Debut

being selfish
When I did "Debut" I thought, ’OK, I’ve pleased enough people, I’m gonna get really selfish.’ And I never sold as many records as with "Debut". So, I don’t know, it seems the more selfish I am, the more generous I am. I m not going to pretend I know the formula. I can only please myself.

Mixmag, september 1997

conflicts
In many ways, Debut was still much in the sign of conflicts. Conflicts with myself and with the outside world. I was wondering whether I had the right to fill an album with nothing but my own songs. Could I be so selfish ? And did I have the right to tell others what to do ? I didn’t think so. That was a little bit my problem : I really wanted to work with other people, but I didn’t want to dominate them. I wanted those people to surprise and stimulate ME. If I knew exactly what they were going to do, I was no longer interested. I had to get something in return.

Oor. 6/95

Debut being a success
Were you surprised at your success ? B : Yeah, completely. When Derek Birkett (head of One Little Indian) first heard Debut he told me that it was going to be very much a niche album. I told him that I was aware of that but I didn’t mind because it’s music I can stand behind, I feel it’s mine. For the Sugarcubes I only wrote the lyrics. I was ready to go out and fight and defend something that I thought was mine. Why do you think it connected with millions of people ? B : I don’t know, it’s really hard for me to see myself from the outside like that. I’m probably the only person who can’t answer that question. I’m not sure. I’m the worst person to ask. I have no idea. But I suppose there was something about... I mean, maybe I’m wrong, because I’m not really a musicologist or historian...

The Times, 2 august 2001

Debut being a success
"Debut" turned out to be the private party everyone wanted an invitation to, and in the eight months after its release, almost half a million copies have been sold worldwide. Much to Björk’s embarrassment. It’s as if you started cooking at this restaurant and everybody heard about it and started coming, she says, shifting in her seat. But you’d still only learned how to fry eggs. You’re doing your best and everyone’s happy, but it’s not exactly what you wanted to do with your life.

The Face #62, november 1993

Debut being a virgin
"Debut" was very much for me like a virgin trying to express herself, I mean a virgin musically. And that’s why I named it "Debut". And people who knew I had been around for many years just thought I was taking a piss or something. But for me it was very much like the songs I had kept in darkness and locked in my little diary, only to be seen by myself. The first time they were out on there own and had to figure out how to survive their own way.

ZTV, 1995

Debut being happy
I get the feeling you were very happy, free then - exciting times with new adventures every day. I think ’Debut’ gives the impression that life was fun ? It was of course. I’d been the youngest person in the group for a long time. It was time to let yourslef go. It was like when you’ve been holding back some pressure for a long time and it bursts its way up to the surface. I’m not criticising the people I worked with. It was kind of metamorphosis that took place.

Livebox interview, 2002

Debut being strong
People often ask me if I know why I only became really famous after I traded the Sugarcubes for a solo career. But I don’t really understand that myself. Even though I do have a suspicion. There’s a strange kind of law that says : the more selfish you do something, the stronger the result will eventually be. I started on Debut with that idea. I made that record from a completely egoistic point of view : I was only pleasing myself and making a record I would buy. Because if I’d concentrated on other peoiple’s tastes and on the question whether other people would appreciate what I did, a sort of compromise-album would have emerged. And you can hear something like that right away : an album like that just radiates insecurity and doubt. Because of that too, a lot of people thought that Debut...

Oor, 6/95

doing better
This record was a bit of a rehearsal and it’s really not that good. I can do much better.

The Face #62, november 1993

doing Debut
Doing "Debut" was like, Wooooah ! Like a kid in a toystore. It’s like, ’I can have anything ? Cool !’

