Björk : When I did Medúlla, which is a long time ago, which is crazy, I was still defining one character. And I think, for me, this was almost like a primordial motherhood character opposed to Vespertine, which was very ideal, defining paradise and very in a way without any flesh because it existed inside the laptop, digital. And then obviously, having a baby and breastfeeding, you are all this flesh and blood and muscles, and it becomes very prominent. And you are like almost not communicating in language anymore. You are like smiling and reading your baby’s face and expressions, and it’s very playful. There’s a lot of, like, humor. I think that’s one thing that people don’t talk enough about after women have given birth, the playfulness. Which is not about words or logic, or theories, or ideology. You can leave that behind, and it’s just, you know, the joy of someone’s face being happy to see you. And it’s a very beautiful place. And it’s a lot of pure innocent joy there. And a lot of the songs on Medúlla are about this.
Oddný Eir : You are listening to Sonic Symbolism where Björk explores her emotional landscapes, the textures, and timbres of her albums. Asi Jónsson : With friend, author, and philosopher Oddný Eir and me, musical curator, Asi Jónsson
Oddný Eir : Bjork’s fifth album Medúlla followed the birth of her daughter. This was the time when she would arrange things, so that she didn’t need to leave her daughter too much. Not touring or doing big concerts. So the home life would be very fertile. It was a peaceful place of self sufficiency, and a place of joyful gatherings. I remember coming to her home on a Thanksgiving evening and feeling how the hospitality was extraordinary. There was something very meaningful in the air.
Oddný Eir : So we continue maybe seeing each album as a person or like an archetype or a being. It’s funny that in the beginning it was quite clear and simple. But now, when you describe Medúlla, for example, the list gets a little longer. Is it because with age you’re like, you’re not afraid of definitions anymore ? You’re like, it’s almost like a feminist claim to own the definitions or like to master them ? Or is it also because you are…what, are you getting more complicated with age ? Or what is it ?
Björk : Yeah, thank you. Yes, very interesting. I probably just have to agree with both. Both things, I think…I think when we’re in our 20s, it’s more like, "Oh, now, I’m gonna be aggressive and now, I’m happy ! And now, I am sad." And it’s more one thing at a time. I think as you get older, you are kind of more everything at the same time. But I think a lot of people, or I can imagine, both authors or musicians or people who make films or whatever, maybe some of the first things they make, they have to define those different prime colors in their own character. So there’s, you know, the gentle, kind one, and another one, the destructive one, and then another one, the humorous one, and the nourishing one. And the two are different colors. And, yeah, in a way, not only just limited to emotional state or so, but for me musically, the instruments and the timbre of the sounds and the textures. But then at a certain point, it’s almost like once you have defined them, you have access to all of them or something. Like they are dormant in you, but in order to make them active, you step into them and write songs about them. But once they’ve been activated, you sort of have access to them your whole life, you know ?
Oddný Eir : Okay, so this…the voice, it’s very central. So was this album, did you see beforehand a little bit ? Or was this more like coming along the way a little bit ?
Björk : Mm. I think a little bit of both. I do remember a moment, though, where I was playing in the studio and I had several songs and I just couldn’t make them work. And then I would just mute one thing, mute something else, mute something else, adjust the vocals to the left. So the first instinct came that I was just bored with instruments. Maybe I just overdosed on instrumentation at this time or something. Like, after Vespertine with 100 tracks in every song, like where were you gonna go ? But I try to, even though a lot of my albums — especially the older I get — they have, sometimes, heavy concepts and stuff, the beginning of them are always an impulse or a genuine instinct. And I tried to actually follow just the teenage thing in me, which is kind of like, "Oh, I’m so over pink. Like, I love green," you know ? Just the first instinct that you see, is usually something very teenage like that. And then if you just follow it, it’s usually right. And then if you follow it for two, three years, you end up actually having something that there’s more chance that you like it. But I also remember a moment a little bit later when, just joking, going to Manhattan for dinner or something. And just joking, like, "Oh my God, maybe it’s gonna be an acapella album." And laughing, thinking, "Oh my God, I never thought I would be the sort of person that would make that sort of an album." But kind of realizing, "Yeah, I think it’s gonna… Yeah, it’s probably gonna be that."
