On a grey morning in London, Björk arrives looking disarmingly conventional. I suppose there’s no reason why she should be dressed as a swan, as she was at the Oscars a few years ago, or sport crystals on her face, as she did in the video backdrop to her performance at the opening ceremony of the 2004 Olympics. It’s just that in Björkworld, we have learnt to accept the extraordinary as ordinary. So it comes as a surprise to find her so demure, in a simple pink shift dress, wearing no make-up, her jet-black hair pushed casually behind her ears. Then there’s her voice. When she opens her mouth, what emerges is an oddly appealing sound — a mix of Nordic and “mockney” — nothing like the unearthly sound she produces on record.
Born in 1965 in Reykjavik, Björk Gudmundsdóttir released her first record at the age of 11. By the time she was 20, she was in a band called Kukl, half of which broke away to form the Sugarcubes, whose guitarist Thor Eldon became the father of her son, Sindi, now 18. The band’s spiky, avant-garde pop became Iceland’s biggest export until 1992, when Björk embarked on a solo career.
She has since sold in excess of 12 million albums, but her work has become increasingly experimental. By Medulla (2004), the manic pop thrills that she had mixed so brilliantly with more avant-garde elements on Debut (1993) and Post (1995) had been replaced by a self-contained musical world of daring originality, but limited commercial appeal.
She’s in town to talk about her new charity album, Army of Me, a collection of 20 remixes of a song that made the Top Ten in 1995 and featured in the film Tank Girl. The project came about when Björk issued an open invitation via her website for people to rework the song. She then listened to every one of the 600 versions she received before deciding on the best.
“I had no idea that so many people were so busy in their bedrooms,” she jokes. “Remixes are interesting because they are a peculiar brand of collaboration. It was like I was the songwriter and all these people were the arrangers or the interpreters. And then I became sort of the editor, and their servant. I liked the anonymity of it. When I first listened, I didn’t know whether they came from Bangladesh, Peru or Manhattan. All I could base my choice on was the music.”
Björk’s record company, One Little Indian, believes that the album will raise £250,000 for Unicef within ten days of release, but the money was not Björk’s only concern. “I feel weird because I’ve been doing interviews for 20 years and this is the first time I’ve talked about stuff like politics,” she says. “I would prefer music to be abstract rather than standing on a podium pointing a finger at what’s wrong with the world. I always said that I would never get involved in politics, but then situations can become too much. You reach a moment when even someone like me has to stand up and say ‘wait a minute’.”
In truth, it was less a moment than a culmination of events. She abandoned her London base in 2000, after an obsessed 21-year-old fan mailed an acid bomb to her home and then committed suicide (which he filmed), in order to be with her in the afterlife. Moving to New York, where she still lives with the American artist Matthew Barney and their three-year-old daughter, Isadora, she was as deeply affected by the events of September 11 as everyone else. But she was equally shocked by the American reaction, which she complained “felt like Nazi Germany or something”.
She begins to talk about her feelings about the war in Iraq, but leaves the sentence unfinished, words unable to convey her exasperation. “Suddenly so many people had an opinion and didn’t agree with our rulers. People stood up and wanted to have a say, but when Bush was re-elected they felt powerless.”
A month after the US presidential election came the Asian tsunami, and that’s when she decided to put the charity album together and to speak out. “Maybe we can’t do anything about Bush and bin Laden. Those guys are going to play their games whatever happens. But I thought: ‘Here’s something where we can have a say.’ I wanted to be part of it.”
Björk is a notorious fidget at the best of times, but talking about politics makes her so uncomfortable that she practically jumps out of her skin. “Politics is so black and white and what’s great about music is that it’s above and beyond that,” she says. “Music is so complex and it has all these organic mechanisms and life forces growing inside it. It belittles it to say that music is left or right, or pro-this or anti-that.”
But uncomfortable or not, she’s even taken to discussing feminism, a word she has spent her entire adulthood avoiding. “It was always a taboo subject. I thought: ‘We’ve done that. My mum did that and her mum did that and it’s time to move on.’ But it turns out that the battles haven’t been won at all.”
Much of this seems to be a response to motherhood — not so surprising considering the stereotypes that are still forced upon young girls — and thinking about the nature of the world in which her daughter will grow up. She’s particularly keen that she should have an understanding and appreciation of her roots. “I’ve just spent two weeks in Iceland and I got all these Icelandic books and videos for her. It’s important for me and for her. I remember when I was six years old, playing outside with all the other kids until 11pm in summer, when it’s bright for 24 hours a day. In a city, your parents hold your hand until you’re 14. It’s a very different feeling. It’s not just about Iceland. It’s about being part of nature.”
Still looking back, she talks approvingly of what she calls the “hooligan elements” of her earlier work, but believes that she has developed into a much better artist. When she toured a “greatest hits” show recently, fans pointed out to her that she had chosen nothing from Debut and just two songs from Post. “It’s hard to judge yourself but I don’t think they’re my best,” she says. “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.”
She is now one of only a handful of artists whose record label allows her to follow her own musical whims without interference. “Nobody has ever told me how my records should sound,” she says. “I make them and give them to the record company and that’s it. I know from other musicians how rare this is, and I’m grateful that I’ve been allowed to go through a natural evolution.”
This year she turns 40, and she’s convinced that her best work lies ahead. She sees the cult of youth as a “modern bubble” invented by a pop world she increasingly feels she does not belong to. “I’ve always thought of myself more as a folk musician, because folk music has been changing and growing for centuries.”
The creative artists who are most revered in Iceland, she says, are not musicians, but writers. “If you put a book out at 20, you’re regarded as promising. It isn’t until 40 that the serious s*** kicks in, and perhaps you will write your masterpiece at 55. You have to collect all these experiences to write about.
“As I get older and more mature, my relationship with my music is becoming like that. It’s more challenging, like a mystery. It’s exciting and scary, instead of just doing it in your sleep because you’ve done it before.”
Next on the agenda is the soundtrack for Barney’s forthcoming film, Drawing Restraint 9. “It’s set in Japan so I’ve been doing a lot of research into Japanese traditional music.”
Don’t expect a return to the charts any time in the near future.
Björk — Army of Me will be released on May 2. All profits to Unicef. You can pre-order the album now from www.onelittleshop.com and www.bjork.com
