Björk

• Born: November 21, 1965
• Place of Birth: Reykjavik, Iceland

Björk Guɀmundsdóttir is an Icelandic singer, composer, music producer, and actor. She released her first album when she was eleven and reached a peak of popularity in the 1980s with her band, the Sugarcubes. Since then, she has explored other art forms, including acting. She is respected for the diversity and uniqueness of her vocals as well as her sophisticated sound mixing, which has been celebrated with numerous music awards. She has used her music and her fame to support a number of humanitarian and political causes, both in Iceland and internationally.

Background

Björk Guɀmundsdóttir was born November 21, 1965, in Reykjavik, Iceland. Her father, Gudmundur Gunnarsson, was an electrician and a labor leader and her mother, Hildur Hauksdóttir, was a practitioner of alternative medicine. Björk's parents divorced before she was two years old, and Björk, her three brothers, and three sisters were raised by her mother in a hippie community. Hauksdóttir married Icelandic blues guitar player Sævar Árnason.

Björk's musical abilities were evident from a young age, and throughout her childhood she had the opportunity and the support to develop her artistic abilities. Árnason encouraged her singing talent and at the age of five, Björk was studying piano and the flute as well as singing at a local music school.

Björk's music career began at the age of eleven, when her music teacher forwarded a recording of her singing "I Love to Love" by Tina Charles to the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service (RUV). Her cover of "I Love to Love" reached the top of the charts in Iceland in 1976. The wide exposure Björk received from RUV subsequently led to the recording of her first album in 1977, Björk. The album sold 7,000 copies.

Adolescence

Throughout her adolescence, Björk was part of a number of Icelandic bands, which gave her the opportunity to develop her unique sound. In the late 1970s, punk became incredibly popular in Iceland, and she was also heavily influenced by Joni Mitchell, a Canadian folk artist. In high school, Björk formed the punk band Spit and Snot with her girlfriends, as well as Exodus, a jazz punk group. After graduating from high school in 1981, she joined Jakob Magnusson in the band Tappi Tikarrass (initially known as Jam-80). They released the album Bítiɀ Fast í Vítiɀ in 1982 and the full album Miranda the following year.

In 1983, Ásmundur Jónsson, from Gramm Records, assembled several prominent Icelandic musicians, including Björk, to perform on the radio show Afangar. The band was called Kukl, and went on to release several important albums: The Eye (1984), Kukl à Paris 14.9.84 (1985), and Holidays in Europe (The Naughty Nought) (1986). While singing for Kukl, Björk also held down part time jobs in a Reykjavik fish factory and a Coca-Cola bottling plant.

Björk and Ȣór Eldon Jónsson, the guitar player from the band Medusa, were married in 1986 and bought a house. It was around the same time that Kukl's label, Gramm Records, went bankrupt. In Björk and Jónsson's home, musicians, poets, dancers and other artists gathered together as a community to develop their talents. Björk and the six other band members collaborated together on the label Bad Taste, with the mission of supporting other Icelandic artists. Bad Taste became one of the most important record labels in Iceland, launching the careers of Sigur Ros and Gus Gus.

On June 8, 1986, Björk gave birth to her son, Sindri Eldon Ȣórsson. That year, all but two of the Kukl members formed the widely popular band, the Sugarcubes. Jónsson and Björk broke up soon after, but continued to work together. The Sugarcubes quickly reached international stardom with the release of the album Life's Too Good in 1988. The Sugarcubes toured internationally and released several albums, including Here Today, Tomorrow, and Next Week (1988), Stick Around for Joy (1992), and It's It (1992). As one of her many side projects during this period, Björk released Gling-Glo, an album of Icelandic jazz with the Icelandic jazz group Trio Guɀmundar Ingólfssonar.

Solo Career

The Sugarcubes began to dissolve in the early 1990s. The members had actually been surprised at how long their band had stayed together, as they had come together as more of a fun social group rather than a band bent on international success. By 1992, Björk's voice and eccentricities had become the defining features of the Sugarcubes, and the group split up in 1993, with Björk launching a solo career. She moved to London with her young son and released Debut in 1993, based largely on her journals from the previous decade. The album went platinum in the United States and received international recognition. She was awarded Best Breakthrough Act at the 1994 BRIT Awards.

Björk's diversity as a musician quickly became evident with the release of her next album, Post (1995), followed by Telegram (1996) and Homogenic (1997). She also worked on collaborations with David Arnold, Tricky, Madonna, and Plaid. Between 1994 and 1998, Björk received the BRIT Music Award's Best International Female Artist three times, and in 1995, she was named the Best Female Artist at the MTV Music Awards.

In 2000, Björk was cast in director Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark. She played the role of Selma, a factory worker in the process of losing her eyesight. Björk also wrote the soundtrack to the film Selmasongs. Björk's song, "I've Seen It All," which she preformed with Radiohead's Thom Yorke, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2001. Her performance resulted in an award for the Best Female Performance at the Cannes Film Festival. Despite her success, Björk swore never to act again, as the experience had been too emotionally taxing.