Björk : Being in London in the ’90s, everything was about beats. Like I was surrounded by people where you could talk about beats for 10 hours straight. About like snare songs and the difference of, you know, drum and bass and jungle or like all the different niche genres and sounds and all the new beats still coming out. And if you would come to my house, I would just be listening to beats all day, you know. And for me, I wasn’t listening to beats all day. For me, it was a symphony. But from other people who are not used to it, that’s kind of what we were doing. We were living in a beat world. It was a very beautiful period of electronic music because it was, in a way, a moment in time where the beat was everything. Asi Jónsson : Mm-hmm.
Björk : It was a whole symphony, you know. You just dropped everything else in a song. And it was a very exciting time. Asi Jónsson : Mm-hmm.
Björk : And of course, the statement of Homogenic, of making my own volcanic beat was part of this. I was smitten by the importance of the beat. The beat is a sculpture, audio sculpture in space. And it has to be something you’ve never heard before, it cannot just be the old drum set, you know.
Björk : And it doesn’t work anymore. And this kinda fertility and sense of adventure that was in London in the ’90s- Asi Jónsson : Mm-hmm.
Björk : in beat culture. And then of course after that, everybody thought I would do another album with big volcanic beats. And then, of course, I did the opposite, which was micro beats.
Björk : And then I lived in a world for three years of micro beats, which was the opposite. And then I think for me, I was just done. Asi Jónsson : Mm-hmm. With beats ?
Björk : With beats. Yeah. Asi Jónsson : Okay.
Björk : I think for me, I was just like, everybody thinks, "Oh, now she’s gonna do whatever beat."
Björk : And for me it was too predictable, or too obvious. And also, obviously, my original instrument is the voice. And for me it was time to go back home to my own voice and to voice music and with the same intense fanatical fervor as I did with the beats.
Björk : But this time use the same passion and direct it to the voice.
Björk : Also, just purely practical, I had a babysitter who was at home. She was with my baby, you know, and then certainly she would cry. She would come and interrupt me. So I would work at home, but maybe sometimes only for an hour. And then I would go away for an hour and then back for an hour. So it was somehow easiest just to do a lot of vocal music and not create this whole other world of other things that I would introduce into it. So I was basically going to another room and closing the door and doing like layers with my own voice. Which, in a way, wasn’t that different to having a small baby and breastfeed, you know, it was very intimate and very happy.
Björk : I tried to learn new software for each album or new technology. So I was getting a lot of, like, SuperCollider and a lot of new software where I could loop my voice, and you can hear a few moments of it on the album. For example, in the beginning of “Mouth’s Cradle”.
Björk : “Mouth’s Cradle” is probably the song, which is most about breastfeeding. Just quite directly about the teeth and nourishment that travels into the mouth and the molars and bouncing on the teeth. And it’s almost like some sort of a playful Tom and Jerry breastfeeding song. Cartoon.
Björk : And you can use those teeth as a ladder up to mouth’s cradle. Mouth’s cradle you can use those teeth. Oh, follow my voice tooth by tooth up to the mouth’s cradle, the mouth’s cradle.
Oddný Eir : I feel on Medúlla, maybe because there is this childbirth, the idea of the bones somehow and the genes and the memory, somehow, and you can feel that awareness of where you come from and where we come from.
Björk : I think I definitely started noticing, you know, maybe having my first daughter, I started noticing black and white photographs with braids and braided hair and how that was connected with folk music. It’s always like braided hair and folk music, and what is my origin, and, you know, my mother and her mother and her mother like back, back, back, back. And maybe some Celtic thing or I’m not sure what, but there was definitely like feeling that I was part of this chain or let’s say braid.
Björk : Which is more feminine than a chain. So that came also into it, I would like to say. But I think maybe my way of trying to make fun of having a family and being in a family home and being a homebody is trying to make singing melodies around the fireplace. And maybe tapping into all the times humanity had done that. You know, like back in the stone age or this kind of need to have no instruments and nothing of the infrastructure of civilization.
