I’ll be honest with you: I don’t really like Björk. I find her eccentricities irritating and there’s something about the way she opens her mouth when she sings that makes me fear for my life. Her perpetual smile and that pleading countenance (why are there so few English words for a frown?) are equally cloying. And I know I’m not alone.

But her music–ah, that’s a different matter, isn’t it! Even the reluctant listener agrees that there’s something unique about Björk’s epic brand of pop music. Here’s what I think it is: she succeeds at fusion in a way that “Fusion artists” have never approximated. She employs textures, timbres, instrumentation and arrangements, and a fabulous breadth of styles from hip hop to industrial to Broadway, that aren’t simply layered or combined. Like the struts in a geodesic dome, they create balance and support. Like soul mates, they light each other up. They bring out the best in each other.

Like any performer, Björk presents to us a persona. While that persona may be closer to Björk the person, we can’t ever assume that we know the Real Björk. As a longtime fan of Björk’s music, I’m of the mind that it is best experienced without Björk, the person, in mind. So unless I indicate otherwise, from here on in, when I refer to “Björk”, I’ll be referring to her body of work, and not to her.

Throughout her career, Björk has been as much an illustrator as a musician. Songs on Debut (1993) were narrative, like “There’s More to Life than This”, about two people meeting in a club and going on an adventure. We hear the sound of the door shutting behind, and the music is attenuated for a moment as if by the walls of the club. “All the Modern Things” (Post, 1995) uses casual prose:

This style has become less explicit over the years, but Björk is still intensely visual. Her lyrics have become increasingly abstract and expressionistic. Yet even, as in “All Neon Like”, (Vespertine, 2001) when she paints with her words:

…her nebulous melodies fill up your ears and dissolve your ideas. Elsewhere on Vespertine, like the foggy “Undo”, each successive moment consumes and sponges the last away. Björk insinuates herself inside you and forces you to experience the music with more than just parts of you.

Björk makes music that is bigger than herself, bigger than me, bigger than you. Even if her songs are about her, they’re dynamic, accessible, even universal, and they become intensely personal. She makes strange the familiar, and the familiar strange. In songs with drums, the beat becomes your heart. In tracks without, like meditating on a raga, your body, your breath, fill the space and provide the rhythm.

There are moments in my life, moments of stagnation, moments of change, moments of love and hurt and confidence and terror, and Björk has helped me to make sense of all these things. And yet, there are those who say that Björk isn’t for everyone. That she’s obnoxious, self-indulgent, over-the-top. That by defying genres, she makes music that’s inaccessible and even corny.

Reviewers consistently award high marks and low praise to Björk. Christgau reviewed Debut with a frownie-face which, in spite of all my heartfelt outpourings and personal triumphs, made me wonder, well, so? Even though I have such big love, if nobody else “gets” Björk, if her music’s not universal, then what’s the Big Deal?

© Ryan Stolte-Sawa 2007 for Listen In.

Read more articles from the “What’s the Big Deal?” series.

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