Mixmag, september 1997

doing her own material
It all starts with a concept, regardless of wheter it’s a song or a concert or a concept for an album or a concert tour ? What’s the basic concept behind ’Debut’ ? If you look at the process from start to finish. Was it difficult to preserve that essence when you started working on ’Debut’ ? You were in the Sugarcubes , then comes a period when you’re doing your own experiments that later led to ’Debut’ ?. I’d been working in groups for ten years where everyone was equal and no one told anyone else what to do, musically speaking. That was when we were doing the third Sugarcubes album. Although I’d always been romantic about the group, I felt the time had come to do my own material. At that time I could feel I was starting to repress certain musical ideas and how to make music in general. The...

Livebox interview, 2002

doing it live
When I wrote the album I didn’t think of doing it live. But the two ways of doing it were just having tapes and DATs and sequencers and just me, or doing it live and consciously trying to create a new sound. I kind of went for that.

Mixmag, november 1993

doing the album on your own
I think one of the reasons my album is the way I wanted it to be is because I could do it in my own corner without anyone poking at me and Derek let me do anything I wanted. I’m probably not going to get the same peace next time around unless I do it totally on my own and don’t let anybody hear it for a year. So that will change me into more of an eccentric than I am already.

VOX, december 1993

foreseeing her Debut
Well I don’t believe in astrology, but if it works, it was probably written in my map that ’93 was going to be a good year. The whole thing has been so effortless for me. At the same time, I realise that it was something I’ve been preparing for unconsciously for ten years, so it’s not just come out like that. But it’s been ten times better than I ever thought.

NME, 25 december 1993

her label warning her
My record company warned me. They felt Debut was so weird it would only sell a third of what Sugarcubes sold. At the time it was the only album I could have made. Probably the same story with all my other albums as well...

www.hour.ca, September 20th, 2007

influences
I was more influenced by ambient music than what you’d call dance music, and by things that were happening way back in Chicago and Detroit that were sensual and daring and groundbreaking in their time. Ninety-five percent of the dance music you hear today is crap. It’s only that experimental five percent that I’m into - the records that get played in clubs after 7 o’clock in the morning, when the DJs are playing stuff for themselves, rather than trying to please people. A lot of the songs on my record have dance beats, but I think they’re beats that are more reflective of daily life - like life in the middle of the day in a city, as opposed to the night life of the clubs I think that the real modern beats are made of machines and cars and elevators and roadwork and people shouting and...

Rolling Stone, september 1993

London influence
Was the atmosphere in London a strong influence on you at that time ? I’d been in a band for so long in Iceland where everything was genuine, all programmed music was bad and clubs meant something cheap.Throwing myself into this was a way of letting off steam. Moving to the big city and meeting all those people, that was breaking taboos. It was a very extroverted period. I don’t think I’ve ever socialised so much.

Livebox interview, 2002

making Debut
At that time you were looking in new directions. Looking around to work with new people. You talked about "brass arrangements" on your new songs. And you were experimenting with electronic music ? When I made ’Debut’ I think the ideas had been gathering for a long time without me necessarily thinking about a solo album. Hundreds of ideas in my pocket that couldn’t find an outlet with the band. Then it was a bit clumsy at putting things into pratice, at that time anyway. I started with those "brass concepts". I met Graham Massey and of course I was working flat out on concepts that didn’t come to the surface until the later albums. I just managed to touch on what I had in mind, or I thought so anyway. That was my experience of ’Debut’. Meeting Nellee Hooper went a bit against the grain...

Livebox interview, 2002

making Debut
"Debut" was all the songs I wrote during ten years in my house on Iceland after my son had gone to bed. They were very intimate, like little experiments. It was like a diary, something that kept you sane rather than you’d want to tell the whole world about it.

ZTV, 1995

making money
You know what the greatest merit of Debut’s success was ? The money it made me. So I could travel all the way to the Compass Point Studios on the Bahamas for Post and I could finally sing like I learned when I was just a little girl. I took a microphone and walked onto the beach and stood with my feet in the ocean in the middle of the night. That’s were I sang most vocals.