Björk : Bærinn minn Bærinn minn og þinn Sefur sæll í kyrrð Asi Jónsson : “Vökuró” is written by the composer Jórunn Viðar. She was for years the only female composer as a member of the Icelandic Composer Society. “Vökuró”, was first performed in 1967. The music sounds traditional, but Jórunn had a deep root in the Icelandic cultural heritage. So, is that maybe the reason that you do your own version of like “Vökuró” that you are going into like folk roots or into roots music ?
Björk : Yes. I mean, I was definitely very interested in Icelandic singing traditions and the choir tradition, which is huge in Iceland. And also, the sort of self-sufficiency of the voice and how with Medúlla, I was thinking a lot about Iceland people sitting by the fireplace 1,000 years ago or 10,000 years ago, somewhere together. I mean, I was imagining this kind of place, which was almost like, sometimes a cave or sometimes a home and how can we fight suffering and bad feelings ? And, you know, when people in the home just start singing together. And it’s a very healing thing. And I mean, we have it a lot in Icelandic culture where we start singing these old Iceland songs, especially after a few drinks. And people just improvise the different lines and it gives you like a sense of wellbeing, you know ? I really am fascinated by this, and I always felt that this kind of the acoustic guitar and the sort of hippie songs, it wasn’t really Icelandic. It was like American. Asi Jónsson : Mm-hmm
Björk : Like hamburgers and Coca-Cola. It wasn’t really based on the Icelandic folk songs or the Icelandic chord progressions or the typical T songs. There are different chord progressions in a lot of the Icelandic traditional songs, which is based more on fifths and it doesn’t have the sort of three chord rock thing. It’s the opposite of that.
Björk : Vonin mín Blessað brosið þitt Vekur ljóð úr [00:20:00] værð
Björk : That song kind of maybe provided the most sincerest moment on the album when it comes to motherhood and singing lullabies and wanting to protect your child from the big bad world out there. I just wanted to sing it, you know. For me that are like part of this Icelandic choir songs of the choir music archives that are like one of the most beautiful music that exists. Asi Jónsson : I want to ask you about the opening track of Medúlla, “Pleasure Is All Mine”, when you blend together in throat singing, harsh metal vocal, beatbox sounds together with an Icelandic choir and your voice. For me, this is a far-fetched mix. But are you willing to take us behind the scene and tell us a bit about how you did work out this radical mixture of voices and the background of the song ?
Björk : Yeah, the way I worked “Pleasure Is All Mine”, I wrote all of it in La Gomera in the Canary Islands. And, yeah, I kind of wrote it first all with my voice and all the harmonies and most of the things. And then afterwards, it wasn’t until towards the end of the album, where I decided to invite guests. I think I was trying to perform some delicate balance that was universal. But also, it’s a contradiction because I was also trying not to be universal. I was also trying to escape traditional genres and analyzations and definitions by a boring musicologist. So I wanted, also, to try to bring a surprising point of view on the history of world music and acapella singing, you know ? And bring it, somehow, into modern times.
Björk : Who gives most Who gives most
Björk : “Pleasure Is All Mine” is maybe the first feminist lyric I write, which is about the generosity and how women, like their guitar solo or ego, if you want, is how much they give. So it’s who gives most.
Oddný Eir : Of unconditional love, yeah ?
Björk : Yeah, who’s the biggest giver ? And, again, I’m very, very sorry that my sense of humor is so bad. But it was also some strange joke from being in some huge family gathering in the countryside. And it’s kind of like not only who brought most cakes and who brought most food but, you know, if a baby, for instance, starts crying, what mother does the baby run to ?
Oddný Eir : Mm.
Björk : And the humiliation of it runs to not its own mother. It’s a disaster. So I think it was like, this lyric is some strange joke that I had actually, I think with, probably with my friend Joga, that women have just as much ego as guys, but it’s just in different areas, you know ? I also mean it in a serious way. I’m looking at myself, like of course, I’m guilty of it too, wanting to have most cakes and-
Oddný Eir : Yeah. Or-
Björk : -give most.