Seeking to incorporate the sounds of numerous artists from a multitude of genres into her music, Björk became a master of mixing sounds, complimenting the sound of traditional choirs and chamber music with techno music and jazz. Vespertine, released in 2001, illustrates Björk's sophistication in sound mixing. The album, which features the poetry of E. E. Cummings and music from harpist Zeena Parkins, Matmos, and DJ Thomas Knak, was her fastest selling album. Björk also spent over a month in Greenland, collaborating with the Inuit Choir for Vespertine. She later toured internationally for the album, accompanied by the Inuit Choir, Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq, and Matmos.

In October 2002, Björk gave birth to her second child, Isadora Bjarkardóttir Barney. Matthew Barney, an American artist and filmmaker, was the father. The couple would later break up in 2013.

Björk released Medulla in 2004. She again collaborated with Tagaq, Matmos, Mike Bell, and Mark Stent, as well as Japanese artist Dakoko for the album. During the same year, Björk performed as the feature artist in the opening ceremonies of the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece. Appearing in a dress that covered the entire floor of the Olympic stadium, Björk sang "Oceania" from her Medulla album.

In 2005, Björk and Barney collaborated on the album Drawing Restraints 9, which is heavily influenced by traditional Japanese music. Drawing Restraints 9 was used as the soundtrack for Barney's film by the same name, which is set aboard a Japanese whaling ship and in which Björk had a role opposite Barney.

Björk reunited with the Sugarcubes on November 17, 2006, in order to perform a single concert in Reykjavik. The proceeds from the concert went to Bad Taste, in order to support Icelandic musicians.

Björk's album Volta was released in 2007 and quickly reached the top ten of the Billboard 200. Volta was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album in 2008. This was Björk's thirteenth Grammy nomination. The following year, she released Voltaic.

Björk released several albums in the 2010s. Mount Wittenberg Orca (2010), was a self-released collaboration with the Dirty Projectors to raise money for marine conservation. Biophilia (2011), was a album project on the theme of science and technological innovation which included an "app album" and educational projects. In 2013, Björk was featured in a Channel 4 television documentary with Sir David Attenborough and Oliver Sacks. Titled When Björk Met Attenborough, the show centered on Biophilia. Björk next released Bastards (2012), a remix album, followed by Vulnicura (2015), which went on to be nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. In 2015, a retrospective of Björk's career opened at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Later that year, she released an acoustic companion to Vulnicura, titled Vulnicura Strings. In 2016, she launched a virtual reality exhibit, Björk Digital, comprising virtual reality videos for Vulnicura. That June, she performed a single from the album, "Quicksand," in the first ever virtual reality live stream broadcast on YouTube. The following year, Björk released Utopia, which was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. In 2020 she released Post.

Björk embarked on Björk Orkestral, an acoustic concert series in which the singer was backed with a strings section, in 2021 following initial delays due to the global COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020. The tour was well-reviewed and won Björk an Icelandic Music Award for Musical Event of the Year.

In 2022 Björk appeared in director Robert Eggers's The Northman, a drama about a viking prince's quest for revenge. With parts set in Iceland, The Northman was cowritten by Sjón, an Icelandic poet and former intermittent member of the Sugarcubes with whom Björk has frequently collaborated with. Later that year, Björk released Fossora, her tenth studio album.

Humanitarian Activities

From the beginning of her career, Björk has used lyrics as a means of bringing attention to situations such as global crises, environmental campaigns and humanitarian initiatives. She became an ambassador for UNICEF, particularly helping in the relief aid for the victims of the tsunami that struck East Asia in 2004. Her album Army of Me: Remixes and Covers, made up of seventeen versions of her 1995 hit song "Army of Me," raised 250,000 pounds for UNICEF.

While touring for Volta in 2008, she donated $1, £1, or 1€ from each ticket sold to raise approximately $75,000 US for UNICEF's "Unite for Children, Unite against AIDS" campaign.

Björk has been involved with a number of other causes. While touring for the album Volta in 2007–2008, Björk dedicated the song "Declare Independence" to independence movements in Kosovo and Tibet. These actions resulted in her dismissal from Serbia's Exit Festival and she caused a stir among Chinese authorities in Shanghai, China.

Björk has also been at the forefront of numerous Icelandic environmental and humanitarian initiatives. On November 6, 2008, she held a press conference endorsing the "CoolPlanet2009" initiative in Brussels, at the United Nations headquarters. The "CoolPlanet2009" initiative aimed to raise new awareness of global warming, as well as introduce additional efforts toward minimizing its impact, going beyond those requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. At the conference, she emphasized curtailing industrial development in Iceland at the expense of the environment.

In 2009, Björk contributed a song to the soundtrack of the film Moomins and the Comet Chase. Björk was a corecipient of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music's Polar Music Prize in May 2010.

Bibliography

Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Björk." All Music, 2024, www.allmusic.com/artist/bj%C3%B6rk-mn0000769444. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.

Ratliff, Ben. “Through the Wormhole with Björk.” The New York Times, 4 Feb. 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/arts/music/bjork-new-york-hall-of-science-show-review.html. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.

Wu, Ashley Shannon. “The Northman Is a $90 Million Björk Music Video.” Vulture, 22 Apr. 2022, www.vulture.com/2022/04/bjork-the-northman-cameo.html. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.

Zemler, Emily. “Björk Says New Album Is About 'Landing on the Earth and Digging My Feet Into the Ground.” Rolling Stone, 31 Aug. 2022, www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bjork-fossora-album-art-1234584918/. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.