Bjork
Bjork
Björk Guðmundsdóttir, known mononymously as Björk, is an Icelandic singer-songwriter. Over her three-decade career, she has developed an eclectic musical style that draws on a wide range of influences and genres spanning electronic, pop, experimental, trip hop, dance, classical, and avant-garde styles. She initially became known as the lead singer of the alternative rock band The Sugarcubes, whose 1987 single "Birthday" was a hit on US and UK indie stations and a favorite among music critics. Björk embarked on a...
ProfessionPop Singer
Date of Birth21 November 1965
CityReykjavik, Iceland
People from the rock and roll world have felt for years that electronic music had no soul, but now electronic music can not only have soul but have all the shapes in the world.
Kids draw masterpieces - they're the best painters ever. I think the same with music. They could totally write amazing music if they just had the right tools. It's important at that age to set up something, and then maybe afterwards you can go study your violin for 500 hours a week. But at least in the beginning you know about the options.
Our times seem to be so much about redefining where we are physical and where we're not. For me, it is really exciting to take the cutting edge technology and take it as far as it can get virtually, use it to describe/control the musicology or the behavior of raw natural elements, and then plug it with a sound source which is the most acoustic one there is - like gamelan and pipe organ. So you get the extremes: very virtual and very physical. In that way you shift the physicality.
The funeral business is so manipulative emotionally. I would want to be thrown into the sea or burned - something that's not a big hassle.
Most people in Iceland are blonde and blue-eyed. I was nicknamed 'China girl' in school 'cos they thought I looked Asian.
Since I was a kid, I always wanted to figure out how to make a bass line that was a pendulum - like, gravity would control it, and then you could make it play different notes.
Nature has always been important to me. It has always been in my music.
In order to actually have a touchscreen in front of me and somehow still be connected to nature, I needed to be able to incorporate natural elements into the song structures. Because that's always been my song-writing accompaniment: nature.
There is such a big chunk of me that is David Attenborough. I think he is my biggest inspiration.
When I was 20, political music was the uncoolest thing on earth.
Living in a capital in Europe but still surrounded by mountains and ocean, my relationship to music was strongest walking to school and back. I would sing to myself and very quickly started mapping out my melodies to landscapes - at the time I just thought it was very matter of fact, a common thing to do.
I think religion is a mistake - I'm exhausted by its self-righteousness. I think atheists should start screaming for attention like religious folks do.
Come on, I'm from Iceland; I don't do hip-hop.
I do love one-upmanship sometimes, like when you see kids breakdancing and who can do the best tricks. It's common, it's in our nature as animals, like the birds of paradise who've got the best feathers and that sort of stuff. But it's fun when it's impulsive and it's about fun.