Oddný Eir : -have a lot of breast milk, for example where it’s. Yeah.
Björk : Yeah. And have biggest parties and with the most food and the most champagne.
Oddný Eir : Mm-hmm.
Björk : And the biggest host. I think what is happening gradually is I am slowly doing more and more myself and later and later in each project I ask people to step in. Asi Jónsson : Okay.
Björk : So maybe there are more and more names. So it’s a little bit misleading. But maybe I work myself, alone on a project for two or three years. And sometimes the last month I will get the guests in. So, I’m looking at the process of album making as my own music school, like the music school I didn’t go to. So, yeah, like I try every album to learn something new that I didn’t know before. Or either surround myself by people who can teach me to do it or learn myself. Yeah and this is slowly happening for the process of the albums.
Björk : Where is the line with you Where is the line with you Where is the line with you Where is the line with you
Björk : There are several songs that I splattered on all my albums, which are written to my siblings, younger siblings. And I call them finger songs where you put your finger in the air and you think you know what you’re talking about when you’re telling your younger siblings to do their homework and stuff. It’s not a very attractive characteristic. But I think, for me, that’s actually quite humorous this song because I’m trying to make fun of-
Oddný Eir : Of the older sister. Yeah.
Björk : -the older sister.
Oddný Eir : A little bit the mother, a type of mother that…Yeah, it’s like talking to her teenagers or something.
Björk : Yeah. And I mean, I don’t know about you, but my group of friends at that time when we were making that beat, we were crying with laughter. They were just hysterical. And I’m very happy. I had to play this beat the other day because we were preparing it for a concert to an engineer I work with, who was like 20 something now and he just started laughing as well. So I think it may be a music nerd joke because it’s sort of like metal by the bonfire with the family.
Oddný Eir : Mm-hmm.
Björk : So it’s kind of [makes sound]. It’s kind of like doing head banging but you’re in your living room, you know. I call it music nerd joke because it’s about writing something that is meant for arena of 50,000 people, usually is an emotion that’s like that, but you’re putting it in a domestic context. So it becomes kind of like either like the Iliad but like in a cardboard book for kids.
Oddný Eir : Oh.
Björk : Or it’s like the wrong container or something.
Oddný Eir : Okay.
Björk : So do a head-banging song which usually is for, like, stadium rock, but do it by the fireplace.
Björk : I want to have Capacity over you And be elastic To be elastic, elastic
Oddný Eir : Yeah, so the spectrum there, just in the using of the voice, there is quite a rainbow of different posts in Medúlla. From the voice of the mother that uses the voice to sooth and to communicate, just the intonation of the voice without the words to communicate with children. And then all the way to the other spectrum where it’s like the grotesque carnal using of the voice somehow from the marrow of the bones and the home and into the streets somehow. Because it’s what’s called…the beatbox ?
Björk : Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I think there was some strange humor also with my friends who do electronic music, like music nerds, maybe because beatboxing was very hip and cool in the ’80s or something. So 20 years later, when I do Medúlla, it’s kind of absolutely unfashionable or something. So it’s kind of like, very strange, like, we would just cry with laughter because it was so wrong.
Oddný Eir : I feel somehow there is this spirit of joyfulness, like all kinds of music together in a very beautiful way. But also, yeah, not parodic but, yeah, fun. Maybe just fun. You’re not making fun of anyone. You’re not making fun of those guys.
Björk : No, not at all. I actually got the best beatboxer in the world, Rahzel, to work with me on the album, and he’s actually so good that he is like timeless.
Björk : So he’s like one of the examples of taking something that maybe came out of fashion, or not even fashion, but like necessity in the environment that the ’80s were. And he kind of elevated above it, you know, because he was just so good at what he did. Maybe when I say humor or parody or something like this, or maybe it’s just opposed to Vespertine, where the album was quite serious, and Homogenic as well, you know. Where I’m taking myself very seriously, and it’s about maybe my own individuation or something like that, and the two parts of me are more masculine and they’re more feminine. But then it’s like, "Okay, that has been established," or something. So now it’s, "Why take yourself so seriously, always ?" You know ?
