Rolling Stone No. 695, 17/11/94
BjörkInterview by Mim UdovitchPhotography by Stephane Sednaoui
Her 1993 solo album, Debut, which has sold a half million copies,
has secured her a position in the music
industry that could best be described as the World's
Only Cheerful Techno Icelandic Surrealist. I think it's
fair to say that she is prepared for the future.
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Thank-you. I've always been for
hairy things.
Does that go for people, too?
Yeah, I guess so. I like things when
they're a bit alive. And if you don't
have a friend or a pet or you're away
traveling, then it is nice to have cuddly
things to wear.
All right, Miss voice of the Future. Do
you feel like you represent your generation?
Well, I'm definitely one of them,
that's for sure. But I look on myself as
one of those people rather than as a
representative. And to me the future
will be about being able to do all
things at once, You can be, like, a really good businessman and also be a
mother and also be really into health
food, and you can do basketball - just
pick up the best things.
Do you think that's partly because technology offers so many choices that people
can make a custom combination platter?
Definitely. Technology used to
complicate things, and now it's simplifying. I've gone up, like, nine points
in being a businesswoman because
I've got a little organizer, and I can,
write songs and arrange things. You
just need the machine, and you can
put out records. So record companies, you won't need them, and you
won't need media because of Internet.
You're eliminating the middleman.
Yes. I'm not saying there won't be
any record companies or media. I
mean, that's a pretty big statement.
That's OK. I don't take it personally.
Well... I'm exaggerating. But a
lot of people from the '80s, for them,
the biggest aphrodisiac was power.
And I have never identified with that.
And for this generation the biggest
aphrodisiac is freedom.
And what do you think are the dangers
of freedom?
Well, the good thing is with all this
equipment, you can pick for yourself
But when you've got all these choices,
you can let them control you.
This is what Kierkegaard calls the
dizziness of too much possibility.
Yes, you have to know what you
want, and it focuses you - not in a
yuppie way, in a freedom way. It's all
about "Stop moaning and do something about it." But I can sense a sort
of optimism in the air.
Where do you think that comes from?
From a generation that realizes
that media and the system are not
gonna satisfy them. And maybe the
people before expected that and then
were disappointed. Now it's more like
"They won't disappoint me." And
you can see it here, like in The Simpsons, they're just taking the piss,
there's no respect. I watch something
like Ren and Stimpy, and I love them
so much, I wish I could marry them
or something.
If you could relive your adolescence,
what would you change?
I'm quite happy with it.
Oh. You were the only happy teenager
in the world.
We had a laugh, man. We were
very active and busy and did stupid
things. Like not having any money,
so we got stuck at autobahn stations,
and we would just eat sugar from the
bowls and steal petrol from other
cars. We would drink two tequilas
through a straw and then go rollerskating on the hardboard.
On the what?
On the hardboard. The hardboard.
You know, where the ships are.
Oh, the harbor. I've often thought it
was a miracle that anybody survives past
the age of 16.
Yes, after drinking all the tequilas,
you could sink to the bottom of the
ocean quite easily.
If you could live in another time, which
would you choose?
I'm really happy about this time. I
don't want to go through all the cliché
subjects, but just being a woman now
has never been better. And to be the
generation after the generation that
fought all those fights, it's outrageous.
How would you define the different
stages of rock music?
Well, in the beginning it's always
the same thing, and then we lose the
plot. We start looking at the outside
of things and lose the heart. That happens over and over. I was just listening
to these records from the '30s, bebop
music, with one microphone in the
middle and a 50-piece band, and it's
completely dynamic. It was like punk.
I'm sorry, Sex Pistols, but it was punk.
It has this complete hardcore energy.
Right. In the same way that Ethel
Merman is a rock & roller.
Yes. And that's what I like:
the beginning. The beginning of
everything is always about the
same thing. Being completely spon-
taneous, with raw emotion and not
censoring anything and just sort of
having a lust for life.
Do you believe in Generation X?
That's like Kurt Cobain, right?
Sort of. It's the lost twentysomething
generation.
OK. I don't live here, but just the
overall view for me, America reached
its last climax in the '50s. In America
you can just sense that they've lost
hope. But then eventually it will go
up again. I mean, I've been living in
London for one and a half years, and
that's just so depressing because it's
rock bottom there. They're at that
point like the Romans when they
were just eating berries
and overdoing it because that was the only
way to deal with just
going down the drain.
That's what London is
like. It's like... I don't know if it's the
same word in English. Like when a
brother has a baby with a sister.
Incest?
No, that's maybe not the same
word. Like when all the royalties were
only marrying to each other in the
Russian Empire, and they just got all
these diseases and everything?
When all the royalties were only marrying
to each other... I don't know.
... Inbreeding?
Yeah, in a way. There's some other
word in Icelandic. Anyway, culturally
when that happens, you just have to
stop there and start fresh.
What kind of music were you brought
up with?
There was music 24 hours a day in
my house. All of the hippie bollocks.
You know, Joni Mitchell, although I
would never say she was bollocks -
she was the genius of the century.
Jimi Hendrix, Cream, early Eric
Clapton, all those guitary things.
And, um, Lynyrd Skynyrd. There's
my roots.
What makes music "alternative"?
You mean like journalists categorize it? I've never really gotten it.
That's another problem, when people
analyze my music as dance music. I'm like
"What? Why?"
Maybe they say it's dance music because
that's the kind of music male critics traditionally don't understand. On the other
hand, maybe it's because it does have a
dance-music beat.
Yeah. But I mean, give me one more
guy wearing a black leather jacket,
jeans and sneakers, and I'll shoot him.
But even if your record is not a club rec-
ord, you could be dancing at home.
Yes, I suppose. But the whole alternative thing, I think, has gotten a bit
stuck. But there are bands out there
that I like very much now. Like the
Breeders girls, they are so great - their
attitude is so fresh and so modern. And
I really admire Courtney Love as well.
And with Madonna, I'm not going to
go into the things she's done for women. You'd fall asleep, there are so many.
Well, name a few.
Just the fact that she made it look
good to control your own life when that
was something that was not supposed
to be very sexy for a woman. She's one
of the few women who has remained
true to herself and been a character.
How do you think music will change as
it gets more mixed?
I think what hopefully will happen is
people will rediscover pop music as one
of the strongest forces in the world, up
there with religion, sex, food, politics.
So you think music can change the world.
Definitely. It does every day. It's just
the biggest nurse in the world. Because
it sorts out people's heads, it makes them
braver and happier and sadder or whatever. It's one of the most important
emotional forces in the world, I think.
Do you consider yourself a political
person?
In a personal sense, yes. I believe in
individualism.
So what's in your future?
My future? I just want to keep on
going. I get so easily bored, I have to
find something new every fucking day.
But then again, I don't even have to
find it. Because there are so many
things out there. Films, books and just
... people. That's what I'm up to, really, when it comes down to it.
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