Oor, 6/95

nostalgia
It’s a bit of a nostalgic album because all of the songs were written in the past. It’s like a photo album of what I’ve been thinking over the ten years before I recorded it. Sometimes you’re learning and sometimes you’ve learnt enough so that you can use it, which is what happened here. I became a grown-up. Well, not a grown-up, but I was in charge. It was a lot easier than being in The Sugarcubes. It was a very simple relationship between me and my songs.

Raw, janvier 1996

not having high expectations
When I made Debut , I kept saying to people, ’Please don’t get overexcited. I can do a lot better’. People thought I was being like a pretentious uncle, but I wasn’t at all, I really meant it.

The Times, 1998

not trying to please anyone
When I made this album, I wanted to do a private little album full of all my eccentricities, without trying to please anyone. Kind of like sneaking into my room, like I said before, and doing all my little things - the things you do in your house when you’re on your own. Having a long bath and singing silly songs in the bathtub and eating grapes, you know ?

Rolling Stone, september 1993

promoting Debut
It was all right the first six months ; seven months was a bit tricky ; eight months was when I started hitting people. I’ve been telling this hideously pathetic, stupid joke that the Bible in England is different. God created the world in one day and then he talked about it for eight days.

The Face #62, november 1993

recording Debut
When I started doing these recordings, I did it all on my own, and with all the people who got involved, like the engineers, brass students and Oliver Lake, I was like : ’Listen, there’s no budget yet, if you’re interested, you have to be interested for yourself and if it goes on record you will get paid.’ Oliver was interested and he arranged it, sent it back. I then got Derek Birkett (One Little Indian’s chief) on a good day and said : ’Listen Derek, I want to do an album, but it’s not going to be what you think it’s going to be, because I am in no mood to please anyone, and it’s not going to be your chanteuse, easy-to-sell album.’ Birkett, a former founder member of anarchoagit punk band Flux Of Pink Indians, remembers that "Björk had recorded some songs in Los Angeles with Franny Gold,...

VOX, december 1993

recording it secretly
I started recording my album secretly, because I had pressure since ’Birthday’ to do an album on my own and I didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea, she explains, recalling how as soon as ’Birthday’ became popular, major record labels had tried to sign Björk as a solo artist. We had that bullshit since Day One and it was ridiculous.

VOX, december 1993

remixes of Debut
In the case of ’Debut’ of course there was a lot of mixing done by the record company who wanted some radio hits. I wasn’t particulary pleased about that.

Livebox interview, 2002

saying goodbye to rock
With ’Debut’ you left the rock world, I think. Is that your feeling ? Does ’Debut’ say goodbye to rock ? If I take rock on its own, I never listened to rock much, with a few special exceptions, such as when I got the Swans craze. My stepfather listened to so much guitar music that maybe I OD’ed on it. I never listened to those hard punk bands or Iggy Pop or David Bowie, with all due respect for them. It wasn’t quite my scene. I preferred DAF and Brian Eno. If there was a guitarist, it was Robert Fripp. That was more my department. This is when I was 14-15. With the Sugarcubes, it was more a question of being in a band with your friends. They played the instruments they played. So when I made ’Debut’ and it wasn’t rock, it maybe wasn’t as much a hardcore statement for me personally, which...

Livebox interview, 2002

something to be proud of
When I did Debut, it was to do something that I could be proud of. Something that I could play to my grandchildren and not blush. If people like it that’s just a bonus.

QX Mag, december 1996

success
Of course I’m very honoured, especially because it was my own little album of just the things I like. But sometimes you so badly want something else and you need to get that first. Say it’s a number, like 5.7, and you’re at 1.2, then suddenly you get 9.8 and you wanna get that 5.7. Everyone thinks you’re really ungrateful, ’cos you got 9.8 and you should be very happy, but it’s a bit tricky.

TimeOut, 11 august 1994

success
I’m very surprised by the success of the album. I thought this album was kind of withdrawn, sort of backwards a bit.

TimeOut, 11 august 1994

the next album
I’ll turn around and make a really sulky record next year, just to keep things exciting.