Björk : In order to use throat singing of Tanya Tagaq, the Inuit singer, and then also like a choir, and then there was this Japanese beatboxer I found online. And then I got all my friends to do just all kind of noises. And we would actually, I remember evenings where we would be like drunk in this small bar we used to go to called Circus. And I would turn the music off, and everybody had to do like a rave song together just with your voice. “Triumph of a Heart” came out of this kind of idea.
Björk : And I got Spike Jonze to help me document. I asked him to do the video of “Triumph of a Heart” to imagine a club where people are all singing together, you know. And one is doing beats, and the next one is doing chords, and then some doing melodies, you know. Which people in a way don’t really do anymore. But I wanted to kind of create this utopia in this video where this was our folk music, you know. If you would in a thousand years have some archaeologist or ethicist person travel here, and they would go into Circus, we would be singing like that every day. We didn’t need a sound system or we didn’t need anything, because we were just making each other happy by singing like that for each other. Like, "Oh, we can be in a club, and we don’t need beats. Who needs beats ?" You know, like "Oh, we can have a party and party till 4:00 in the morning and just sing acapella to each other and just find that really funny." I don’t know why.
Björk : The triumph of a heart that gives all, that gives all
Björk : Maybe part of it is that I actually think it’s really uncool. Like acapella and samples, it was almost the worst music I can imagine.
Oddný Eir : Really ?
Björk : And then kind of take…embracing that but loving it, you know ? And also the part of me that you know, it can be pretentious and all kinds of things, but also the seriousness, of course, of it. But then, of course, I think Tanya and Rahzel are phenomenal artists in their own right. And they’re really, really good at what they’re doing. So I don’t mean it in any disrespect to the people I asked to join. But I think it’s also like my strange way of putting the middle finger up to genres. Like I just wanted to erase a little bit, the genres that we’re supposed to, the boxes we’re supposed to be in.
Björk : And then, of course, there is “Oceania”, which I wrote for the Olympics. And I wanted it to be from the point of view of the ocean that goes around all the nations because I didn’t want it to be like some strange sport lyrics. And then I asked Sjón to do the lyrics from his point of view and he, of course, did a magnificent job. But it was a coincidence that I got asked in the middle of this album to do this, but it was kind of perfect because it’s sort of singing for all the world nations from the point of view of the ocean.
Björk : One breath away from mother Oceania Your nimble feet make prints in my sands
Björk : We all went to Athens, and I performed it there. So, actually looking at it now strangely fits the theme.
Oddný Eir : Yeah.
Björk : And actually “Oceania”, I first wrote it thinking it was going to have two pianists or two grand pianos. And I wrote insanely impossible things to play on the piano, so that it was like a piano sport song. So they were competing.
Oddný Eir : Mm-hmm.
Björk : Like the Olympics of grand piano playing. And then in the end, for the album, when it became a vocal album, I got a female choir in London.
Björk : And they became like the sirens in Athens.
Björk : They sing (mimics sounds) which is like very hard to play on piano, but easy to sing.
Björk : I see the islands You count the centuries
Oddný Eir : And then there is, E. E. Cummings in the song “Sonnets” ? Where did that come from ?
Björk : It sort of came from nowhere. I remember I was in Cologne or something and I was in a hotel room, and I just sort of opened this book I had with me and I literally just sang the whole song in one go.
Björk : It may not always be so And I say and if your lips Which I have loved should touch another’s
Björk : I remember when I wrote it, it was like, "Wow, this is the furthest emotional point away from me at this moment."
Björk : As mine in time not far away
Björk : And also. the lyric is obviously about that. You know, when you’re really really in love with someone and you imagine, "How would it be when we split up ?" And it’s like a worst case scenario thing.
