who like took from those genres into house music 00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:40.135 and Moby was moving it into like what kind of became like In this album, 00:11:40.155 --> 00:11:45.155 Björk starts kind of dissolving some of the fundamental major pillars of 00:11:45.474 --> 00:11:48.025 pop song and pop album production. 00:11:48.135 --> 00:11:52.045 So while she does stick to kind of like verse chorus structure, 00:11:52.055 --> 00:11:53.484 she's playing with a meter more. 00:11:53.484 --> 00:11:57.395 So there's some interesting strange time signatures across this album. 00:11:57.484 --> 00:12:01.535 The kind of gestalt of it is that it's kind of queer. 00:12:01.694 --> 00:12:05.850 Now I don't say that necessarily about So Bjork and her sexuality, 00:12:06.270 --> 00:12:12.179 just in that it's got this like queer take on music and sound. 00:12:12.240 --> 00:12:15.290 It felt very left of center and right of center and just 00:12:15.290 --> 00:12:16.649 kind of anywhere but center. 00:12:16.649 --> 00:12:21.180 But then also center at the same time, because a lot of this music went 00:12:21.180 --> 00:12:25.560 straight to the radio and was actually like Embraced by lots of people. 00:12:25.580 --> 00:12:31.720 This was really when Bjork had hit a sound and a form of delivery that she 00:12:31.720 --> 00:12:36.609 would start to iterate on throughout her career and that tons of other 00:12:36.630 --> 00:12:38.740 artists would kind of start copying. 00:12:38.900 --> 00:12:40.920 Some of her best work is definitely here. 00:12:41.280 --> 00:12:43.333 Hunter is an extraordinary song. 00:12:43.333 --> 00:12:45.030 This is the first song on the album. 00:12:45.650 --> 00:12:47.020 Very electronic. 00:12:47.110 --> 00:12:49.200 Also definitely darker. 00:12:49.610 --> 00:12:51.940 You feel like you're in the dark wilderness. 00:12:52.710 --> 00:12:57.070 You're not necessarily sure if you're in a European city or like East 00:12:57.070 --> 00:13:00.850 Asian countryside or the Arctic. 00:13:02.350 --> 00:13:03.520 It's world. 00:13:04.189 --> 00:13:05.199 It's everywhere. 00:13:05.209 --> 00:13:07.069 It's where you are and where you aren't. 00:13:07.440 --> 00:13:12.360 What's cool is that even though this feels so electronic, there still is 00:13:12.379 --> 00:13:15.320 an accordion in this song and strings. 00:13:16.175 --> 00:13:20.745 So there are organic materials and instruments and inorganic ones 00:13:20.775 --> 00:13:25.075 interfacing, and it feels almost like her voice is the surface area 00:13:25.284 --> 00:13:27.375 where inorganic, inorganic meet. 00:13:27.565 --> 00:13:30.195 She is almost like a Metroid, and she is like both. 00:13:30.655 --> 00:13:36.355 becoming like electronica and computer as a person, but then also Very very much 00:13:36.355 --> 00:13:42.345 still iceland where nature is celebrated and where the richness of dark during 00:13:42.345 --> 00:13:47.515 the winter Inspires artistic creation and just the way that people live life. 00:13:47.515 --> 00:13:52.055 So I hear so much in this sound and I come back to this music a lot. 00:13:52.094 --> 00:13:55.185 To me this is a no skips album front to back and maybe the beginning 00:13:55.204 --> 00:13:58.254 of a string of what you could call, but what I don't think Bjork 00:13:58.254 --> 00:14:00.185 necessarily calls, concept albums. 00:14:00.194 --> 00:14:04.704 It's really contiguous, it's really a package, and it's really kind of a 00:14:04.704 --> 00:14:07.184 fully scoped concept front to back. 00:14:07.204 --> 00:14:10.704 Another song, I'm actually not sure how to pronounce this song, it is written 00:14:10.905 --> 00:14:15.834 Joga, I believe it may be pronounced Yoga, and it is about, I think, her best 00:14:15.834 --> 00:14:17.545 friend at the time, a beautiful song. 00:14:19.485 --> 00:14:25.895 Like Hunter, It's an interface between dark emotive strings and electronica 00:14:26.104 --> 00:14:31.910 threaded with her really unique soaring Kind of like gravity defying voice. 00:14:38.210 --> 00:14:43.320 Is very performative, theatrical, not unlike things in her earlier 00:14:43.320 --> 00:14:47.890 career and the literal way that her voice is mixed and presented, it's 00:14:47.919 --> 00:14:50.259 bigger, it's bolder and sharper. 00:14:50.640 --> 00:14:57.490 I think now the production quality is helping her storytell and genre build. 00:14:57.510 --> 00:14:59.380 This is kind of where technology becomes. 00:14:59.615 --> 00:15:04.015 one of her greatest aides and greatest muses for the rest of her career. 00:15:04.055 --> 00:15:07.005 A final song, and I believe the final song in this album, and that takes 00:15:07.005 --> 00:15:10.164 us kind of to the end to this chapter of Björk, is All is Full of Love. 00:15:10.165 --> 00:15:13.225 And this is a song that has followed her throughout the rest of her career. 00:15:13.225 --> 00:15:14.175 It is a fan favorite. 00:15:14.175 --> 00:15:17.794 It is often performed in tour set lists, um, and it is something 00:15:17.794 --> 00:15:18.915 that feels very timeless. 00:15:19.295 --> 00:15:25.655 Again, string section, pulsing, programmed bass beneath it, threaded with her 00:15:26.535 --> 00:15:28.775 Sounds like this starts to appear later. 00:15:29.160 --> 00:15:33.900 In the third chapter, as I see it, of her career, which is kind of the nature 00:15:33.900 --> 00:15:39.570 Nymph chapter, um, where she's painting soundscapes and landscapes using her 00:15:39.570 --> 00:15:42.300 voice and using her production materials. 00:15:42.330 --> 00:15:47.790 This song in particular, I think sounds a lot like the Sonic Bed of Utopia, which 00:15:47.790 --> 00:15:50.970 she released, I believe, in 2000, 2017. 00:15:56.440 --> 00:16:00.500 So that takes us to the end of what I see as chapter one of Bjork's solo career. 00:16:00.790 --> 00:16:04.930 The first two albums of which really draw from things that she had been doing, 00:16:04.940 --> 00:16:09.790 and then eventually land in Homogenic, where the concept feels fully baked, 00:16:09.810 --> 00:16:14.219 the soundscape feels really clear, there's consistency song to song, we have 00:16:14.229 --> 00:16:17.660 almost a concept album on our hands, and something that was really pushing Bjork. 00:16:17.755 --> 00:16:18.115 culture. 00:16:18.125 --> 00:16:21.695 It's one of those albums that feels like it arrived not too soon, spoke a 00:16:21.695 --> 00:16:25.175 new language that people were finding themselves hungry for but didn't know 00:16:25.175 --> 00:16:29.285 what it was yet and then would iterate and replicate for years to come. 00:16:29.285 --> 00:16:33.744 This was a place where I think Björk felt comfortable and ready and charged 00:16:33.775 --> 00:16:38.705 to begin taking left turns, um, one after the other, which brings us into 00:16:38.705 --> 00:16:42.515 what I view as Her Chapter 2, uh, which I'll tell you about in the next video. 00:16:42.515 --> 00:16:44.305 But thanks so much for watching. 00:16:44.305 --> 00:16:48.215 Hope you got something out of this and, uh, Sending you lots of love, 00:16:48.315 --> 00:16:50.255 Bjork style, through the airwaves.