NME, 25 december 1993

the style of Debut
Compared with other music that was happening at that time, 808 State, electronic music fermenting, the British soul scene - ’Debut’ is quite different. A long time later you defined the music on ’Debut’ to me once ; " The concept behind ’Debut’ was house music, where the starting point was songwriting". Was this done consciously ? I don’t think it was conscious. When you look back you can often be incredibly profound and a lot of what you say might be right. But when things are happening you don’t see them like that, You’re chasing you’re instinct more. Ever since I started clubbing with Graham in 1989-90 and was listening to a lot of acid jazz, house, which was quite abstract music then for partying and quite improvised, I experienced incredible moments. Those moments occured if you could be...

Livebox interview, 2002

the style of Debut
It’s more like I’m inviting someone over to my own house, where everything is just as I want it to be. And it’s very private ; like I’m inviting just that one person to come into my bedroom and showing him or her my things and the maybe cooking a little meal for us. When I decided to do this album, I found that I had piles of songs from way back. Björk had originally intended to record the songs with a variety of producers. I wanted to have all these different flavours. The most important thing was going to be my songs, as opposed to what style they were done in.

Rolling Stone, september 1993

three different aspects of Debut
’Debut’ had three different aspects for me. The studio album, the tours and the MTV Unplugged session. Would you mind touching on the concpet behind these three difeerent elements concerning this period of your career ? A lot of those songs were written before I made ’Debut’. Many of them were old ideas. So they existed as songs before they were arranged in the final form they took on ’Debut’. Maybe it’s always turned out like that ever since. ’Debut’ was shaking hands with Nellee, maybe on equals. Maybe most of all shaking hands with London club scene. So the songs were dressed for the occasion. When I was going to do the tour an emergency broke out. The songs were there but I hadn’t particulary thought of performing them in concert. Loads of people were called to audition for the concert...

Livebox interview, 2002

using old material on Debut & Post
Many of the songs on those albums I’d written years before. Human Behaviour is definitely the kind of song a 14-year-old girl would write.

Dotmusic.com, 15 September 1997

what Debut is about
This record is really about being tired of going into the world’s largest record store in the hopes to finding something fabulous, and walking out with fucking yet another Miles Davis record because there’s nothing happening that’s challenging. So you felt that you had to make that music yourself ? Largely, yes. That was my impulse. I think pop music has betrayed us. Everybody in the world needs pop music, just like they need politics, their pay, and oxygen to breathe. The problem is that too many people dismiss pop as crap because nobody has had the courage to make pop that’s releant to the modern world. Pop music has become so stagnant. This is really a paradox because it should change and evolve every day. I don’t think anybody has made a decent pop album in years. I want this album...

i-D, may 1993

what Debut is about
It’s very hard to say just what it’s about. I’d like it to be a statement of individuality. But I’ve still got a long way to go, so I’m a bit confused, because I just know I can do so much better than this record... If you went out somewhere and had a really good time, you don’t wake up the next morning and try to figure out why you did. It’s not because of anything. It’s just the atmosphere, the people, the chemistry of friends, your mood, what happened before, what will happen after. And you can’t explain it, and I don’t understand why you should. And it’s the same with songs.

The Face #62, november 1993

what she thinks of Debut in 2005
It’s hard to judge yourself but I don’t think they’re my best. Debut was the album that went the highest up there in terms of what is "Björk music". But I think that the persona I created, which was entirely accidental, is better captured on the later albums.

The Times, 2 april 2005

whats next
I think I might put a record out next year, and the title might be, `All The Remixes Of Bjork’s `Debut’ LP For People Who Don’t Buy While Labels’, just to keep it very down to earth. Obviously I could tour America for a whole year, but you know, there’s more to life than that...

NME, 25 december 1993

why it is called Debut
I don’t really look at myself as a singer. I never intended to be a singer, really. And that’s why my new album is called Debut.

Rolling Stone, september 1993

why it took so long to do Debut
One of the reasons it took me all these years to make Debut was because I thought it was so selfish and egoistic.

Details, july 1994