Björk : Great rising words, as uttering overmuch Stand helplessly before the spirit at bay If this should be, I say If this should be you of my heart
Björk : And then if you imagine, sometimes it happens. 10 years later, it happens. So, it’s kind of interesting that when I’m singing it, I’m singing it as someone it will never happen to.
Oddný Eir : Mm-hmm.
Björk : But I love things like that. I actually heard, like a jazz song I sang when I was in my 20s, and I remember singing that song, it’s like the saddest song of all times.
Oddný Eir : Curiosity, like What song is that ?
Björk : “You Don’t Know What Love Is”.
Björk : I remember singing it like, "Wow. Like, this is like being on the moon for me. I really feel like I’m singing about Martians or aliens. This is really exciting because it was so— I’ve never experienced this.” You know ? Billie Holiday : You don’t know what love is Until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues Until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to loose You don’t know what love is
Björk : And then hearing that song on the radio in some taxi or something, just last year, I was like, "Wow, now, I’ve experienced a thing like this, but I have no interest in singing it."
Oddný Eir : Wow.
Björk : But I was actually watching a documentary yesterday with KPOP, Korean, girls. And they’re singing like all these love songs and they are in this kind of really strict music school where they cannot really have relationships. And then they’re singing these like extreme passionate love songs. It’s such an interesting point of view. It is kind of like me in Vespertine, like writing about something that hasn’t happened to me yet, you know.
Oddný Eir : Mm-hmm.
Björk : And it’s almost like you’re almost more capable of telling the story when it hasn’t happened to you. Does that make sense ?
Oddný Eir : Well, that’s an interesting theory. Or like your idea.
Björk : Sometimes.
Oddný Eir : So you have some idea of it, you have some instinct. Yeah. Because you’re really giving a life to the songs, to the text. So it seems like you really know what it’s all about.
Björk : There is some…yes, there’s some interesting library inside all of us. You know, sometimes we don’t have to. You know, if you are a performer, like good actresses don’t have to be their character-
Oddný Eir : No.
Björk : -and all these things to be able to act on. So, yeah, there is some emotional pallet with every single emotion and situation that has existed. And then sometimes it’s amazing that you have lived it, because then you give it some weight and gravity, and that’s amazing. But sometimes it’s the opposite. You know, it’s more a concept or an idea that you’re thinking about.
Oddný Eir : Yeah, it’s also like what belongs to this world. Like in this album in Medúlla, you are somehow mapping out, this is what it’s implicit to say, it’s a motherhood. But if it’s like, your family life, somehow, there is the older sister, there is the one that’s nursing the child. So there’s like a lot of places and, one, of course, this possible break up is there somewhere within this world. I mean, the possibility is always there that this family world can be fucked up. Somebody will fuck it up.
Björk : Mm-hmm.
Oddný Eir : So consciously or unconsciously it’s all there a little bit, this poem. It’s almost like, yeah mapping of this family life. The entrance and the exit also.
Oddný Eir : The difference between Homogenic and Vespertine is like the character, the emotional character is so different, there is not as much desire for transformation and explosion in Medúlla. So I’m wondering where are the posts ? You know, could you define them a little bit, like emotionally ? You said earlier like there is the unconditional love, the home, the nurturing, and then the humor and the gathering, and where the body just explodes in all its sound somehow.
Björk : Yeah, I mean it is definitely : you’re happy where you are. You’re happy with what you’ve got. You know, it’s not trying to define something far away that’s a fantasy and hoping maybe one day that could be your life. It’s not that at all. It’s the opposite. It’s being happy with what you have.
Handing Duna : Sonic Symbolism is a co-production of Mailchimp Presents, Talkhouse and Björk and was made by Björk, Oddný Eir, Ásmundur Jónsson, Anna Gyða, Ian Wheeler, Julie Douglas, and Chrstian Koons. Asi Jónsson : It was produced by Chrstian Koons and edited by Christian Koons and Anna Gyða. Special thanks to Derek Birkett, Catherine Verna Bentley, Zach McNees, Ævar Kjartansson and Duna Hrólfsdóttir. Duna : Music appears courtesy of One Little Independent Records.
